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Why is a construction job lame? If you want more housing built, you damn well need construction workers.
I don't think the job itself is lame, but it does lead to a pretty undesirable lifestyle. Waking up before dawn, working outside in the freezing cold and boiling heat, giving you sunburns and chapped skin. Sweating and stinking, getting course hands and back problems. Lots of heavy lifting, but not in the way that makes you look attractive like a lean cut model, more just bulky fat. Lots of hanging out with other lower-class men drinking and swearing too much. Almost no women in the field at all. Then you have to go to bed super early so you can be up on time the next day. All of that is going to make it really hard to meet women.
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Chicks don't dig it. The story goes that regardless of income, women aren't interested blue collar men. I don't know how true that is.
Do you want to be the one telling all your friends you just met the nicest guy and he's a plumber? It's true
If I were at all inclined to marry, then a plumber would be a respectable occupation for any spouse. I'm not middle class, I'm lower middle class at best from rural working class roots. My paternal grandfather was a navvy in England during three quarters of the year, coming back home to Ireland for the winter months. My maternal grandfather was a farm labourer.
The people I know, the family members I have, a good trade like plumber or electrician are decent jobs and nobody is looking down their nose at "you can only get a plumber as a match?"
Were I middle-middle to upper-middle class where all my antecedents had been white collar workers, maybe that would be different. But it's not the case that I instinctively recoil in horror at the notion of "oh no, I have to tell my friends my fiancé is a - gasp!- manual labourer????" 😁
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