Words for My Enjoyment

WFME’s Bad Job Wednesday: Highway Line-Painter

September 20th, 2006

Welcome back to another edition of WFME’s Bad Job Wednesday.

Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about what has to be the worst job next to being a tollbooth taker. A job that requires zero passion, very little eye-hand coordination and absolutely zero people skills whatsoever. A job that most of us don’t even think of as a job because, well, it’s a pretty damn bad job.

It’s time to talk about the highway line-painter.

Without lines, society would be in chaos. Lines in the sand (figuratively, of course), lines at amusement parks and movieplexes and the lines that keep us (in our cars) from swerving out of control and slamming into someone else’s beloved mechanical beast. They are everywhere, they are different colors, they are dashed and dotted, raised and smooth, and they stretch from sea to shining sea.

And if you were the guy who was being paid to sit on the back of a truck periodically pushing a brush down onto the concrete so you could form a quick dash of paint — you’d probably be just about ready to shoot yourself.

Being a highway line painter has very few benefits. Sure, you get to be outdoors all day and you get to harness yourself up to the back of a dirty open-aired pickup truck while grasping a brush that raises and lowers in equal intervals in an attempt to drop lines onto the highway. In addition to that, um, you get to, um…

Yeah, that’s it.

Some might say it’s the perfect job for people who like to think. Well, I like to think, but do you know what I’d end up thinking if I was a highway line-painter trying to think about deep and important subject-matter? Here’s how my thought process would go:

“If only there was a way to stop the wars on this planet, only then could we- Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen lines, eighteen lines- What was I thinking? Oh right. Peace on Earth. See, weapons are probably the biggest cause of- Twenty-one, twenty-two, ooh pretty paint, twenty-three, was that a racoon carcass?”

I’d never be able to get any complete thoughts, thunk.

Then again, that’s probably the reason why I don’t do anything but count when I’m in the presence of a loud ticking clock, a banging construction machine that’s down the street, or…sitting right atop a machine painting lines onto the highway, which just happens to be a part of one of the worst jobs ever — highway line-painter.

Some might say it’s the perfect job for people who like to listen to music — hooking themselves up to an iPOD and just overseeing the line-age while groovin’ to the tunes of the 70’s (if that’s your bag, baby). Others might suggest that a solitary person who has no desire to interact with other human beings might thrive in a singular situation such as this. And even more might chime in and suggest that the job of a highway line-painter is simple yet artistic — providing people the opportunity to really challenge that creative right-brain part of the cerebellum.

I say, pffbt! The job of a highway line-painter is just plain bad.

And so today on this Wednesday, I would like to shed a tear for all those highway line-painters out there. I would like to offer my condolences and my honest emotional support. I would like all those highway line-painters to know that they don’t have to stay in such a bad job if they don’t want to. There’s options, my HLP friends. There’s other jobs out there. Other jobs that aren’t quite as bad as being a highway line-painter.

But that, my friends, is a conversation for another time.

Posted under Bad Job Wednesday, Line Painting. |