“I can’t imagine now, or anytime in the last 15 years, a teenager being able to walk into an office and be expected to show up and work the next day in a hard industrial job”

To be honest, in my anecdotal experiences, the teenagers aren’t asking for these jobs anymore. I’m one of the youngest people at the company I work for and I’m 32, I’ve been here for 3 years as an apprentice mason and 2 years as a laborer. We’ve had 2 people work for us (30-35 employees at any given time) that were younger than me. We are always hunting for new masons/laborers/operators but we end up subbing out work to other companies a lot because we just can’t find the help.

I got my job in a very similar manner as the author, albeit a modernized version. My cousin posted something on Facebook about the company he worked for needing help, and I naively thought my attention to detail and trigonometry knowledge would come in handy. I showed up the next day and was now the new bottom of the totem pole. My job for weeks was mixing mortar and carrying the heaviest things I’ve ever had to pick up in my life to the tippy-top of some 30 foot tall scaffold setups.

My first day I went to a McDonald’s down the road to eat lunch and was so exhausted I couldn’t chew. I was covered in mud and mortar, shaking from exhaustion, and mentally drained at the pace everyone worked and asked for things that I had no familiarity with. (I.e. “get me a <mud board> <16-foot level> <brick stretcher> <wall ties> <grass> <tuck pointer>” … I’ll let you figure out which ones are real ;) )

I contemplated never going back, literally leaving McDonald’s and going home. The only thing that made me go back was fear of embarrassment. I’d be embarrassed to face my cousin at the next family get together, so I went back. I went home and cried because I’d breathed in so much mortar dust I’d chemically burned my throat so bad that the one Dorito I managed to eat that night turned to sand in my mouth and felt like glass on the way down.

My second day experience was much like the authors; I hurt in places I didn’t even know were parts of my body. (That goes away after the first year or so) I asked for a mask while mixing and was told to “not breath” which is a method I still adopt on days I’m unfortunate enough mix my own mortar (think of it like the front crawl while swimming).

You’re right that transportation is looked at as a plus, but we’ve got plenty of guys working for us now that will never have their license again for various alcohol and drug related reasons. Some still drive, others get rides, if you’re good at your job, people don’t mind picking you up.

There are still places you can walk into in the morning and be working by the afternoon. Are you interested in learning more and live around Madison or Milwaukee, Wisconsin? I’ll text you an address just show up Monday morning 7am. Not a joke, this glamorous job can be all yours, no experience, drivers license, tools, diploma, prior experience, general knowledge, attention to detail or trigonometry needed.

That being said, 9/10 people we hire won’t last more than a week if they’re green. I don’t blame em, the work is hard, benefits are nonexistent, and prospects for the future pretty bleak. I started at $14/hour in 2014, took time off to found a company based on an invention I had a provisional patent for, came back in 2019 at $20/hr and worked my way up to $30/hr with maybe another $5-$7 worth of potential growth left. Which is okay, not great by the standards of most on this site I’m sure, but I genuinely enjoy the work I do now. We build some really cool stuff and I look at it as getting paid to learn. I’m not crazy about the hours, or working through the winter, or being away from my daughter so much now that she’s becoming more aware. But they’ve got me hooked, I’ve specialized my labor so much so that going back looks like a much worse prospect than continuing forward. I’ve got 3 years of a college degree that are worth their literal weight in gold but lucky enough the GI bill covered the costs. I’ll probably stack bricks until my body won’t let me anymore, or at least until it’s not economically viable; whichever comes first.