Dirty work

One of my favorite shows on TV is this program on Discovery Channel entitled Dirty Jobs. Each week, the show’s host, Mike Rowe, gets his hands dirty — literally — as he personally experiences a day in the life of a man (or woman) who has a dirty job — that is, a job that is really dirty and filthy. 

Some of the dirty jobs he has featured on his show are cleaning toxic bird poop, removing dead animals run over by cars, diving for golf balls in alligator-infested waters, cleaning the rivets in a hot and steamy sugar mill, and assisting in the artificial insemination of horses. 

Whenever I watch the show, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I’m amused at how Mike Rowe tries to cope with the difficult circumstances of the job he’s trying out.  On the other hand, I feel sad for those people, because for a lot of them, they have no choice.  They’re kind of stuck with their jobs.  Or, even if they had other job choices, they feel they have to do it because no one else will.  Some of them grow up doing that particular job, and that’s the only skill they’ve ever developed.  It’s depressing if you think about it.

At any rate, what I particularly like about Dirty Jobs is how they present those jobs as all part of an honest day’s work. By serving as an apprentice to everyday men and women who perform the jobs no one else wants, Rowe manages to effectively pay tribute to the unsung heroes of society while getting a few laughs along the way.  But you know what’s ironic about this show, though?  It talks about dirty jobs but it’s precisely because of the work these people do that our world is a cleaner and better place to live in. 

For example, thanks to a garbage man, our environment becomes cleaner.  A septic tank cleaner arguably has the dirtiest job in the world and yet, because of what he does, we can breathe a little easier.  A car repairman gets really down and dirty but he’s the one who “cleans up” your engine of all its defects.  So in a way, it’s not accurate to say that these people have dirty jobs.  I think it’s more accurate to say that they have cleaning jobs. They clean up all the messes of the world.

Doing The Dirty Work

Now, dirty jobs are one thing, but “doing the dirty work” is another. We hear that expression all the time, right?  Whenever someone’s doing all the unglamorous, nitty-gritty legwork of a project that no one wants to bother with, we always say, “That guy’s doing all the dirty work.”   

“Doing all the dirty work” is an expression to define those nitty-gritty activities that need to be done for something bigger to be accomplished. It’s also a term we use for a job that no one wants to do but that needs to be done in order for a bigger goal to be achieved. For example, when President Bush issued the order to attack Iraq, he had a goal: to get Saddam Hussein and make sure that Iraq was not a threat to the world.  But his order didn’t really accomplish anything in and by itself.  At the end of the day, someone had to do the dirty work. And in that case, the ones who did the dirty work were the soldiers and military officers deployed to take over Iraq, capture Saddam Hussein, and bring down his regime.  In the end, President Bush will be given credit  (or will be blamed, depending where you stand) for this Iraqi takeover.  But the ones who really accomplished his objective are the men and women in uniform who took the risk and even sacrificed their lives to get the job done.  In the end, the dirty work had to be done by individual soldiers. 

That Iraq attack is just an example of what “doing the dirty work” means. In the construction of a building, you have the architect designing the intricate details of a mega-structure.  He, the engineer and the contractor will decide where to put the beams, the pillars, and planks — and they will decide how the building will look. But it’s the construction workers who actually build the building, who roll up their sleeves, and do all the dirty work. They’re the ones who do the drilling, the driving of the nails into the beams, the painting of the walls, the pouring of the concrete.  And when the building is finished and people ask, “Who did this building?” the answer usually is “architect so-and-so.” That’s odd, right? 

When we graduate and people ask us where we got our education, we always mention the name of our school. But if you really think about it, what really taught us all that we know and all the values that we now espouse is not the school.  It’s your individual teachers. They’re the ones who had to deal with us day-to-day — our quirks, our naughtiness, our kakulitans. It’s the teachers who did the dirty work of making sure we turned out to be good, productive, law-abiding citizens. And sadly, we never really give them credit.  It’s almost always the school.  

Now, I’m not saying that leaders, architects, or schools are useless.  That’s not my point.  Of course we need leaders and visionaries who set objectives for people to achieve.  What I’m simply saying is this:  we have to always be thankful for people who do the dirty work. And we have to show our appreciation by either expressing it — or by helping them concretely in their needs.  Make some effort to make it easier for them. Because the reality is, most people who do the dirty work don’t get decent pay.   It’s through the work of these people that things get done.   And the sad part is they will never get the credit for it. When the garbage collection system in your village is working, who gets the credit?  The mayor or the barangay chairman, that’s who.  But did they ever pick up a single piece of garbage for you?  Nope. Someone else did it.  And believe me, that person didn’t enjoy it as much as you don’t enjoy it. But he did it anyway — either by choice or by circumstance.  And for that, we have to be thankful. 

If you currently have a “dirty job” — or you are currently doing the dirty work for your office — I want to tell you, “God bless you.”  And if you’re blessed enough not to have a dirty job that you have to do every day, or you don’t have to do the dirty work all the time, all I can say is, “Be happy.” Since you can probably afford it, try to make things easier for those who have to do those dirty jobs. 

Because you know what? That someone doing the dirty job could have been you.

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Thanks for all your letters, folks!  You may e-mail me at rodhnepo@yahoo.com.