Salt and monotony
Try to imagine doing the same job, over and over, for years. Many years. Any time my own professional life seems to have taken on a one-dimensional form, I try to catch an episode with Mike Rowe. Then, I bow and give thanks, and I sleep much better that evening.
This afternoon we headed down into a salt mine. First of all, things weren’t particularly white. In fact, it was rather dark down there, and if not for the artificial lighting, the cameras wouldn’t have had anything to show us. Think of rough, grey walls, and dust reminiscent of an afternoon cleaning the attic. After the ride down in the requisite mine elevator, we learned that the really cool Pontiac had been brought down, a piece at a time and reassembled in situ. Shades of that Johnny Cash song about building your own Cadillac, “One Piece At A Time.”
But that’s not the part that kept me spellbound and silent. One of the mentoring workers had been there for fifteen years. Not without at least a few trips back to the surface, but nevertheless… his job required drilling a grid of holes in “the face” with a huge augered affair, so that a coworker could stuff explosives into the holes and then destroy the man’s handiwork. Shift after shift, day after day. Drill some holes, run for cover and then start all over again once the noxious fumes had cleared. I guess he could take some pride in the ever larger area that had been emptied of salt (do you refer to it as ore?)
Just the same, I’m glad that my work has a tiny bit more variety.
