https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...
I also really enjoyed the writing style.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/truck-john-jerome/book/97808745...
This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in purpose.
I feel like you don't have any first hand experience with the kind of classist horseshit that is endemic to these kinds of work environments.
The key is to use this to your advantage.
> They’d followed my oily bootprints down the hallway and begun to leer. Who is this diesel-stinking contractor?
That's probably the real reason. Being a welder is messy, stinky work and office workers don't want that in their space.
Oh the horror!
> Oh the horror!
Indeed, that is precisely the case for some folks - with social anxiety. Or autism. Or a number of other mental states.
Maybe they're tired to their bones and barely have energy to even have one meal a day? Maybe they lost a loved one and never quite recovered since then?
It costs nothing to be polite and assume best intentions from the other side.
Pleasantries are fine, but that was never going to be a long term solution for him. He needed a space that was always available to him, where he is always welcome. For better or worse, that's not the site office. (Even if it worked on that job, you don't stay in one place as a contractor)
This guy is amazing - the dedication to his craft is inspiring!
It's a great piece of writing. We don't have enough contractors with truck desks writing or programming or making art.
It makes me sad that pleasantries are viewed by some as a time-consuming chore. You can recognize that person who really cares about how you are doing or what you did on the weekend, and it makes you warm inside. You don't need to shoot the shit for 30 minutes, but human interaction is what builds community, and most of us like that; all of us need it.
And sometimes I just really need to be able to walk over to the coffee maker and refill my cup while processing a complex problem in my head. Unfortunately due to my brain wiring, having even that 5 minute conversation makes a ton of that problem solving context evaporate and it’s exceptionally frustrating when that happens.
I’m fortunate that I can plan where I’m going to be working based on the probability of working on hard problems on a given day. The pleasantries are deeply pleasing for me, except when they’re not.
(I'm in the UK, and I tend to associate that kind of approach to casual employment with dock work in sea ports. That ended with containerisation in the 1980s)
There are still union trades in the US, but they're a dying breed.
I don’t know why this is, but it’s always been this way. Workers don’t go into the building.
The office staff don’t want you there and if you stay too long, your fellow workers will rib you for hours about going to “the dark side”.
In my few years at the job, I had only been in the office area for 5 minutes to fill out some sort of paperwork. Most of that from when I was hired.
Seeing as he was in there on multiple occasions, he probably did establish rapport with the office staff, but left that out because it messed with the flow of the story.
The warehouse workers were explicitly banned from entering the office space. I assume because the company didn’t want them enjoying the free snacks and catered lunches.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a45497067/ford-transit-ste...
Has anyone had success finding a way do this, but for drawing? I've been trying to make time for a small comic project and, while I do have plenty of fifteen-minutes breaks I could use, those breaks are usually in places where drawing is impractical (such as buses).
If you are sewing a ballroom dress (that is any very large project) you probably need longer stretches to get it together. However you could take an individual piece and put in a few embroidery stitches.
Still it does feel like you get 2 minutes of work for your 15 minute break
* https://www.ford.ca/support/how-tos/more-vehicle-topics/f-se...
* https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-for...
I got much more thoughtful about how I used my time and also got better at pre-planning what I had to do so as to make the best use of it. Mostly the key was to just try to tackle smaller tasks and accept that progress would be slow.
Accepting that progress will be slow has been the most difficult adjustment, and applies to more than just side-projects. Choosing books or games also becomes a more strategic decision when what used to be a weekend sprint, turns into a several week marathon.
I need a good chunk of time to settle into "productive" work, even if it is just reading. I suspect that what is needed is a little bit more discipline at first and slowly it gets easier, but I just never had the ethic to stick to it, and because of this friend I don't even have the ability to claim any doubt as to how impactful it would be.
Context switching is a common and accessible state, but it's severely taxing and relies on stress. To the point that ADHDers might purposely 'proctastinate' to make use of this stress.
But, not only is it not good for the system to constantly rely on stress, it also means that everyday /mundane / low stakes things simply can't utilize this "superpower" effectively.
At least, how I interpret and navigate my own bouts with ADHD
Since youth I've had (what was always termed a bad habit) the habit of jumping into a task and then never touching it for a week.
For sure there was constant worrying and ruminating on the thing I need to do, but I also have my mind ample amounts of time to 'sleep on it'. So when it came time to sit down and finish the thing, so much of the thinking and ideating had been done and I simply had to convert that into mechanical output.
For some reason, a forced time constraint based on external pressure motivates me enough to finish a task.
Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you practice it, just like any other. There are techniques like leaving good notes to yourself to pick back up where you left off more easily, but a lot of it just mental training. You sort of learn to hold some of the context in your head all the time but keep it idle when you aren't using it.
When I'm hacking on a hobby programming project, I can often fix a bug or tweak a small feature in fifteen minutes, make a commit, and get a little serotonin hit, all while I'm waiting for the wife and kids to get ready to leave the house.
It doesn't always work for all kinds of tasks. Sometimes for more challenging stuff I really do need a larger chunk of time to load it all in my head. But you'd be surprised how easy it is to eat an elephant one tiny bite at a time if you really try.
> Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you practice it, just like any other.
Totally agree with this!!
I learned this when I started off as a junior dev. We had some shitty machines and the project compiled for like almost 10mins. Most of the people just read the news and stuff and for some reason I started reading Clean code from Bob Martin (probabbly someone sent me a pdf of it or something). I remember reading it all in a few weeks using those breaks. Then I just kept the habit for almost a year (until we got some better workstations).
I'm not good at it, because I prefer to cross things off when I finish them, but when I can pull it off it saves some of that time getting oriented to what I'm working on.
I'm astonished at how productive I can be while waiting around outside a job site for late deliveries/people or even my kids music lessons for an hour or two, or when sometimes I can sit at my desk and get nothing done in the same time. Maybe it's the constraints of the time/space? I (only half) jokingly wonder if some times I'd be more productive sitting in the van in my own driveway rather than in my home office.
My "truck desk" is the rear parcel shelf/cargo blind out of a Hyundai Accent and the moulded counters fit my laptop and mouse pad perfectly. It also tucks nicely into the void behind the back seats when not in use.
I recently acquired a Vision Pro and am still coming to terms with how incredible it can be sitting in the back of my van parked literally anywhere in the country and having a full ultra-wide desktop experience that packs away into something the size of a lunchbox.
This is the cyberpunk future I dreamed of as a kid.
getpokedagain•3mo ago