Carpenter Job Quotes

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

A young apprentice applied to a master carpenter for a job. The older man asked him, "Do you know your trade?" "Yes, sir!" the young man replied proudly. "Have you ever made a mistake?" the older man inquired. "No, sir!" the young man answered, feeling certain he would get the job. "Then there's no way I'm going to hire you," said the master carpenter, "because when you make one, you won't know how to fix it.

I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it.

What he realised, and more clearly as time went on, was that money-worship has been elevated into a religion. Perhaps it is the only real religion-the only felt religion-that is left to us. Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers-the elect, the money priesthood as it were- 'Thou shalt make money'; the other for the employed- the slaves and underlings'- 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.' It was about this time that he came across The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and read about the starving carpenter who pawns everything but sticks to his aspidistra. The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, the flower of England! It ought to be on our coat of arms instead of the lion and the unicorn. There will be no revolution in England while there are aspidistras in the windows.

Your job is not to be a fire killer. Your job is to prevent fires.

The carpenter has done a great job of restoring the door’s broken lock and handle.

Your task is to optimize one system after another, not careen through the day randomly taking care of whatever problems erupt. Your job is not to be a fire killer. Your job is to prevent fires.

Although the ending was more John Carpenter than John Updike, Carroll hadn't come across anything like it in any of the horror magazines, either, not lately. It was, for twenty-five pages, the almost completely naturalistic story of a woman being destroyed a little at a time by the steady wear of survivor's guilt. It concerned itself with tortured family relationships, shitty jobs, the struggle for money. Carroll had forgotten what it was like to come across the bread of everyday life in a short story. Most horror fiction didn't bother with anything except rare bleeding meat. ("Best New Horror")

I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unless the latter is a friend or a relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn't matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm around apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental, and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has. I hate populist [shit], no matter how much the demos love it.

Thereafter he gave up on a career in the arts and filled a succession of unsuitable vacancies and equally unsuitable women, falling in love whenever he took up a new job, and falling out of love - or more correctly being fallen out of love with - every time he moved on. He drove a removal van, falling in love with the first woman whose house he emptied, delivered milk in an electric float, falling in love with the cashier who paid him every Friday night, worked as an assistant to an Italian carpenter who replaced sash windows in Victorian houses and replaced Julian Treslove in the affections of the cashier, managed a shoe department in a famous London store, falling in love with the woman who managed soft furnishings on the floor above.

So our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to tell children how to play; it’s to give them the toys and pick the toys up again after the kids are done. We can’t make children learn, but we can let them learn.

From his father, Jobs had learned that a hallmark of a passionate craftmanship is making sure that even the aspects that remain hidden are done beautifully. A great carpenter isn't gonna use a lousy wood for the back of the cabinet even though nobody's gonna see it.

There was also more practical inquiry. How should I make a living? How do I get my relatives out of my house? Could you help me postpone payment of this loan? The dervishes had jobs in the workday world: mason, weaver, bookbinder, grocer, hatmaker, tailor, carpenter. They were craftsmen and -women, not renunciates of everyday life, but affirmative makers and ecstatics. Some people call them sufis, or mystics. I say they're on the way of the heart.

Unemployed people will use any number of excuses including discrimination for reasons such as disability, race, sexual orientation, religion, sex or age, or maybe there’s a shortage of jobs in their area. Well if that’s the case then they can travel to wherever the work is and go into digs. I work in construction management and regularly work with steel erectors from Ireland or Newcastle, electricians from Cardiff, fixers from Sheffield or Birmingham, steel fixers from Romania, carpenters from Poland, canteen girls from Romania, scaffolders from Lithuania, and concrete gangs of Indians, and they all travel wherever the work is and they all live in digs. We all do. It’s the nature of our industry.

The American Society for Training and Development says that by the time you go back to your job, you've lost 90% of what you've learned in training. You only retain 10%. If you don't use the skills very quickly, you will have big decay very quickly.

He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union. It wasn’t John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance — that job fell on the shoulders of a Jewish carpenter.

Today more than ever, we are in need not only of godly pastors and Bible teachers, but also godly lawyers, politicians, diplomats, judges, doctors, economists, educators, artists, carpenters, mechanics, and used car salesmen who see their jobs as a way to honorably represent God's ways in daily living.

Sometimes one is better off misled. The host may be better off thinking the guest enjoyed himself; the wife happier believing that she can tell a joke well. The liar’s false message may not only be more palatable, it may also be more useful than the truth. The carpenter’s false claim “I’m fine” to his boss’s “How are you today?” may provide information more relevant than would his true reply, “I am still feel terrible from the fight I had at home last night.” His lie truthfully tells his intention to perform his job despite personal upset. There is, of course, a cost for being misled even in these benevolent instances.

Hi, I’m not answering my phone right now because I’m building kitchen cabinets at 111 Main Street. I’m putting my heart and soul into these cabinets so I won’t be returning calls until I’m finished with the job. Please know I will give the same attention and care to your work, as well. If you need to talk to me feel free to come by 111 Main Street during my lunch break at noon.

The current economic era has given us fresh impulses and new ways to stigmatize work such as farming and caring for children--jobs that supposedly are not "knowledge" jobs and therefore do not pay very well. But in Genesis we see God as a gardener, and in the the New Testament we see him as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God.

Mr. Duffy Napp has just transmitted a nine-word e-mail asking that I immediately send a letter of reference to your firm on his behalf; his request has summoned from the basement of my heart a star-spangled constellation of joy, so eager am I to see Mr. Napp well established at Maladin IT. As for the basis of our acquaintanceship: I am a professor in an English department whose members consult Tech Help—aka Mr. Napp—only in moments of desperation. For example, let us imagine that a computer screen, on the penultimate page of a lengthy document, winks coyly, twice, and before the “save” button can be deployed, adopts a Stygian façade. In such a circumstance one’s only recourse—unpalatable though it may be—is to plead for assistance from a yawning adolescent who will roll his eyes at the prospect of one’s limited capabilities and helpless despair. I often imagine that in olden days people like myself would crawl to the doorway of Tech Help on our knees, bearing baskets of food, offerings of the harvest, the inner organs of neighbors and friends— all in exchange for a tenuous promise from these careless and inattentive gods that the thoughts we entrusted to our computers will be restored unharmed. Colleagues have warned me that the departure of Mr. Napp, our only remaining Tech Help employee, will leave us in darkness. I am ready. I have girded my loins and dispatched a secular prayer in the hope that, given the abysmal job market, a former mason or carpenter or salesman—someone over the age of twenty-five—is at this very moment being retrained in the subtle art of the computer and will, upon taking over from Mr. Napp, refrain (at least in the presence of anxious faculty seeking his or her help) from sending text messages or videos of costumed dogs to both colleagues and friends. I can almost imagine it: a person who would speak in full sentences—perhaps a person raised by a Hutterite grandparent on a working farm.

I create with my mind. I don’t physically put up a building, but I make it possible. I dream a dream of bricks and concrete and steel, and make it come true. I create jobs for hundreds of people; architects and bricklayers and designers and carpenters and plumbers. Because of me, they’re able to support their families. I give people beautiful surroundings to live in and make them comfortable. I build attractive stores where people can shop and buy things they need. I build monuments to the future.’ She smiled, sheepishly. ‘I didn’t mean to make a speech.

She had done worse, all right, lots worse. She had been a thief, a pimp, a blackmailer, a junkie, a liar and a cheat. She had pretended to love men she had despised. She had done it all, and none of it had worked. Every time she got into a place where she might have had a chance, something inside her had fired up and she ruined her chances. Always…Her whole life was a clutter of three-day jobs, punctured ambitions and drug-deadened hangovers. 'Oh Lindy,' she cried out. 'Help me! Help me!' She clenched her pillow and sobbed. It had been more than twenty years since she had shed any tears for anybody. Now these tears were for herself.

The key to understanding the situation is the most elementary principle of economics: the law of demand—the higher the price of anything, the less of it people will be willing to buy. Make labor of any kind more expensive and the number of jobs of that kind will be fewer. Make carpenters more expensive, and fewer houses than otherwise will be built, and those houses that are built will tend to use materials and methods requiring less carpentry. Raise the wage of airline pilots, and air travel will become more expensive. Fewer people will fly, and there will be fewer jobs for airline pilots. Alternatively, reduce the number of carpenters or pilots, and they will command higher wages. Keep down the number of physicians, and they will be able to charge higher fees.

Though there were many auspicious signs that preceded and accompanied Jesus's birth that might have prepared us for something kingly and special, the birth of Jesus was of the humblest peasant parentage in an unimportant town and in the lowest conceivable of buildings, a stable. After his birth he moved from there to a despised portion of the country, Galilee, to an unsavory town, Nazareth. As he grew up, he took a blue-collar job as a carpenter. He achieved a measure of notice as an adult when he was a rabbi with several men and women following him, but even then he went out of his way to reject marks of status by touching lepers, washing the feet of his followers, befriending little children, letting women become prominent in his entourage, and finally being crucified under the most humiliating circumstances. Everything about Jesus spoke of servitude.

Born in 1821, Croll grew up poor, and his formal education lasted only to the age of thirteen. He worked at a variety of jobs—as a carpenter, insurance salesman, keeper of a temperance hotel—before taking a position as a janitor at Anderson’s (now the University of Strathclyde) in Glasgow. By somehow inducing his brother to do much of his work, he was able to pass many quiet evenings in the university library teaching himself physics, mechanics, astronomy, hydrostatics, and the other fashionable sciences of the day, and gradually began to produce a string of papers, with a particular emphasis on the motions of Earth and their effect on climate. Croll was the first to suggest that cyclical changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit, from elliptical (which is to say slightly oval) to nearly circular to elliptical again, might explain the onset and retreat of ice ages. No one had ever thought before to consider an astronomical explanation for variations in Earth’s weather. Thanks almost entirely to Croll’s persuasive theory, people in Britain began to become more responsive to the notion that at some former time parts of the Earth had been in the grip of ice. When his ingenuity and aptitude were recognized, Croll was given a job at the Geological Survey of Scotland and widely honored: he was made a fellow of the Royal Society in London and of the New York Academy of Science and given an honorary degree from the University of St. Andrews, among much else. Unfortunately,

at the seat. Instead of blowing his top, he picked me up in his arms and said, "You did it?" I nodded, "Yes I did it!" "But, look son." He tried to explain, "I can't go out with a bottomless pajama — I am a man". I whispered, "And so am I". He just stared, and embraced me. And from that day I got proper pajamas to wear. Dad was a great friend, a very understanding and loving person. Time flies fast — my father's leave was almost over, but the construction work still remained incomplete. He had to go back to Amritsar to resume his duties, and my mother badly needed more money. Two days before his departure he took a loan of Rs. 1,500 from a friend, a Zargar (ornament maker), to somehow finish the construction work, and mortgaged our part of the haveli for this amount. This Rs. 1,500 brought a lot of trouble and hardship to the family as the interest for the loan went on adding. My father resigned his job as a postman and searched for a new clerical job. He did his best to pay off the loan; he but could not. Destiny's smile had changed into a fearsome frown. Soon my little sister Guro was born. While my father slogged in Amritsar to support the family and pay the monthly interest, my mother and grandmother somehow managed to survive. I fell sick, very very sick and the chubby child was soon a bundle of bones. The fair skin was tarnished and looked quite dusky. The handsome Kidar Nath became an ugly urchin. Lack of nourishment also made me a dull boy. The only thought that kept me alive was that my father was my best friend, and that I must stand by my best friend and help him to surmount his difficulties. Having found a tenant for the rebuilt Haveli, we all moved to Amritsar. Across our house lived a shop-keeper known for being a miser. He called a carpenter to fix the main door to his dwelling, because the top of the frame had cracked. A robust argument ensued because the shop-keeper would pay only half a rupee, while the carpenter wanted one. His reason being that an appropriate piece of wood had to be cut to match the area being repaired and then he would have to level the surfaces at a very awkward angle. But the owner was adamant and said, "Just nail the piece of wood, do not level it or do any fancy work, because I shall pay you only half a rupee", as he walked away in a huff.

After the Accident Before we run out of pages, I want to tell you a little of what happened to my family after the accident. My mother moved to a small house in Western Shore. Her first concern was finding a way to support herself and Ricky. Being an ex-dancer, motorcycle rider, and treasure-hunter was not likely to open any doors, so she decided to go back to school. She enrolled in a business course in Bridgewater and began her first studies since she was 12 years old. Soon she earned a diploma in typing, shorthand, and accounting, and was hired to work in a medical clinic. Ricky had been on the island from age nine to 14, mostly in the company of adults--family members and visiting tourists--but hardly ever with anyone his own age. Life on the mainland, with the give and take and bumps and bruises of high-school life was a challenge. But he survived. In time he became a carpenter, and is alive and well and living in Ottawa. My mother made a new life for herself. She remained fiercely independent, but between a job she loved and her neighbors, she formed friendships that were deep and lasting. Of course, she missed Dad and Bobby terribly. My mother and dad had been a perfect match, and my mother and brother had always shared a special bond. Bobby’s death was especially hard on her. My mother felt responsible. One day, before the accident, Bobby had taken all he could of Oak Island. After a heated argument with Dad, Bobby packed up and left. My mother had gone after him and convinced him to return--his dad needed him. She rarely spoke of it, but that weighed heavily on her for the rest of her years. My mother never left the east coast. She was 90 years old when she died. For the last 38 years of her life, she lived in a small house on a hill, in the community of Western Shore, where, from her living room window, she could look out and see Oak Island.

The vestibular system tells us about up and down and whether we are upright or not. It tells us where our heads and bodies are in relation to the earth’s surface. It sends sensory messages about balance and movement from the neck, eyes, and body to the CNS for processing and then helps generate muscle tone so we can move smoothly and efficiently. This sense tells us whether we are moving or standing still, and whether objects are moving or motionless in relation to our body. It also informs us what direction we are going in, and how fast we are going. This is extremely useful information should we need to make a fast getaway! Indeed, the fundamental functions of fight, flight, and foraging for food depend on accurate information from the vestibular system. Dr. Ayres writes that the “system has basic survival value at one of the most primitive levels, and such significance is reflected in its role in sensory integration.” The receptors for vestibular sensations are hair cells in the inner ear, which is like a “vestibule” for sensory messages to pass through. The inner-ear receptors work something like a carpenter’s level. They register every movement we make and every change in head position—even the most subtle. Some inner-ear structures receive information about where our head and body are in space when we are motionless, or move slowly, or tilt our head in any linear direction—forward, backward, or to the side. As an example of how this works, stand up in an ordinary biped, or two-footed, position. Now, close your eyes and tip your head way to the right. With your eyes closed, resume your upright posture. Open your eyes. Are you upright again, where you want to be? Your vestibular system did its job. Other structures in the inner ear receive information about the direction and speed of our head and body when we move rapidly in space, on the diagonal or in circles. Stand up and turn around in a circle or two. Do you feel a little dizzy? You should. Your vestibular system tells you instantly when you have had enough of this rotary stimulation. You will probably regain your balance in a moment. What stimulates these inner ear receptors? Gravity! According to Dr. Ayres, gravity is “the most constant and universal force in our lives.” It rules every move we make. Throughout evolution, we have been refining our responses to gravitational pull. Our ancient ancestors, the first fish, developed gravity receptors, on either side of their heads, for three purposes: 1) to keep upright, 2) to provide a sense of their own motions so they could move efficiently, and 3) to detect potentially threatening movements of other creatures through the vibrations of ripples in the water. Millions of years later, we still have gravity receptors to serve the same purposes—except now vibrations come through air rather than water.

If you wanted to work as an electrician (or as a steelworker, carpenter, or plumber, for that matter) on any of the big job sites in Chicago, you needed a union card. And if you were black, the overwhelming odds were that you weren’t going to get one. This particular form of discrimination altered the destinies of generations of African Americans, including many of the men in my family, limiting their income, their opportunity, and, eventually, their aspirations.

physical activity level (PAL), the ratio of the energy you spend per day relative to the energy you would spend by resting in bed and doing absolutely nothing. PALs for male adults with clerical or administrative jobs that involve sitting all day long average 1.56 in developed countries and 1.61 in less developed countries; in contrast, PALs for workers involved in manufacturing or farming average 1.78 in developed countries and 1.86 in less developed countries.17 Hunter-gatherer PALs average 1.85, about the same as those of farmers or other people whose job requires them to be active.18 Therefore, the amount of energy a typical office worker spends being active on an average day has decreased by roughly 15 percent for many people in the last generation or two. Such a reduction is not trivial. If an average-sized male farmer or carpenter who spends approximately 3,000 calories per day suddenly switches to a sedentary lifestyle by retiring, his energy expenditure will decline by about 450 calories a day. Unless he compensates by eating a lot less or exercising more intensively, he’ll grow obese.

Boarding the waiting bus, I saw that it was about half full of what appeared to be apprehensive young men. Although I didn’t know who he was, Bo’sun Vernon Haskell, wearing a well-worn officer’s cap, was seated behind the wheel. Carpenter Bill Cooms was sitting with his legs up next to the window, taking up both of the front right-hand seats. Boarding, I asked, “Is this the bus to Maine Maritime Academy?” To which the Bo’sun answered with another question, “Were you expecting the bus to Davy Jones’ locker?” I would get to know both of them much better in time, but for now their gruff manner caught me off balance. Some of the things Bo’sun Haskell would say baffled me at first, but the twinkle in his eye always gave him away. “Half of you seven men will work loading the ship, the other half will work with chipping hammers and the rest will come with me,” or “Three of you two men, come with me,” were some of his favorite statements. There was always a little humor in how he said things, but he got the job done! Noticing that I was not sure of myself, they both smiled, which immediately put me at ease. “Find a place to sit, son. We still have some more men coming in from Augusta by car.” The fact that he used the term “men” in reference to us, was also new! It didn’t take long before everyone they expected had arrived, and were seated aboard the bus. We started east on the bumpy ride to the Academy.

I admired Bolden’s abilities. I’ve long thought that a good prosecutor is a well-trained union carpenter building a sturdy house with shiny tools and freshly hewn wood. She follows blueprints to the letter, makes sure the framing is in plumb, lines up the two-by-fours, and hammers the nails straight. The best courtroom carpenters are Renaissance men and women. They double as bricklayers, installers, tapers, finishers, electricians, and even plumbers. They can build the whole damn house, and it’s a thing of beauty that will pass the toughest inspection by city inspectors . . . or juries. Until the defense lawyers come along. We’re the stealthy vandals wielding crowbars and spray paint. We tear down door frames, break windows, and spray graffiti on the walls. Our job is to destroy what the carpenters have built and feed it into the woodchipper.

I’m a carpenter by trade and frankly, my father’s paper is not very successful. He’s determined to keep at it, but sundown papers can be difficult to keep afloat.” He saw Lee’s confusion and explained as he had to Spring. “Sundowns are newspapers worked on after the editor gets home from his day job.

way out, Dorsey would find an even easier one. He was a walking billboard for the twenty-year retirement rule, although obviously he had chosen to take his retirement while still on the job.

to go and have a night in a hotel somewhere. I’d have been happy to have them both, even with Pat’s clinginess and Crystal’s present obstreperousness. But Vicky kept putting me off. In fact, we’d almost had words about it – Vicky grumbled that Crystal didn’t want to sleep in her own bed any more, and couldn’t understand why Mummy and Daddy didn’t let her sleep with them, like Auntie Anna had. ‘Does Peter still never get up with the kids in the night?’ I asked, knowing the answer. Vicky snorted. ‘Um…let me think…No. Well, occasionally at weekends. But you know, being a carpenter’s a pretty stressful job…’ She turned and went into a cubicle. ‘You should ask him to help a bit more. Maybe just on alternate nights. You’ve got to do something, if you feel this wretched.’ The sound of Vicky sighing floated over the top of the cubicle door, followed by the sound of the toilet flushing. ‘I’m sure it’ll get better eventually,’ she said, emerging wearily. ‘In about sixteen years’ time.’ I took out my make-up bag and reapplied my lipstick. I knew it wasn’t very charitable of me, but sometimes I couldn’t shake the thought that, apart from on the subject of Peter, Vicky was making a fuss about nothing: her kids were healthy and gorgeous. What else could she possibly ask for? Even if she looked a bit jaded, she didn’t have any stretch marks or cellulite, and her stomach was flatter than mine. ‘Come on, then,’ said Vicky, shouting over the noise of the hand-dryer. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friend, once more.’ By

QUALITY: The Carpenter’s House An elderly carpenter was about to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife, enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. His contractor was sorry to see his good worker go.  He asked the carpenter to build just one more house before retiring. The carpenter accepted, even though he didn’t really want to do so. His heart was not in his work anymore. He put in a half-hearted effort, taking shortcuts and using inferior building materials. The quality of the finished building was much below his usual standards. When the project finished, the contractor came to see the house. He took a look around, then he took out the front-door key and handed it to the contractor. "My friend, this house is yours. This is my gift to you as a thank you for all these years of hard work." The contractor said. The old man was shocked and embarrassed. If only he had known, things would have been done in a different way. He would have taken care of every detail and this house would be the most beautiful house that he’d ever built.  Like the old carpenter, many of us do not give the job our best effort. Then we find ourselves living in the poor quality house we have built.

married. I believe in the institution of marriage very strongly. I’m family oriented and I’m proud of it. I had a happy childhood, and I would like to do the kind of job my parents did.

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

Many could see that placing affirmative action onto a world of declining opportunity was little more than a zero-sum game—and most likely a fast track to further racial resentment. The problem, as Bayard Rustin put it in 1974, was overcoming the divisiveness of “Affirmative Action in an Age of Scarcity.” As Andrew Levison made the connection between the future of racial progress and the limits on economic opportunity in the New Yorker in 1974, “until progressives deal seriously with the idea of full employment and government guaranteed jobs, black representation in skilled jobs will remain a question of throwing a white carpenter out of work in order to employ a black, or making a Pole with seniority continue to tend the coke ovens while a black moves up to a better job.

Thanks to the Betamax and Jason’s diligent collection of tapes, she’d even been able to rerun the shows she’d missed while in Haiti. It was her job, she reasoned. And now she’d blown it!

To be perfectly candid, our supply of talent was at a critical low. Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy, so complex and highly specialized that each individual could only function within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized structure. You should have seen some of the “careers” listed on our first employment census; everyone was some version of an “executive,” a “representative,” an “analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis. We needed carpenters, masons, machinists, gunsmiths. We had those people, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary. The first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation. We required a massive job retraining program. In short, we needed to get a lot of white collars dirty.

In essence, from the point of view of a city, a high-tech job is more than a job. Indeed, my research shows that for each new high-tech job in a city, five additional jobs are ultimately created outside of the high-tech sector in that city, both in skilled occupations (lawyers, teachers, nurses) and in unskilled ones (waiters, hairdressers, carpenters).

it had become apparent that there was one man employed by Buildings and Grounds whose entire job it was to apologize for the fact that the carpenter hadn’t come. He seemed like a nice man. He was exceedingly polite and even-tempered, and always had just a slight trace of wistful melancholy about him, which made him quite well suited for the job. Still, it’s hard to imagine he was particularly happy with his choice of career. Most of all: there didn’t seem any obvious reason the school couldn’t simply get rid of the position and use the money to hire another carpenter, in which case his job would not be needed anyway.

Not again, sir,’ Tremayne said protestingly. ‘No man is infallible, my son.’ Smith smiled politely. ‘You mean you don’t know where we are, sir?’ ‘How should I?’ Carpenter slid down in his seat, half-closed his eyes and yawned vastly. ‘I’m only the driver. We have a navigator and the navigator has a radar set and I’ve no faith in either of them.’ ‘Well, well,’ Smith shook his head. ‘To think that they lied to me at the Air Ministry. They told me you’d flown some three hundred missions and knew the continent better than any taxi driver knows his London.’ ‘A foul canard put about by unfriendly elements who are trying to prevent me from getting a nice safe job behind a desk in London.’ Carpenter glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll give you exactly thirty minutes’ warning before we shove you out over the dropping zone.’ A second glance at his watch and a heavy frown. ‘Flying Officer Tremayne, your gross dereliction of duty is endangering the entire mission.’ ‘Sir?’ An even deeper apprehension in Tremayne’s face. ‘I should have had my coffee exactly three minutes ago.’ ‘Yes, sir. Right away, sir.

Professional chefs aren't the only ones who get to wear an apron to work. There are welders and farriers and fishmongers and printers and grocery clerks and artists and florists and bakers and housekeepers and lab technicians and carpenters, to name a few who call an apron their uniform, and lucky them. How nice to be able to shift gears from leisure to work and back again with the tug of an apron string.

The current economic era has given us fresh impulses and new ways to stigmatize work such as farming and caring for children—jobs that supposedly are not “knowledge” jobs and therefore do not pay very well. But in Genesis we see God as a gardener, and in the New Testament we see him as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God. Simple physical labor is God’s work no less than the formulation of theological truth.

Those who work in an office often feel that, despite the proliferation of contrived metrics they must meet, their job lacks objective standards of the sort provided by, for example, a carpenter’s level, and that as a result there is something arbitrary in the dispensing of credit and blame. The rise of “teamwork” has made it difficult to trace individual responsibility, and opened the way for new and uncanny modes of manipulation of workers by managers, who now appear in the guise of therapists or life coaches. Managers themselves inhabit a bewildering psychic landscape, and are made anxious by the vague imperatives they must answer to. The college student interviews for a job as a knowledge worker, and finds that the corporate recruiter never asks him about his grades and doesn’t care what he majored in.

Jesus was a carpenter but he was also the Messiah. So do not confuse your Job with your calling

There is a tremendous truth contained in the realization that when God became man, he became a workingman. Not a king, not a chieftain, not a warrior or a statesman or a great leader of nations, as some had thought the Messiah would be. The Gospels show us Christ the teacher, the healer, the wonder-worker, but these activities of his public life were the work of three short years. For all the rest of the time of his life on earth, God was a village carpenter and the son of a carpenter. He did not fashion benches or tables or beds or roof beams or plow beams by means of miracles, but by hammer and saw, by ax and adze. He worked long hours to help his father, and then became the support of his widowed mother, by the rough work of a hill country craftsman. Nothing he worked on, as far as we know, ever set any fashions or became a collector’s item. He worked in a shop every day, week in and week out, for some twenty years. He did the work all of us have to do in our lifetimes. There was nothing spectacular about it, there was much of the routine about it, perhaps much that was boring. There is little we can say about the jobs we do or have done that could not be said of the work God himself did when he became a man.

In the plateau the able-bodied unemployed workmen are supported by a combination of cash and commodity doles for which they render no service. Thus, being able to work, they do not. They live in idleness on government largesse while around them on every hand lie countless tasks whose doing the national welfare urgently requires. A public policy is scarcely sane when it supports idleness in the midst of a region which desperately needs public improvements. If the taxpayer is going to pay men who are jobless through no fault of their own, every element of common sense requires that he pay them for working rather than for not working. The men would benefit morally, physically and spiritually from constructive employment. Condescending charity in any form is harmful to the moral fiber of a people. If persisted in long enough, it sees pride and self-respect drain away to be replaced by cynicism, arrogance and wheedling dependence. It undermines good citizenship and contributes toward the thing a democracy can least afford — a class of unproductive and dependent citizens. At the present time practically every skilled man in the plateau has regular employment. The few genuinely competent carpenters, masons, mechanics, metal workers and electricians find regular work for their hands. They have jobs at good wages with mining companies and at other essential building and maintenance tasks. While the tiny corps of skilled men are energetically at work, the great army of their unskilled fellows drift about in dejected idleness. Irrefutable logic requires that work be found for their hands and energies also.

There is a real freedom of speech on a job site, which reverberates outward and sustains a wider liberality. You can tell dirty jokes. Where there is real work being done, the order of things isn’t quite so fragile. Not surprisingly, it is the office rather than the job site that has seen the advent of speech codes, diversity workshops, and other forms of higher regulation. Some might attribute this to the greater mixing of the sexes in the office, but I believe a more basic reason is that when there is no concrete task that rules the job—an autonomous good that is visible to all—then there is no secure basis for social relations. Maintaining consensus and preempting conflict become the focus of management, and as a result everyone feels they have to walk on eggshells. Where no appeal to a carpenter’s level is possible, sensitivity training becomes necessary.34

Those who work in an office often feel that, despite the proliferation of contrived metrics they must meet, their job lacks objective standards of the sort provided by, for example, a carpenter’s level, and that as a result there is something arbitrary in the dispensing of credit and blame.

Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan. She was over six feet tall and had freckles and wore her light red hair cut short and wore a blue suit with white hose. She worked hard and was a good prosecutor, and I had always wanted to like her. But she seldom smiled and she went about her job with the abrasiveness of a carpenter building coffins with a nail gun.

Spicer was trying to reframe Trump’s argument into something more plausible—by pretending Trump said more people “witnessed” the inauguration, a figure that could feasibly include anyone who saw photos or videos of it on television or online, than actually attended it. (Remember the “play pretend” strategy in the Surrogate Secrets chapter?) After resigning from his White House job, Spicer said that he “absolutely” regrets telling this lie. That doesn’t negate the fact, however, that during that time, the White House team was totally committed to spreading it.

...Instruments of God. We are the hammer, but our Father is the carpenter. Do not thank the hammer for a carpentry job well done. Snelling, Lauraine. An Untamed Heart (Red River of the North)

Trump was about to move into the most fringe-infested area of American politics, which strangely enough unites the far-left and far-right ends of the political spectrum. In this case, the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job and that George W. Bush—Jeb’s brother—was somehow responsible for it. Just like birtherism, this was a subject plenty of people on the right and the left obsessed over. The territory was rich, should someone have the nerve to take ownership of it. Trump did.

If you wanted to work as an electrician (or as a steelworker, carpenter, or plumber, for that matter) on any of the big job sites in Chicago, you needed a union card. And if you were black, the overwhelming odds were that you weren’t going to get one.