One of my lecturers at Uni had been a professional sculptor when he was younger. He was maybe 60 when i met him.

One one time he had a couple of drinks and confessed that ALL his sculptor friends were dead, and had he not become a lecturer he probably would be too.

Regular contact with harsh chemicals (even on your own terms) seems to just be pretty gnarly for your health in general.

"Kid, you're 18 now. You have to decide. Do you want to breathe toxic fumes the rest of your life or sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day?"

My brother in law died recently. He is the only member of my family I gave a shit about. He worked for a few years at a place where they made light poles. I visited him once. It was a toxic nightmare. He left that job to work for Terminix. He worked there for nearly a decade. He died last year of cancer after a years long battle at 60.

I worked in my twenties at chemical plants, power boilers and nuke plants. I didn't quit even after I noticed how all these people who were twenty to thirty years older than me were dying and how they were dying. I quit when three other men in my age group two of them very healthy and one who was a alcoholic died within months of each other after being doused with chemicals when they cut into a void while wrecking out a storage tank at a 3M plant I had worked at.

Now thirty years later all of the friends I knew who were boilermakers during that time are gone including one who now that I look back on it was a father figure to me.

Those people aren't saying desk jobs are worse or even "just as bad" to make physical laborers feel better; it's a word of warning to those with so-called "safe" jobs to be cautious of issues many people aren't aware of.

Look, I'm not going to sugar coat this. I have been a machinist for 16 years. I witnessed someone turning into mist via lathe. The entire company closed for a month. I wish I had problems like "Oh shit I pushed bad code to prod!"

I recently took a 20% pay cut to move from a factory to a remote desk job. No regrets.

I mean, yeah, but things should be better for desk workers too. We're all being taken advantage of in different ways. I was WAAAAAAAAY happier working in auto shops and occasionally getting injured than I ever have been working in IT. If I could make ends meet doing that I'd go back in a heartbeat. It's fucked that anyone doing skilled or dangerous work should struggle to own a home and live comfortably.

i love shitposts that are way more well-written than they have any business being haha

All ill say, is that both environments do their own type of damage. Physical work leads to things like physical injuries, death, etc. Deskjobs are usually mental health problems. I tend to lean toward jobs that can cause bodily harm being worse, but thats NOT to say that damage to mental health cant be debilitating in its own way.

Today I worked a corporate event. It was a lunch for all the bigwigs celebrating the completion of a freeway… that was completed 10 years ago.

These people just spend all day jerking eachother off while the guys who actually built the road are still out there working.

So true, every non-desk job is a non-stop nightmare of blood and guts. I've worked a physical job for 30 years and saw a guy twist his ankle once and another guy cut his finger and need two stitches. I pray the nightmares will stop

I worked in a Mexican restaurant for two months. I burned my finger on the beans pot on my first day, and my hands were always wet from washing dishes, so it didn’t heal until after I quit.

I actually like using excel.

There's nothing more satisfying than seeing chips fly and that solid block of steel turn into something underneath my tools. You would have to pay me an excessive wage to have me sit in front of a screen instead standing on a lathe or mill.

I'll even add that it's not as straightforward as "blue collar physical, white collar mental." Shitty blue collar jobs could mean no time at home, verbal abuse from the boss, and just generally dealing with the "blue collar culture" of sex jokes and misogyny. And that doesn't even include the possibility of ptsd from seeing a coworker get fatally injured.

they say our time is over

They say our time is through

They say you need no union if your collar isn't blue

Well that is just another lie the boss is telling you!

For the union makes us strong!

Yesterday one of my colleagues announced he had a headache so was going to have a nap. We all just wished him well and carried on without him.

Compare that to most farm workers who are lucky to have all 4 major limbs.

Nah I like the chaos.

Fist fighting a pizza oven was the highlight of my career.

The dirty blue collars don’t get the protection and long term support they need. I think there is a thought that they will quit or die before the company gets hooked for long term healthcare. It’s really one more reason why they should be first in line to vote for universal healthcare. It’s also another reason why pensions were a good thing. Spend your useful years and physical health for a proper retirement.

Oh yeah? I once had to run search for a first aid kid because a friend cut her finger with a knife while slicking bread in the office cafeteria. Office jobs are no joke, bad shit happens there too.

Dwight you ignorant slut

Genuinely: the worst part about my swivel throne job is that i spend all day perusing the algorithmically curated contents of Pandoras box.

Beautiful and bleak

I am so confused about the purpose of this sub

Sounds like bad employers and safety laws issue, tbh. I was in a much better shape when I worked in a kitchen than now with an office job, personally, even considering the absolute idiots I had to work with.