For short stretches in my life I have. I worked a summer in college as a Boilermaker as a “permit” guy (my father was the construction manager on the project, and the Boilermakers’ union allowed me to work that summer on permit; I have no idea what kind of concessions he had to make to the Union to allow me on the payroll). That was hot, sweaty work, and the first day nearly did me in. I had been assigned to work at the top of the boiler building (fortunately this was during construction, so the boiler wasn’t running and the building was no hotter than it already was), and I got heat exhaustion. I knew that it would embarrass Dad if I had to quit early or request relief, so I stuck it out… and was sick all the way home, and all that night. Fortunately I was still living at home that summer, so he knew I wasn’t dogging it or faking. After that first day, the rest of the summer was a comparative breeze.
Other than that, the work involved a lot of running up and down stairs to fetch tools, cut sheet metal on the chop saw (I worked a lot with a crew of insulators, and had to do a lot of sheet metal work to attach the insulation to the boiler, and later with the sheet metal workers to cover the insulation with aluminum lagging for its protection). There were a lot of minor nicks and cuts, and the mineral wool insulation was itchy all day when it got onto your skin. (So you’d have to cover up good – in the summer, of course – to try to prevent that.)
I got to work with tools that I had never used before: acetylene torches; chop saws; come-alongs; chain falls; Porta-powers and bigger wrenches than I had ever used before (or since). Building a boiler, as we say, is “not like building a Swiss watch”, so there was a lot of banging with sledges to make things fit better. I learned what “a little red hair” means in terms of boiler erection, and I learned why Boilermakers have a (deserved) reputation sometimes for “a 3 hat and a 30 neck”, but I generally had a good time that summer, and made a ton of money – which I had to spend 100% for college.
Another summer I worked for the Worcester Parks Department, which was a lot more boring, mostly mowing lawns with huge mowers, some various small repairs, and cleaning bathrooms (and women’s rooms, for some reason that was never clear to me, really are the pits – in every different park we worked where I had to clean bathrooms, the women’s rooms were always trashed; men’s rooms would be messy, but never appeared to have been deliberately trashed; women’s rooms, always).
And finally, once during a half-year of unemployment – Winter 1991–92, I worked with my father-in-law, who had a State of Michigan grant to insulate low-income houses in and around Berrien County, MI. That was cold work, since it was nearly all outside (blowing cellulose insulation between the sheathing and inner walls of homes, through holes that we drilled in the outside sheathing). The insulation we used was bagged cellulose that had to be broken apart and run through a chopper with the blower mounted, which blew the chopped insulation through a flexible hose and into the series of holes that we would drill and later cover. Sometimes we’d also replace broken windows (part of the grant) and weatherstrip windows, insulate attics and crawl spaces under homes. That part was the worst. One afternoon while insulating under the crawl space of a big home in Benton Harbor (completely dark, of course, except for whatever drop lights and flashlights we’d drag in with ourselves to get the work done) I rolled over a dead cat. I didn’t know it was a dead cat (only something that didn’t feel right) until my brother-in-law whistled at me afterward and pointed it out with his flashlight. That was not a fun afternoon.
As for the weather, when you work outdoor work in most construction, you dress for the weather. Plan to be cool in the morning and wear layers that you can take off as needed – and when you’re working in the winter, then you dress in tons of layers that you hope you’ll be able to eventually shed as you warm from the exertion.
Most injuries are avoidable, but “back in the day” safety was not emphasized as much as it is now. A lot of people work with zero safety training in how to avoid injury and prevent accidents. When I was younger it was not uncommon to see men working without hardhats, without fall-prevention harnesses, lanyards and lifelines; no one used to wear steel-toed boots as a rule, and gloves were something you wore only when you had to. (When you work with wire slings you learn what “meat hooks” those tiny wires can be as the sling ages and the wires break from time to time.)
And when it rains steadily and you’re working outdoor work, as a rule you just turn around and go home. (Unions usually have a provision in the contract for “show-up time”, where the worker will be paid for two hours just for showing up on bad days. That’s not a feature of smaller non-union residential home construction, as a rule.)
I recommend that everyone should do some “real work” at some point in their lives; it gives a much greater appreciation for what it takes to get things done.
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