this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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So, you're a manual labourer with no qualifications or skills, and you're starting to feel the effects of that?
Most people are qualified and starting to earn decent money by their thirties.
Manual labour requires a lot of skill and by 30+ you need to acquire it or you'll destroy your body. There are jobs that require only a few hours of learning but they rarely are intensive, just extremely boring.
What are you calling manual labor? Methinks you paint with a very small brush.
Carry a metric tonne or so of wallboard up the stairs because the lift hasn't been installed yet, empty all the wheelie bins on site, sweep the floor, all that stuff.
Basically, the people that do all the work that's beneath the dignity of a tradie.
You and I are on the same page. We're talking about hard work, simple, non-stop bullshit. I wouldn't put tradesmen in the same bucket.
Hell, I thought being a cable guy was fucking rough, but slinging mulch and rocks at Lowe's has been far worse, even trying to adjust for a 25-year difference in my age. I did insanely hard shit hanging cable, but it wasn't non-stop. My legs are more solid than they were running across rooftops installing satellite.
There are definitely manual labour jobs that require little to no skill, a lot of site labourer work is like that. Carrying wallboard, emptying bins, just generally carrying shit around.
Don't know where do you live, but around here there is no construction jobs that only require you only to carry shit around. Also you need to learn a lot to carry shit around correctly unless you have spare back.
In Quebec they're called "journaliers" and being assigned to the Mason as a "journalier" sucks big time.
It's the entry level position in construction for people who didn't get a professional degree in a specific trade.
I think they are called handyman in english, and it's an extremely hard and shitty job that doesn't require a lot of learning, true, it does require skill to do it properly and efficiently, and in way that won't leave you invalid by 40. Good handymen often learn other skills and obtain 'real' profession, so it's more like a starter point of a career for many.
No. A handyman is a skilled role.
The guy bringing timber and wallboard up the stairs to where that guy is working is a site labourer.
Glad to be enlightened, clearly this doesn't happen, since you haven't experienced it.
Big construction sites where I live definitely have such people, and it's a horrible job.
I'd say OP is full of it with no real experience in construction. Of course there are people who do the mindless grunt work. I'm one of them!
Worked my ass off to move up, take on more responsibility, take on less muscle work, but there are plenty of guys who do nothing but lift and load.
Rude
OP's fat and/or has been sitting in a chair his whole life if he can't hang at labor in his 30s. Fuck me, I'm 54, work my ass of at Lowe's, after working IT for 20-years, can still hang. Barely.
I have seen people destroy their backs working as a soda merchandiser before their 40s. That can be a surprisingly brutal job with ridiculous demands.
Watched the soda guy unload today, and you can imagine it's not much at a Lowe's. Kinda like what I do, tossing heavy weights around without benefit of a machine or tool. Not that we don't have forklifts and a myriad of lifting options, but often all you can do is He Man that shit around.
Those are actually coveted jobs, much less manual lifting and much higher pay because of the license requirement.
Merchandisers go into Walmarts, big grocery chains and the like and fill all the shelves, move out pallets that have already been dropped in the backroom by the truck hours or days before. The trucks have electric jacks, that part is pretty easy. What's not easy is being one person during the summer time, hauling a dozen pallets out of staged trailer with a manual pallet jack with one wheel stuck (bc grocery managers are power tripping usually) and then move that all out across an entire Walmart to build out a 10 pallet display and then fill all the shelves. And the slower you move, the more soda you have to move later as people buy more at the other stops further along your route... I have worked 28 hour weekends. Pay was good for not being skilled and I was in the best shape of my life, but it would have took my back out so quickly. So many situations where you are forced to lift over things or lift weigh too much, or literally move a ton of soda on equipment that isn't entirely functional.
Yeah right.
god i wish lol