Construction Workers

[SaintDragon]

I do construction and love it...meeting the guys in the morning, sipping my coffe then heading up the ladder, put my tool belt on(lol) make sure my boots are snug then work, laugh and crack jokes all day...lots of fun even though the work can be hard sometimes. Plus outside.. I couldn't take being in an office all day....it would get boring really fast.

 

However....I am a pilot of small aircraft(got my PPL at 22 years old) I can build a 358 stroker engine complete with Ross Flattop pistons and scat crank making about 500 HP(I went to engine school) This engine won a few races back in the day when I was heavy into racing. I didn't win with it, but another guy ran my engine and won won with it.

I've built my own race chassis, bent and cut all the tubes and installed a 9"Ford carrier nested on coils in a car that originally had leaf springs and had a complete torque biscuit system.

 

Oh I can write out CSS alongside of XHTML and build nice websites. Css is great...control of a website... I even do some Java scripting..even made my own applet once with a little help from my uncle.

 

I could of went a few ways with my career as I do have the intelligence, but I always go back to construction and construction workers are not stupid.

[carhill]

Stbx had a phrase she once used, in better times, to describe the dynamic:

'Blue collar hands and a white collar mind'

 

BTW, in 30+ years (only counting income producing years) of working with dangerous machinery, I've never been seriously injured nor taken a day off work for 'damaging' myself. A few cuts here and there and that's it. Plenty of dangerous situations; explosions, things falling off the crane, etc, but, like the cat, I get out of the way. When the cat moves for the door, I'm right behind

[sweetjasmine]

The thing I think women are turned off.. is because these guys were viewed as school 'rejects'.. but today.. these young guys have been to school... no one can afford not to go to school... even for the trades, they're asking for some education (at least HS diploma) which wasn't the case decades ago...

 

Around here, illegal labor makes up a big chunk of the construction workforce. Since illegals are often treated like lepers, it has an effect on people's general impression.

 

There are idiots in all 'trades' and 'professions'...

 

Ain't that the truth.

[GoodOnPaper]

As a female physician I have a number of female colleagues who have married what some women would consider men of lower status. One friend is married to a substitute teacher, I am married to a man with two years of college, no degree, and another two colleagues' husbands work for them as office managers, and yet another has a boyfriend who is a carpenter.

 

I saw something similar in graduate school. Most of the women in my PhD program were going after "hot" guys outside of academia. Highly frustrating.

 

I had the impression that when it comes to attracting women, the perceived masculinity of the average blue-collar worker trumps anything that most of us who work in offices and labs can offer -- again, highly frustrating.

 

As far as the OP's mother-in-law goes -- she's probably thinking only about financial stability and security and may have some mistaken assumptions. Where I live, contractors are doing just as well as doctors and lawyers . . .

[Jersey Shortie]

It also applies to other occupations, like those I'm surrounded with, in farming. That greasy farmer driving the dirty pickup with a shovel in the back doesn't look too inviting, but the 6,000+ sq/ft empty mansion across the street is testament to what that shovel can do. The farmer lives elsewhere. The mansion is a tax writeoff for one of his 'farms'. You'd never know by looking at him.

 

This is so true. My dad was a farmer. I think people would be surprised how much someone like a farmer can make. Not that my dad owned a mansion but he did very well. He never went to college and he was one of the smartest men I knew. He knew how to work hard physically and mentally. Those are the kidn of skills you need for hard labor. Some people today are afraid of that kind of hard work. He had another man that worked for him. Very loyal employee. This guy is in his 70s. Works for a bunch of different people in the community, lives in a trailer, complains about all the lazy young men that in all honesty don't work as twice as hard as this guy in his 70s and we always joke that he is probably sitting on a stack of money that's a couple million several times over.

 

Women what are your views on someone who works construction? The reason I ask is because I know my ex's mom looked down on it. I am in a 5 year Union Apprenticeship and end up making a very good wage. I am comfortable with it myself. I just wondered what your opinions are.

 

I have no problem with construction workers. I've dated guys of all professions. There are good and bad people in any profession. Actually, I probably have a soft spot for guys in hard labor positions because of how I grew up and my dad and both grandfathers who owned their own farms and businesses.

[pandagirl]

When I had a full-time office job, I remember getting out of the subway, walking to work and looking at all the construction going around me. My thought? 'Wow, wouldn't it be nice to have a job where you physically did stuff and weren't in front of a computer all day? That'd be awesome."

 

I'd much rather date a construction worker than a banker.

[VertexSquared]

I actually look down on investment banking -- to me, it signifies a huge imbalance in work versus life for something that's honestly not that intellectually stimulating. I still make a decent living in finance, but you couldn't get me to be an investment banker even if you paid me double what they make (which is already huge).

 

Besides, what you do for a living won't make or break you. If you've got a great personality and a well-equipped head on your shoulders (and potentially down below), you've got nothing to lose. I think it would only be a problem if you made so little money that you'd be incompatible with whomever you're dating.

[Lizzie60]

Actually I had more MMs from the finance industry than any other trades..