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Sure, and that's happened. I'm in better shape than I was, and there's more work to be done. My hands are now crazy strong, fingers thick as sausages. But decades of typing and this kind of work aggravated my carpal tunnel and it was not pleasant. I'd wake up in the mornings because of crippling pain in my right hand. It would take me hours of ice to get it to subside. There's only so much you can do with ergonomics though in flooring, and I did the best I could. The ten hour shifts were deadline-oriented and I won't go into that since I had no choice. But,... Few weeks after I finished installing my floors (and demolishing what was there before, and carrying 3,000 lbs of material in beforehand) I had my A/C serviced. The guy was in his mid-50s, and he complimented me on the job. "You did this yourself?" Then he asked some more questions. He said my long lines (25'+) were straight, which was a big deal for me since I spent an entire day brooding over the starting line and re-measuring over and over again with a chalk-line and laser levels. "This looks like professional work" he said. After he left, found out from his supervisor that the guy worked in flooring for 23 years, running his own business, and he watched it die during the last market crash. In the end it was him and another guy doing a job a day, which sq-ft for sq-ft was basically them working 5-6 times faster than me, and better. The man favored his both knees the entire time he was working here, and had menthol/wet wraps around his hands that he kept renewing. Evaporative cooling does only so much to reduce swelling. Anyhow, I can't imagine working that hard for decades, and my 10 hour shifts were nothing compared to what he did day after day after day. |