Ways to Make Money - Construction Worker
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When I first left home I ended up moving to the then boom town of Calgary where jobs were plentiful and money, relatively was big. After a couple weeks living in the youth hostel and scouring the city’s help wanted ads, I discovered that the “boom” was mostly available to experienced workers.
Then, through a friend, I met a guy who had a killer job, making big bucks doing laborer work at a construction site - he said they were looking for workers. He called his boss and I was told to show up the next day.
My Background
I was 18 years old, about a thousand miles from my cozy suburban home; the first time away from my parents nest. Living in a youth hostel my eyes were just getting used to the initial shock of diversity at the world around me compared to the world I had known growing up.
The day I reported to work it was -20 Celsius and I could tell that the foreman took an instant dislike to me. He had my suburban, cozy, middle class, never-done-a-stick-of-real-work ass all figured out.
He passed me off to one of the senior workers on site, with a sinister wink. This guy, I was pretty sure he was recently escaped from some high security institution, was in charge of finding a task for me.
I was lead out of the site shack and given a device that resembled a chain saw only it had a round blade like a circular saw on the end of it. I was all I could do to lift it with my scrawny arms. In front of me was a concrete pipe about 15 feet long and about 4 feet high. Looking at the edge it was about 4 inches thick. It has a line drawn on it about 2/3 the way along it’s length.
“Cut it at the line.” Was all he said.
After about 15 minutes I had managed to get the saw started and an hour or so after that I had actually penetrated the concrete so that I was through to the inside of the pipe with my blade.
Was he expecting this done today? This week? How the hell am I going to cut the bottom part that is resting on the ground of this massive pipe?
At lunch time no one would look at me. By the end of the day I had about 4 feet cut on the line or about 1/4 of the circumference. And I was the coldest that any living human being has ever been.
I Never Went Back
It went completely against everything inside me, but I just couldn’t find the energy to get myself out of bed the next day and go back there. Didn’t care about the day’s earnings I had coming, I just wanted to never go their again.
It wasn’t so much the work, but the attitude of the boss that got me.
Lesson Learned
Don’t suffer needlessly. I don’t believe in pain avoidance, but there is productive pain and there is stupid useless pain. As I look back in my life, some of the best moves have been when I realized that the pain I was experiencing had no positive purpose and I walked away from it.
What do you think, is it good to walk away from a painful situation, or would I have benefited more by “sticking with it” and toughing it out?
- Jon Symons
P.S. this article is a part of my “Ways I’ve Made Money” series.
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Comments ( 2 )
Vin Cache added these pithy words on Jan 14 07 at 10:55 pmIt’s a lesson I wish I learned at a young age. When you’re young you feel you have to take some abuse because you don’t know anything and have to prove yourself, but nobody deserves poor treatment just because you’re young and dumb. You were right to walk away.
westley added these pithy words on Apr 03 08 at 9:58 pmWell i started at the age of 15 iam 19 mow and make 120 dollars a day in nyc