Mind Numbing Jobs

I have been scanning in photographs that Donna and I took well before there were digital cameras. It’s a pretty simple thing, really. Pick up a pile of printed photos, insert one print in the printer/scanner, push a few keys a few times, open scanner, take out the photo, put in another one. 

Then I have to remember where the photo was taken - some 20 or so years ago - name them and put them in a folder called new scans.  

Then each of those pics has to be tweaked and placed in the appropriate folder for viewing on the TV. 

I have a special HDMI cable that hooks to my Mac that lets me do that. I am sure it can be done wirelessly as well but damned if I know how to do that.  

When I hook it up to the tv, we can bore our guests into the same state of oblivion that I slipped into after hours and hours of endless scanning.

I wonder how people who have these sorts of jobs make it through the day. Same thing, hour after hour or in some cases minute after minute.  

I worked on an assembly line in a light metal stamping company back between freshman and sophomore years at Michigan State. I was told it was a great job by the women who worked there, some of whom for 20 years or more.  It was clean, not noisy or dirty. They ate together, socialized, went bowling and teased me. I was shunned because they thought that somehow I was better than they were because I was in college. Remember this was 1960 and working women were unusual then, especially factory workers. They thought that I was some sort of intellectual because I was in college. 

Lemme tellya after that summer, I was impossibly happy to return to school.

My job at the stamping plant was to pick up an L-shaped piece of metal, insert two screws in two holes and then put wing nuts on them. Then I stacked them in a box ready for shipping.   Oh My God, who can do that for more than 5 minutes and that’s pushing it.

So there are tens of thousands, people in this country who do jobs like this for days, weeks, months, years on end.  Is it any wonder they commit mass murder, take mind numbing drugs or just run away with no thought of where they are going, only that they are never coming back? 

Many folks do that for their entire working career, getting a gold watch when they retire. How on earth do those poor folks survive?

I suppose they get a pension when they retire.  But people, was it worth it? 

Really?