5 stars
And You Thought You Have A Crappy Job
June 17, 2008
Now admit it. Every once in a while, maybe even today, you sat in your tiny cubicle at work saying to yourself; "Man, my job sucks." or "I hate my job." or maybe even "I wish I can find another job." Ever have those days? Before you decide to change jobs, there is a tv show that makes your boring job at a cubicle in an air conditioned building look quite cozy in comparision.
On the Discovery Channel's documentary/reality show "Dirty Jobs", the show's host Mike Rowe meet and work along side people who work in the most disgusting, filthy, vile, revolting and downright dirty and dangerous places just so they can earn a paycheck. And these people like and even love what they do.
Ever wonder what happens to your garbage after it's picked up by the garbage man? Or how they grow mushrooms and put them into those plastic wrapped containers you find in the supermarket? Ever wonder what happens after you flush the toilet or how they turn raw sewage water into water you can drink? Let me tell you, it doesn't happen by magic. It takes people working in some of the most disgusting and dirty places to make that happen. These people do the the kinds of jobs most of us won't do. They're the ones who as Mike Rowe says at the beginning of the show; "make civilized life possible for the rest of us."
Besides highlighting the kinds of jobs most of us associate as being dirty such as being a plumber, working at the garbage dump, being a coal miner, an oil roughneck, pig farmer, working at a waste water sewage treatment plant and cleaning out septic tanks, Mike has highlighted jobs most of us don't think of as being a dirty job such as working at a baby day care center, at a candy shop, at a winery and beer brewery, being a dog groomer and a cheese maker. He has even shown us jobs most of us never heard of, want to think of or even thought of such as owl vomit collector, turkey famer, making compost out of dead turkeys, potato farmer, cranberry grower, picking up road kill, cleaning animal skeletons, baby chicken sexer, wine barrel maker, mushroom farmer, geothermal well digger, airport incinerator operator and airplane baggage loader. He has even shown us people who are real innovators such as the CT dairy farmer who makes flower pots out of cow poo and a man in Washington state who runs his pick-up truck on used restaurant cooking oil.
What makes this show unique is that shows us the real America. It's not the CEO of a huge corporation with his tailored Armani suit or the big businesses headquartered in New York City that makes America run, it's the people who work at jobs most of us won't do such as the pest exterminator in Louisiana, the immigrant from Israel who now lives in Pennsylvania making a living cleaning cow hoofs, or it's the female enlisted Air Force airman fitting into a tight space in the belly of a KC-135 tanker plane to clean out jet fuel cells and it's the people cleaning up pigeon droppings off of buildings in New York City. They're the ones who make America what it is, a nation built on the ethic of hard work and making an honest living.
Now, you may never want to work in a lump charcoal factory, at an auto salvage yard or at a scrap metal junkyard but just remember this; it's a dirty job but someone got to do it.