Caturday
8 minutes ago
Friday, December 15, 2017
Wear and Tear of a Blue Collar Life
One of daughters owns a massage therapy business. She sees people from all walks of life. A lot of her clients are retired people.
Those who've worked white collar jobs are usually in much better condition. They tend to have active retirements. They go on cycling trips, cross country ski, hike and are in pretty good physical condition.
Those who've worked blue collar jobs all their lives tend to be worn out. Their retirements are not nearly so active. Most are suffering from injuries sustained from a long life of heavy labor. In retirement, their activity level is lower as they are in more pain. Because of their enforced sedentary lifestyle, they get out of condition. It's a vicious circle.
I think of my friends who've worked hard all their lives. Their knees and hips are shot. Many have had them replaced. Shoulders have bad rotator cuffs. Backs are messed up. They are living with a lot of pain. Shift workers have a lot of weird problems associated with messed up sleep schedules.
I think about how politicians want to raise retirement ages. They've got nice cushy jobs and often “work” into their 80s. They can't imagine how different it is to work 40 or 50 years in blue collar jobs.
We seem to be operating in a two tier system. Those with soft jobs who can work until they retire, then have many more good years. Those with hard physical jobs will either work until they die or go on disability.
-Sixbears
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Sad, but so true!
ReplyDeleteI wish it was different.
DeleteThe same goes for low level 'white collar' or what I call 'grey collar' jobs. Like serious office workers. Bad backs from sitting all day, carpel tunnel and tennis elbow, and miss-aligned spine from cheap-assed office chairs.
ReplyDeleteThirty years of crap furniture and being forced into twisted dwarf shapes while keyboarding my life away has messed up my ass, lower back and my lower arms, along with my shoulders.
Upper-class white collarers have nice chairs and desks and get to run around and move and have active lives while at work. Office drone life totally sucks.
Okay, it doesn't approach the nastiness of a coal miner or a steel worker, but it does take a toll.
My massage therapists (husband-wife team) say the shoulders of office drones are the worse they have ever worked on, as they are never ever relaxed. I know 30 years of hunch-typing have left mine tight and in pain for, oh, 29 years or more.
Well, enough whining about me, hope your repairs go well on the RVbulance, and that you and yours have a good December.
Good points. I'm going to steal that term "grey collar."
DeleteLow level workers have all kinds of stress and very little control over their environment -bad combination.
My co-workers would look at me like I was insane for wearing a filter mask when changing the toner cartridge on the copier. Never could get them to understand that the fine particles of anything, especially burnt motor oil, is one of the best causes of lung cancer (what fingerprint powder and basically copy toner is, seriously, burnt and ground carbon. The best source for fingerprint powder for years was some guy in New England who makes it in his basement from, yep, used motor oil.)
DeleteClosely following in the realm of hazmat material is paper dust. Again, another very fine particle respiratory irritant.
Followed by all the hazardous chemicals found in, oh, say, inks, whiteout, liquid toners, just about any office products (formaldehyde is a big one, it is in everything,) and the fact that the prole office worker usually is stuck in poorly ventilated areas, and it is lucky that I don't have a third eye or some other weird mutation, or some cancer eating me up.
Not to mention all the suits bringing their sick kids into work while waiting for a doctor's appointment for the ill creatures, and expecting me to take care of the walking disease vectors. Hell no! And they get all uppity when the paper mask and nitrile gloves come on when they are walking around coughing up a lung on my desk.
There is a real 'indentured servant' feel to being an office drone. Everything is your fault, especially the things that are out of your control. You have more bosses than you have fingers and toes (and they all hate each other) and the company will hire another suit at huge expense to try to figure out why you aren't productive enough or why your work is so much more accurate and better than those around you. (Seriously. Ended up getting fired because they hired someone at 3 times my pay to try to figure out why my info was correct and the person I reported that info to could not get the same results (Hey, how about you fire her and hire me? No? Makes too much sense? Doors hitting me in the ass on the way out, thanks for nothing!)
Yes, low level workers - the modern servants of the modern world. The movies make our jobs seem so glamorous. Kinda like "Pretty Woman" made street walkers look like princesses.
Good point about the office chemicals. A friend of mine used to work in publishing and now has all kinds of weird conditions. Probably connected.
DeleteIt's a darn good thing I never worked in an office environment. Eventually the stupidity would send me over the edge.
One of the things that drives me nuts is the whole intern system. Legal slavery. Plus, only those with rich parents can afford to take those internships that may lead to good jobs. Of course, since mom and dad are connected, they have those jobs in the bag already.
Yep. Been working since I was 16. My whole body hurts when I get up in the morning because of physical labor jobs up until I was 42. Then 15 years of an office job and the last 2 of swing shift. So I've had the whole gamut and am ready to retire at 62 except for the money and insurance factor. Sad state of affairs indeed.
ReplyDeleteThere are good reasons to retire early, but they've made it much harder to do so.
DeleteFirefighters can retire early but that's because the job ages the heck out of people.
Yup, I ask my five-foot-two female frame to function for 39 years on a concrete floor doing a job designed for a five-foot-eight male. My joints are shot and the only reason I'm not in worse shape is I got a golden handshake and retired early.
ReplyDeleteI've a buddy seriously thinking about taking a buyout to retire early. He's out on injury leave right now and will be close to 62 when he's cleared to go back to work. Don't think he wants to go back.
DeleteGlad you got out before it was too late.
So true, its not the years, its the mileage and a bumpy road that get us where we are at. Tough roads produce dings in our body.
ReplyDeleteBut the tough road also conditions us mentally. That when situations go bad, we don't wait for things to get better - we pull out tools and fix them or at least improve them. People who have led a tough life handle stress much better - we are used to it.
We can handle stress, but it still takes a toll. It's a shame that we have to have the attitude and fortitude of Russian peasants.
DeleteAndrew has a good point. I'm an office worker and sitting all day and typing believe it or not has taken its toll. My body is crap now at age 61. I try to exercise but I have limited mobility in my shoulders and arms and now my hips are acting up. I never thought sitting all day would be so detrimental.
ReplyDeleteI've a friend who used to buy himself crazy expensive office chairs,but it paid off for him over the years. He had to get a Dr.'s note to bring his own chair in.
DeleteI have a malformed tail thanks to cheap assed office chairs. I did my best by scrounging good chairs from surplus, but then the other assistants would get assed up and complain and I'd have to go back to craptastic plastic.
DeleteI can't sit for long periods of time now on regular furniture without my legs falling asleep, dangerously asleep. Either I have to sit on a pillow or I do all my sitting in bed, now, wit lots of back support. I am a veteran of the Office Wars.
You must have seen that movie "Office Space." Every office drone I know has seen it.
DeleteYou aren't just a veteran, you are a casualty.
There is too much truth in "Office Space." To us surviving office drones, it isn't a comedy, it is a tragic drama, with redemption at the end.
DeleteGod, I hate, HATE, HAAAAATE, fax machines...
And to this day the smell of Folgers or Maxwell House coffee makes me want to kill...
I knew it!
DeleteThat crap coffee is a pretty good reason to kill.
Your daughter is in a good field, if her body can deal with the energy it takes to do the job. I get bodywork done every two weeks. Sometimes I feel guilty, like it's a guilty pleasure but then I throw my back out or some such think and am so grateful to have a standing appointment to get my joints put back into place. Yes it's costly, but I look at it as paying the piper in advance so I don't have as many issues down the road.
ReplyDelete