My version of this, with my Dad, was when I was precocious 16 year old, failing highschool because I was spending all my time hacking code, smoking pot, and girlfriends. Not a bit of schoolwork was being done, and my Dad was having none of it.
So he gave me a summer job. In the hot Australian sunshine, I was sent off to be a labourer on building sites. Since I was the young blood, the brickies and other construction types gave me the shit jobs .. moving piles of bricks from one end of the universe to the other, shovelling shit from one end of the universe to the other, getting lunch and ciggies and mud and bricks to the brickies from one end of the universe to the other. It was monotonous, hot, boring work, and I hated getting up at 5am every day just to get there on time, and work until the sun went down every day, just to go to bed in time to get up again and start moving shit from one end of the universe to the other.
It did teach me a lesson, and that lesson - which dear reader I hope you understand - is that work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with.
So, at the end of summer, I took my hard-earned wages, bought myself a new computer, got back to hacking, split up with my girlfriend, and got myself the hell out of that situation.
And I've never looked back.
Well, now I look back .. because now I'm the Dad, and more than anything else in the world I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you, but smart work is better. Don't know how its going to happen, but that's the joy of fatherhood, innit ..
When I was ~22 I had a brief spell of unemployment. My dad, who was a malt whisky distillery manager, said I could work for a bit at his distillery as a warehouse man to fill in for one of the workers who was off sick. The job mainly entailed rolling filled casks from the filling store into the warehouses, unloading empty casks delivered from the coopers, moving and loading casks of mature whisky into lorry trailers, internal cask movements and cask "dipping" and inspections.
Dad was a real stickler for time keeping and we had to be on-site and in the rest room for the day's briefing by 0800 on the dot, not a minute later.
I had been sailing pretty close to the wind for a few days and then one Thursday night went out and got quite drunk with pals, eventually getting to bed at around 3am - and yes, there was whisky involved. The next morning I had a stinking hangover, slept in, and arrived a whole five minutes late at the rest room. My dad said nothing about being late except for suggesting that it was about time I learned the ropes on filling whisky barrels.
For the next two hours (and for my sins I suddenly realised) I filled whisky casks. This was done by hand. You basically have a big hose with a nozzle and a tap. The flow rate is quite high which means there's a high speed out-gassing of very strong whisky fumes that hit you right in the face. The last thing you need with a whisky inflicted hangover is to be around the smell and fumes of more whisky, especially when it's hitting you square in the face like a small gale.
It took all of my being not to be sick, or faint (pardon the pun), and was probably the best lesson on time keeping and not partying on his watch I've ever had. He never said anything that day except for a knowing wink and a wee grin that he gave me from the window of the weighing office as I silently retched and struggled to maintain my composure surrounded in sickening malt whisky fumes :)
My friend was considering dropping out of school. In the US, you have to get your parent's permission to drop out at 16, and he asked his dad.
His dad said, "Well, son, you can make a living as a dropout. It's not easy, but it's doable. My brother dropped out of high school. Tell you what - if you work with him for a week and decide that you still want to drop out, I'll sign the paper."
My friend's uncle was a furniture mover in Boston. Boston has lots of old apartment buildings. His job was to help move couches, dressers, tables, and all sorts of other stuff up and down stairs.
He made it two days and said, "Alright, Dad, I'll stay in school."
"work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with"
That's the sad truth for many people. I mean most people even find their love interests at work.
I was unemployed for about 1 1/2 years now and I didn't miss work for a second.
I coded what I wanted, I learned music instruments, I did sports, had much time for friends and slept till noon. After half a year I couldn't even imagine a life with a job anymore. I had so much todo even without a job.
I've only been a full time employee for a short period of time and I see exactly where you are coming from. It's not even that I don't like my job, just that there are so many things that I'd like to be doing instead. When there are days with awesome weather I feel like I'm wasting them by staying cooped up in an office all day.
I'm able to do amazing things with my life now, because I worked hard. Work is only a part of the picture - but its an important part, and if you try to occlude it from life, you will eventually get bit. The default state of the Universe involves entropy; working, on anything, is the only way to change that.
Everyone should have at least one physical labor job and one service job in their early life. They teach you to appreciate hard work, understand what people go through in those industries, and empathize.
I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you, but smart work is better. Don't know how its going to happen, but that's the joy of fatherhood, innit ..
Send them on a labourer summer job where they have to wake up at 5am moving piles of bricks from one end of the universe to the other.
Ha. I variously did several hard labour jobs including summer time lawn mowing (not ride-on, the supervisor did all those jobs), working as a cleanup-boy at a butcher, returning supermarket trolleys, and working in a timber and hardware yard for twelve months after fluffing the final semester.
When I got my first desk job, nobody worked harder than me. Just being inside in air conditioning with clean hands was all the motivation I ever needed. While other new grads moaned about having to work 40 hours, I was in heaven at only doing 40 hours, all inside, and all on the weekdays!
It is a tough question, though, how to instil that same work ethic into your kids without taking it too far. I fear laziness in kids more than anything else, because laziness is pervasive and destructive.
It's several generations since my ancestors had to work a manual job, but my grandfather sent my dad to work on a mushroom farm for a summer, and in turn my dad told me I needed to find manual work for the summer when I was 18 if I expected any financial help from them during university.
I worked in a series of factories, mostly cleaning machines. None of the work was physically tiring — I think I was too useful to be given that work — but I at least met other people who'd probably be doing similar work for the rest of their career.
Similar story as yours, although you had it worse. When I was 13 or 14 my dad made me start helping him with all his side labor jobs. Commercial fishing, firewood splitting, etc... Today he would probably be called out for child endangerment for having me run a log splitter at that age or yelling at me for not opening up a cast net fully on the throw. He also went up and down the street and signed me up to cut almost every neighbors grass.
Those jobs pushed me quickly to go get a 'real' job when I turned old enough to drive. I ended up working overnights in a grocery store stocking. Working 10pm - 8am was eye opening and something I certainly did not want to do forever.
While sometimes fun, all the work definitely made me a driven person. It also gave me a sense of confidence that no matter what I could likely work my way through something, which has been super useful in IT.
because now I'm the Dad, and more than anything else in the world I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you, but smart work is better.
It's also important to raise kids who understand that there is a lot of hard, necessary work out there, and culturally (at least in the U.S.), we tend to devalue this work. I'm not suggesting that being a sanitation worker is better than being a programmer, but both types of work are necessary for society.
There is a different world where you dad never sent you on that job, where you ended up starting a business based on what you learned hacking. In that timeline you are now much richer.
Do you still think hard physical work is good for you.
In fact, it is exactly what happened: I put the cash earned that summer into new computer gear, and coded myself into the future .. without my Dad pushing me to make the cash and encouraging the investment, I wouldn't be nearly as well off as I am (quite fine, thanks) ...
Identical story here. Nothing like carrying lumber around and dragging shingles up a roof all day in 100F degree weather to convince one to go learn an "office" skill.
I'm a software developer, duh. 30+ years and still going strong .. still, right about now, getting out there and building a house, brick by brick at a time, seems like it might actually be better for me at the moment. I must be getting old.
So he gave me a summer job. In the hot Australian sunshine, I was sent off to be a labourer on building sites. Since I was the young blood, the brickies and other construction types gave me the shit jobs .. moving piles of bricks from one end of the universe to the other, shovelling shit from one end of the universe to the other, getting lunch and ciggies and mud and bricks to the brickies from one end of the universe to the other. It was monotonous, hot, boring work, and I hated getting up at 5am every day just to get there on time, and work until the sun went down every day, just to go to bed in time to get up again and start moving shit from one end of the universe to the other.
It did teach me a lesson, and that lesson - which dear reader I hope you understand - is that work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with.
So, at the end of summer, I took my hard-earned wages, bought myself a new computer, got back to hacking, split up with my girlfriend, and got myself the hell out of that situation.
And I've never looked back.
Well, now I look back .. because now I'm the Dad, and more than anything else in the world I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you, but smart work is better. Don't know how its going to happen, but that's the joy of fatherhood, innit ..