Lessons in the Rubble: My First Day in Construction

Free Friday post!

As many of you already know, my first job right out of college was working in construction. My whole 4th year of undergrad [we say “4th year” not “senior” at my alma mater…Wahoowa!] I spent working with a team of students and mentors to design and build a house, and I had decided I wanted to work more on the construction side of things after that experience. So, after a summer building the house we designed, I landed myself two construction gigs.

The first was taking photos of a construction site for a local GC who was building a giant house for an out of town client. The client wanted regular updates, and so I’d drive out to this beautiful spot in the Blue Ridge twice a week and take photos in the evening after all the guys had gone home. I learned so much doing that - I’d try to guess what they were doing and why, I’d try to guess the next steps - and every week I’d stop by the GC’s office with a disc of images and a paper time sheet [it was 2005].

The second was for a design build company and was a full-time position. I was very excited, because I could both design AND build - they had a big woodshop, and white vans full of tools, and I was going to be able to build the things *myself* that we were designing. There were two guys and me. That was it.

My first day, we went to the jobsite, where we were doing a renovation of an office space. It wasn’t just any office space, though, it was an *architecture firm.* We had to jackhammer out a bunch of concrete in the basement to prepare for new steel columns that would support a super cool loft inside this converted gym space. The guys looked at me, and asked if I knew how to run a jackhammer.

“No,” I said, “but I bet I can learn!”

“How much do you weigh?”

“About 130 pounds…”

“Well this thing weighs a buck fifty, so, no, you’re not running it.”

Demoted on my first day. That’s ok, I thought, better to stick with something I know I can’t mess up and that won’t rip off any limbs. They handed me two five gallon buckets, and told me to get haulin’. So I did. The guys would chunk up slab, and I’d collect the debris, fill up my buckets, haul it up the stairs and through the office and out to the street and over my head into the high wall dumpster. Then I’d tramp back downstairs for another load.

After the first few loads, I started to realize what was happening and where I was. I was walking past folks I had just graduated architecture school with, but they were learning how to be architects. They had cool work stations and cool outfits and better paychecks. I, on the other hand, was clad in Carhartt work bibs [men’s, because that’s before I became a field tester for Carhartt’s burgeoning women’s line], hauling concrete rubble in buckets, and getting sweatier and more bruised by the minute.

Pretty soon I didn’t have the strength to lift the buckets over my head anymore, so I built myself a little set of stairs to get to the top of the dumpster. My former classmates walked by me laughing and chatting with each other in the warm fall sun headed for a fun takeout lunch, while I fished out my PB+J from my black metal lunchbox I had found at a junk shop…and tried not to feel downcast. And invisible. And lost. Like I didn’t belong in either world - not interested in sitting at a computer all day, and not any more useful than the runt pack mule on the jobsite.

The runt [but determined!] pack mule herself, on a jobsite, c. 2005.

What had I done? Was I wasting my education, as several people told me? What exactly was I learning? How would this help me be a better architect? I started to panic. Everyone would pull ahead of me, and I would be stuck, and I would never get a job as an architect, or get into grad school, or even make it through this day without dropping a load of gravel in the middle of the office while people looked over their black plastic rimmed glasses at me in pity.

As I finished up my last bites of PB+J, I had two thoughts. First, I needed to pack about 4 more sandwiches tomorrow. And second, hopefully, someday this would be a great story. I closed the top of my lunchbox, called my aching limbs to action, and picked up my buckets. Aw hell, I thought, this *is* a great story. An architecture office?! Really, that’s where I have to do this task?! And I chuckled.

“Let’s roll,” I said to myself…”let’s roll.”

And here we are: I’m an architect with my own practice, 9 years strong, and a portfolio of beautiful projects for happy clients. I’ve been a professor, I’ve traveled the world doing research on housing, I’ve led my own groups of students on their design build projects, I’ve worked for other architects, I’ve bought, rehabbed, sold, and operate investment property, I’ve had more than a few adventures.

And now I’m telling you this story, connecting with you because of our shared interest in building stuff. I wish I could go back in time and reassure my 22 year old self…

I think it turned out ok.

Working that job, I learned a lot about field work: I got shoved in holes [it doesn’t pay to be the smallest one on the crew], I got to work alongside subs and hear their gripes about architects, I got to see how construction folks are treated because that’s how I was treated, I got to work from many different architects’ drawings. I didn’t stay there long - probably about 6 months - because I moved on to work for another GC [and that’s really when the firehose of knowledge and experience turned on full blast…but we’ll save that story for another day.]

I learned what it feels like to be humbled by being the weakest one on the team, but how my smarts could still be helpful [my stepladder at the dumpster!] and how determination and refusal to quit doesn’t have anything to do with physical stature. Growing up, I was taught how to *work,* and work was something I could do. One foot in front of the other, and I’d show ‘em.

The fact is, I shouldn’t have worried that I was wasting my education, because what I was doing was just another phase in that education. I learned things I couldn’t learn from books, about what it takes a person to physically do the work of making a building happen, and about what it takes to earn the respect of a bunch of guys out on a jobsite. That was nearly 20 years ago, in central Virginia…no one was laying out the red carpet for me.

But you know what? Almost everyone I encountered in those days had respect for someone who wanted to learn, no matter who they were. And I am so grateful for what I learned from those guys, and in those days.

In conclusion…

You never know how what you’re learning today might be laying some serious groundwork for something awesome in your future…and you never know how many PB+Js you can eat in a day til you haul gravel in buckets for 8 hours.

As always, thank you for reading! Please share, let me know what you think, and if you’re not a subscriber, consider supporting my work!