Your job and the environment you are in will certainly make you feel as though you are always “switched on”. This is because you probably have a stressful job. And you are not alone in this. Most of us think our jobs are the most difficult in the world. You might be sitting at a desk from a 9-5 job, working in a mine cutting, blasting or removing rock, sitting in an office making decisions for your private business. Well, I am a writer, and like almost all writers, I can hardly imagine that anyone’s work is more complicated than mine. But it is. I mean, coming up with a really good second act twist is a definition of hard work but what about that worker digging a trench in the middle of a summer or a neurosurgeon sewing two severed nerves?
Almost every job is a stressful one. You can love it, hate it or learn to tolerate it, but you will feel stressed one way or another. You can even divide work into two categories: those that require physical work and those that require mental work. Which one is more difficult? Well, it depends on you and your capabilities. But if we take into consideration that physical labor is not mindless then physical labor is more difficult. I have to be objective in this one because I have tried both, physical and mental labor.
Most people move from job to job throughout their careers. For me, that meant changing at least 5 different jobs every year. At one point, a couple of years ago, I tried to work as a mover. That was one of the most exhausting months of my career.
Being a mover is a challenge. First off, most removal companies will work even during the holidays. A mover’s job is very important for all removal companies and it represents the heart and soul of any relocation service. It’s not only about driving a truck and transporting all that furniture. You need a strong mentality, persistence, ability to handle pressure every single day, and ingenuity. All that, even during the holidays.
A Typical Day at Work
There is no such thing as a typical day at work when it comes to a moving business. For example, one day it’s pianos. They are surprisingly really easy to move. All you need are leverage, tipping, dollies, and if something goes wrong just run for your life. The second move for that day could catch you off guard (like it did for me) with huge old closets. Imagine carrying them 4 stories down, in tight corridors of an old building with no room to (as good old Ross would say) pivot. One of those closets just grazed my foot and took the nail off my toe. However, there is no time to cry, you have to continue your day and move. I had to finish my job and get back to work the next day at 7 a.m.
The next day started with a couple of sofa beds. You know, this thing looks very comfortable but it hides about 100 pounds of upholstery underneath. All you can do is to tie up the bed frame and hope for the best. I will remember that day as one of my greatest failures in life. Not because we got stuck with one of those sofa beds on our way down and then couldn’t go up either and had to resort to a hacksaw but because of the one really old piece of furniture.
Responsibility
One of those days when you are simply out of energy but you have to push forward. You know physical work is very fulfilling. At the end of the day, you feel accomplished. However, at some point your mind simply turns off, backup generators turn on and you are in some kind of auto-pilot. It was the end of my workday and the last move we had to do. Ten-story building and the apartment was on the sixth floor. There was one elevator but not big enough for most of the furniture. We had to carry a lot of basic things like refrigerators, beds, armchairs, cupboards, lamps, and one drawer table. We chose to carry down that old drawers table the last so we don’t damage it.
All those pieces of furniture drained the last bits of energy we had. It was 2 a.m. on a sweltering August night and we even had to drive to another part of the city and unload all that into another apartment. So we did that.
The first thing we had to unload was the old drawers table. It was on some cabinets, but I didn’t know that a kid a hammered Justin Bieber’s poster on that cabinet. Nobody had seen that nail during the loading process. So, I started pulling the old drawers table and immediately heard a loud squealing sound. Yeap, that was the sound of the brand new nail pushing down its claws into the old beautiful drawers table that had been kept safe through generations of owners. The company I worked for was insured and this was not a big deal. However, it was one thing that made me say goodbye to this job.
The Resolution
My negligence damaged someone’s memories. Somewhere down the line, I forgot that I was touching someone’s days, months or years. I was touching someone’s care or love towards family or friends. I mean, the physical part of the job was difficult but not a big deal. The job is well paid and movers take huge pride in what they are doing. They devote a lot of time in planning and the state of their truck or van. Loading is a skill like playing a game of Tetris on the hardest level. You have to be very careful. The driver is responsible for everything that happens to household goods when loading and unloading. The crew is like a family. They are people from all kinds of branches. They are musicians, ex-criminals, lawyers, mystics, and the combination of everything else. And my small negligence had cost some of them a part of their wage.
