I would not be the person I am today if I had not stepped foot into the big and beautiful world of construction. Like many, I started working in construction at the ripe age of 17. Since then, I have had the luxury of working along side the most random group of people, in some of the harshest conditions, doing work in places that will expose the type of person you are real quick.
I can remember my first job straight out of high school. I was laying sewer line for a new subdivision on the north side of Edmonton, in Alberta. I showed up to the job site with my boots, and vest, eager to make $23/hr to push and pack dirt. 12 hour days, 6 days a week with an “optional” Sunday.
For many of my friends who were taking the gap year, this sounded like hell. For me, it was the damn lottery.
Looking back now, I can confidently say that this was an eye-opening experience for me. Between the long hot days, and the motley crew of dirt pushers I worked beside, this summer changed and exposed my character more than any summer filled with beaches, beer, and babes ever did.
During my summer of laying stink pipe, I got to see grown men lose their ever-loving minds, young kids come and leave within the same week. I also got to witness how a leader steps up when the project is behind while the crew is at each others’ throats, and the wrong material just showed up. Not to mention I also got see what 3 divorces does to man.
As I moved throughout my career working in different trades, I got to see these scenarios play out over and over again. The names changed, the people you work alongside with changed, but the goal always remained the same. Build new shit, keep it running, try to do it on time, within budget, and hope no one gets hurt.
It doesn’t matter if your laying drain pipes for a new subdivision, pulling wire on a downtown high rise, installing toilets at the new hospital, or building a plant in the middle of piss willy Alberta. Working in construction is something that has not only molded my character drastically, but also has molded many of the people I worked alongside.
Even if that was for better or worse.
How the people in construction will shape your character:
There is no shortage of human character on a job site. You have people from all over the world, from all walks of life, at different stages in their career all coming together to build something. You can walk onto almost any job site in North America and run into teenagers hammering nails with 60-year-old men. Ex – cons working alongside doctors and lawyers who traded those long nights at the practice for a tool belt and a 30-minute lunch break.
You will meet people who have been through hell but still show up everyday with a smile, and you will also meet people who fall apart after a shitty day in the mud. You will meet a little of this, a little of that, and everything in between.
The wide variety of people you meet on a job site will not only inspire you, but also challenge you. They will shape your character in ways you likely never thought possible. For example, let’s go back to my summer laying sewer pipe. Within the first week on site, I naturally found my place in a particular shovel crew. We all worked well together, had lots of fun and still got the job done. I learned how to have fun digging ditches, come rain or shine. I noticed an instant change in myself, for the better. I found sugar in the shit, I learned how to smile through the hard stuff.
Well near the end of the season, a few of the guys had to go back to school. And unfortunately, our little boy band started breaking up. Bodies soon had to be reallocated to form new crews, well I got stuck with a group of guys who were seasoned ditch diggers, and although excellent at their jobs, they acted as though someone pissed all over their corn flakes. Being the green hat, I kept my mouth shut, took the shit, and tried to keep a positive attitude. But it quickly got out of hand, I quickly found out that a couple of the guys in my new crew, were not just giving the young guy a hard time but wanted to push me to the point of going behind the sea-can and having “a tool talk”.
In simple terms, they wanted to throw punches. And since I was not about to lose my job over a couple of assholes, I laughed it off. Well, this went on for the next few weeks, with some days being worse than others. One day I came into work 30minutes early to see if I could catch the foreman and ask for some advice or possibly a new crew. When I got to site, I pulled up next to a white chevy Silverado. When I turned my head, I made eye contact with 3 of the guys on my shovel crew, the foreman, and the driver of the truck…
These sons of bitches were in the middle of taking pulls from a vodka bottle and ripping hits from a straight pipe.
Knowing we only had roughly 2 weeks left on the project, I confidently made the choice to reverse out of there, send in my notice via-text and take the last 2 weeks of summer taking safety courses so that I could spend my winter in the oil patch.
In this one summer I learned how to smile through the back breaking work, got to see how that even digging ditches plays a roll in a bigger picture. I also learned that if you don’t advocate for yourself, you could easily get walked over and even get put in a dangerous situation.
For better or worse, the people on a job site will shape your character.
How the wide diversity of challenges you face on a job site will shape your character:
You know there is a saying, you make a plan and God laughs. Well, when you step onto a job site, it feels like God, the engineers, the material suppliers, and your foreman all got together for a big laugh party…
A typical day on a job site is anything but typical. You will show up bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to dive headfirst into the day. Then you find out that most of the material that got delivered during the morning pow wow is wrong.
Then once you start staging the material that is correct, you bust out the blueprints only to realize the engineered drawings don’t match what you’re looking at. So, you make a few adjustments and start getting what little material you have installed. A few hours into the day and after some classic roadblocks you start to get a rumble in your belly and head in for lunch.
Now your sitting in your truck eating a bologna sandwich, the sky goes quickly from blue to gray. Rain starts hitting your windshield, coming down heavier with every drop. Your job site now went from dry and clean, to an absolute mud pit. With only a few hours left in your day, you buck up, throw your rain jacket on and head into the disaster of a job site.
On your way in the electrical foreman trips on a piece of rebar sticking out of the ground, and he gets covered in mud. Seeing this makes the mechanical guys laugh, because it truly is funny, but it makes this electrician pissed. He tells the plumber, “Shut your mouth asshole” and the plumber responds “chill buddy” but he ignores this advice and gets even more pissed. Now throwing his hard hat on the ground, he starts looking for the concrete guys so he can tell them where to go and how to get there.
A few hours later your phone rings, it’s your foreman. He tells you that the project is behind schedule and you need to work the weekend to get caught up
This right here is not an abnormal day. It is not uncommon to run into not only one or two of these issues, but all them plus more. All jobs have their challenges, but construction is one of those fields where getting the wrong material, having a pissed off foreman, and working off shitty blue prints is wrapped up in unpredictable weather and topped off with a phone call to work the weekends.
It truly is a sweet little package.
For better or for worse a job site will test your patience, your resilience, and your decision making. These will without a doubt shape your character.
How early mornings, walking with purpose, and owning up to mistakes will shape your character:
I have gone from working in the field doing a wide variety of tasks on a wide range of job site, to now consulting companies on their heavy equipment. Looking back now, I can confidently say that those years I spent waking up 4:30, working through changing weather conditions, trading holidays and weekends for some OT pay, were some of my most formative years.
Those early years of my life is where I learned to do things with purpose, even if that only meant running back to the tool crib to grab another wrench. You learned to walk back with purpose. Those days are where I learned how to take direction and follow a plan. Where I leaned how to own up to my mistakes, and where I learned that just simply showing up prepared and ready to work truly is half the battle.
I’m not saying that you must go pour concrete or dig dirt in the blistering sun, or even go lay pipe in -30 to develop a solid work ethic. No, not at all, but it does help. What I am saying is that when you decide to take a job working in the trades, you are given the opportunity to build not only yourself as Human, but to also build something that is going to contribute to this world.
When you work on a construction project, you see the efforts of your labor being built right in front of you. You start to realize that showing up and walking with purpose really does make a difference. You start to understand the importance of being prepared for a job, and how most mistakes happen from being unprepared or miscommunication. When you work construction, you start to appreciate hard work, no matter how it looks.
You don’t have to throw a stone very far on a job site to find someone who feels like they are a victim to their work, I think this is a mindset that plagues most work environments. Working construction is no easy task, it demands a lot of you physically, mentally and emotionally. If you go into most of your days understanding and embracing that the challenges of the days are in fact just that, the challenges of the day, then you will likely come out not only with a stronger work ethic, but with a better human character.
In summary, construction is one of those jobs that has many elements all wrapped up into one. It requires strength, organization, technicality, resilience and awareness. There are many things on a job site that will expose and shape these traits in one’s character. Whether you’re new to the trades or are seasoned vet, the challenges will never stop, they just change from day to day. And this is what makes us stronger, makes us better, and keeps us sharp. Using your day job as an opportunity to shape your character, develop a solid work ethic, and to build resilience is truly making the most of your time. Because for better or worse your character is being shaped day in and day out, by the way we handle challenges in our life. For better or worse.
One proud human,