Injury Stories
Telling stories on a jobsite will inevitably set into motion the notorious injury-story cycle of one-up-manship. Most injury stories start the same way, “That’s nothing! One time…” My boss Dave (is there a better word for Boss? Supervisor? Fearless Leader?) was telling me one day that he was on a jobsite when he was a kid (maybe he was 19) and a he saw a guy fall off a roof and die. He saw another guy lose an eye just from barely missing a nail with his hammer causing the nail to fly back at the guy and stick straight into his eyeball. On that same job Dave was telling us all about how one time he was nailing off plywood sheathing on the side of a really tall chimney (chimneys built in seismically active areas today are actually framed with wood and plywood and then covered in rock or brick to look like the widow-makers of yesteryear). He was on the tippy top of an extension ladder—probably 25 feet up to the rung he was standing on, and was nailing the plywood sheathing to the wood framing. The width of the chimney was such that stretching out he could just reach each side of the plywood without moving the ladder. This feet of athleticism becomes harder as you get nearer the top because as you get closer to the plywood you are forced to straighten up rather than being able to lean into the building.
Dave said, “I was just getting to the very last couple of nails and reaching out as far as I could with one hand on the nail gun and the other on the wall for some grip when the ladder started to slide.” He said that out of pure knee-jerk reaction he swung his hand, still holding the nail gun, back to the center, but never let go of the trigger, and as his right hand and nail gun met his left hand righty nailed lefty to the wall right through the fleshy web of skin that is between your thumb and forefinger. “I was actually lucky because the nail gave me enough grip to stop my slide, and I just pulled the ladder back beneath me with my feet. I grabbed my catspaw and pulled the nail out. I was done nailing the plywood so I just climbed down the ladder.” I don’t remember if Dave said he went to the hospital, but I kind of doubt it. There is definitely a code of toughness on a jobsite that says, ‘Don’t go to the hospital, pussy.’ I believe that is changing, as people are starting to realize that there is no bonus at the end of your career for being tough but crippled. That being said, I find toughness to be an admirable quality in a man.
Come to think of it, it is a desirable quality in a woman too. One of the worst injuries I ever witnessed was sustained by a woman for whom I was building a deck. She was helping me do the shade structure that sat above the deck, and installing some wood blocking in between the rafters. The block she was working on was a little too big, and instead of cutting it smaller she was slamming it into place with her hammer. She was a fairly experienced carpenter, and basically knew what she was doing, and it was her deck so I didn’t really feel it was my place to tell her that she was being lazy and should just climb down and cut the block smaller. I also think there might have been something else on her mind because she was really letting that block have it. Anyways, she was sitting up on the rafters wailing away on that poor block when wham! she connected with her finger. Immediately, yet relatively calmly she said, “Oh fuck. It’s broken. It’s broken.”
“It’s not broken,” I said, not knowing but trying to keep her calm.
“It’s broken.” She said, and then showed it to me. It was very clearly broken. When she showed it to me I could see that finger had one extra joint and it was bending the opposite way of the other joints.
“Ok, it’s broken.” I conceded. She was really calm and still, I’ve always heard that women are better at handling pain then men, and judging by her reaction in that moment I’d say that holds water. She asked me to help her down from the rafters, and when I lifted her up to set her down on the deck I could feel her just slightly shaking.
In a list of most dangerous jobs from Bankrate’s article 10 of the most dangerous jobs in the US2 of the 10 are in the building trades: Roofers and Structural Steel Installers. And, according to The Washington Post 5 out of the top 20 most dangerous jobs are construction jobs: Roofers, Construction Laborers, Painters, and Electricians. You don’t necessarily need to be a tough guy to work in construction, but you do need to deal with the reality that you are more likely to die at work than the average desk jockey. You also need to deal with daily pain. I don’t think you could find a trades person without nicks and scratches on their hands. Maybe painters? But even painters get a fair share of cuts while they are prepping buildings for paint. If you’ve ever painted your own house and spent the time to do it right by prepping the surfaces you know that painting should actually be called scraping and sanding. Our hands are incredibly useful tools, but even over 200,000 years of human evolution they still have not developed into something tougher than skin. Some guys wear gloves, but most don’t. As I am typing this I am looking down at no less than four cuts, one blood blister, and cuticles that are simply atrocious, and I can’t really remember how any of the blemishes got there.
Injury stories are part of the mystique of the trades. There is a blue collar aesthetic that permeates American culture, and it shows up in flannels, Timberlands, I would argue tattoo culture owes its popularity to the blue collar aesthetic, and movies like Office Space where the blue collar neighbor represents the fantasy version of our white collar protagonist. Nothing gives you street-cred as an grizzled blue collar trades-person like a good injury story. If you’re reading this, and wondering why you don’t have a good one yet, don’t fret—you will, so be careful!