I do quite intense manual labor. The most striking thing to me is that you have to treat it like a training program, then when you do, everything the bean counters say and want turns into complete nonsense. Their thinking in 8 hour blocks is hilarious.

Lets imagine a hypothetical a job like unloading 50 kg bags from trucks and say you carry them up stairs to the 3rd floor. Or let them be 20 kg bags, 1 floor.

You can find a person who can do one 50 kg bag + 3 floors, lots of people can do multiple 20 kg bags. But how many can you expect an employee to do in a day? How fast is a reasonable demand? The answer is simple if you look at it from a training program perspective: If you can do 1 bag (of either kind) you keep doing it until you are tired or until it starts to hurt ever so slightly. You do this 3 days per week. You grow and grow until eventually you can hurl bags easily for hours. You could in theory keep training until you can comfortably do 50 kg bags, 3 floors, 8 hours long. It would take forever ofc. 20 kg, 1 floor is doable. You train until you can do a whole shift 3 days per week. Keep at it for a while then add a 4th day and eventually a 5th.

If you however push yourself a bit harder than you should, by not quitting when you had enough and/or going for 5 days to early you don't grow! You just destroy your body and if you destroy your health sufficiently you wont get used to the work in this life time. One slightly to long vacation might break you.

The moral of the story is that in some places you see these seemingly impossible mountains of men do absolutely insane amounts of absolutely insane work and it doesn't seem to bother them.

The bean counters understand non of this. They want 8 hours, preferably on a salary that doesn't afford a perfect diet and adds extra units of stress that should be subtracted from the training results or added to the injury list.

In many countries you cant even take employees blood pressure, measure heart rate or test their blood for nutrients. Some guys driving a desk decided that is a violation of peoples privacy.

Manual laborers 200 years ago spend a good amount of time outside and got a good amount of vitamin D.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15050-vitamin...
> Vitamin D deficiency is a common global issue. About 1 billion people worldwide have vitamin D deficiency, while 50% of the population has vitamin D insufficiency. Approximately 35% of adults in the United States have vitamin D deficiency.

If you are looking to push the human body to the limit the year round getting out of the deficiency zone is not enough. About 100% gets insufficient D the year round.

I tell our bean counters that if they want to see more work done they have to give us a solarium with UVB lamps and pay people to use it.

There is nothing like seeing people hold 2 contradictory thoughts at the same time. They all know I'm 100% right and they know it 100% cant happen.

Unless ofc they subscribe to the official pseudoscience:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/indoor-tannin...

Good level D is positively correlated with endurance performance, muscle strength and with a lower rate of injuries. Anything less and you become fragile or a jellyfish. If you see someone do hard work your limbs snap off.

I also suggest they serve the employees meat (protein) during work to avoid them eating something stupid like sandwiches during lunch then a pizza or mcdonalds after work.

It honest to god feels like talking to a different species.

Recently they tried to explain to me the concept of working harder because they cant find employees. I tried to explain them being unable to find employees means I'm going to do less work and go home early. We all have our tasks. I did a great job. They couldn't find employees? It seems so simple? Give me more money, I will do more work, others will come if the price is right?

It's a lovely job, I bust my ass, pay is crap but my thoughts are my own and the employer has to put up with my bullshit. I can just walk away, there is plenty of grunt work and I can jockey a desk too! I drive a really fast desk. It's lovely to see a plan come together or to slap a bunch of code together and see it do its thing. It's all the same really, you get to be impressed by your own abilities, accomplishment or if both fail by the compensation :)