BS: How blue collar are you?

Subject: Obit: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:44 PM

We got any "salt of the earth" working men out there?

Do you work with your hands?
In industry?
Do you have a fancy degree?
Are you part of a union?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:47 PM

Thanks clone!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:56 PM

"Blue Collar" ~ B.T.O.


Walk your street
And I'll walk mine
And should we meet
Would you spare me some time
Cuz you should see my world
Meet my kind
Before you judge our minds
Blue Collar

Sleep your sleep
I'm awake and alive
I keep late hours
Your nine to five
So I would like you to know that
I need the quiet hours
To create in this world of mine
Blue Collar

I'd like you to know
At four in the morning
Things are coming to mind
All I've seen all I've done
And those I hope to find

I'd like to remind you at four in the morning
My world is very still
The air is fresh under diamond skies
Makes me glad to be alive

You keep that beat
And I keep time
Your restless face
Is no longer mine

I rest my feet while the worlds in heat
And I wish that you could do the same
Blue Collar

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:57 PM

Depends when you looked over the last 50 years...

Worked in a factory, worked on roads, gardened, played guitar, worked in broadcasting, ran a university library, retired... still play guitar.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:11 PM

Blue enough.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: olddude
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:17 PM

Well regardless of my technical background, I am so blue that I sing "nobody knows the troubles I sees" every night ...

I am so blue that when I get wet, I color the sofa when I sit down.

Blueberries are my favorite fruit

I love bluebirds
Love Art Thieme's song about his old blue dog

I even have black and blue marks on my shins from running into the coffee table

I could go on and on

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:17 PM

ALL of me is blue from time to time.

The collar, not so much. I've done hard labor at see, in gold mines, and as a yard-bird on Navy vessels, scraped paint and done assays and swung picks and shifting irons, but I escaped to pretty much white collar work before I was forty. Clawed my way through an BA and MA degree in my late thirties and forties, too, to assist in acheiving escape velocity.


A

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:20 PM

The color of my collar depends on which Hawaiian Shirt I have in that day.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:23 PM

oldude still has his wife wash his clothes with Bluing

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:25 PM

blue collar, white collar, pink collar

they are just boxes, "little boxes just the same."

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:28 PM

I believe there is now a name for those people who work from home : 'open collar' workers!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:28 PM

as long as its not that toilet bowl stuff

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:44 PM

I think the idea of the "blue collar" worker is pretty antiquated.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Dave Swan
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:58 PM

I'm proud of the blue collar I put on every day at work. I am a union man, so was my dad. My university degree isn't necessary for the work I do and I look around every day at guys who are smarter and more intelligent than many of my classmates.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:15 PM

Dave... ain't THAT the truth! I have shovelled it all from concrete to snow to gravel to shit. LOTS of shit, including fresh green horseshit with fresh green horse flies buzzing by the hundreds to bullshit of the bovine and human kind. I have an M.Sc.Eng. but MANY times would sooner deal with real shit than the shit I ecncounter in most boardrooms and staff meetings.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon, at the Webster, WI library
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:36 PM

I have never done much physical labor, although I recently had a "post office" job that required me to lift packages a lot. Part time, I also drove a delivery van. I worked for a university, not the USPS, and only delivered mail around the campus. Is that blue-collar enough?

I definitely came from blue-collar stock. My father was first a farmer and later a janitor in a large office building.

The only handkerchief I carry is a bandana. For me, that's a fashion statement. I haven't worn a tie in years, except for weddings and funerals. Many years ago, I had jobs that required me to wear a tie at work, but many offices have become a lot more informal since then.

I think there are definite differences in point of view between blue-collar and white-collar people, and one of them is the amount of tolerance for corporate bullshit.

You can work for a corporation and either resist the bullshitters, or suck up to them. I didn't suck up, and I think that, more than anything else, makes me blue-collar.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:40 PM

Grew up on the farm: definitely blue collar except for no-collar summer days doing things like stacking 70 lb hay bales over my head.
And yes, shoveling and pitchforking lots and lots of literal shit.

Spent more than my share of student days, before and after a 4 year Navy hitch. Working Navy days were in blue denim and chambrey.

One year as a blue uniformed UAW member, working in a hell hole foundry. Might have been there a lot of years, but the foundry closed.

About 7 years as a retail clerk, a bottom-rung wearer of dress shirt and tie.

Quite a few years as a quality inspector, some in literal blue collar but all at that level.

So am I blue collar because of my work history, or somethin' else because I picked up a masters in divinity along the way in a past life?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:45 PM

froggy... "masters in divinity"

So you can find water? I thought all froggies knew how to do that without going to school?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:46 PM

Gee. I've only delivered newspapers by walking the route; scrubbed gym floors; worked as a dishwasher; cleaned the floors in a hospital (including the OR and Delivery Rooms); made and set gravestones; been in the Infantry, and earned an MS in Library Science. After the MS I've cleaned up leaky diapers, cleaned the library's gutters, plowed snow, cleaned rugs, installed computer networks (including running the cabling), climbed on roofs to find leaks....

Define your terms. A worker is a worker is a worker. OBU.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:06 PM

I belong to two unions. The Communications Workers of America (worked a few years as a telephone operator) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (sang a fair amount on television and worked as a radio announcer at a couple of stations).

I don't think that necessarily qualifies as "blue collar" work.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Cats
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:27 PM

Union.. yep.. I am the National Executive Member for my union for Devon, Cornwall, Torbay, Plymouth and the Isles of Scilly.

Working with my hands... no, was the head of the biggest Special Education Department in the county before becoming full time union

working stock.. oh yes.

Fancy degree .. yes you have to to teach and especially to work with the students I chose to work with

2 out of 4.. what does that make me?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:28 PM

Does it really matter, as long as you are paying your taxes.?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: JennieG
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:53 PM

Do people still use terms like blue collar and white collar any more? Seems a bit 'classist' to me.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:22 PM

JennieG, the tea party faction in the U.S. has at least one prominent spokesperson, Sarah Palin, who constantly presents herself as "blue collar", with the implication that that is the only really good, "true blue" type of American suitable for office. On the other hand, that faction try to brand the opposition as "elitist", meaning "out of touch with real loyal Americans." A few months back Palin had a short TV series on her life in Alaska. On the episode I saw, she went out on a salmon boat with her family. She pressured her daughter into clubbing salmon as they were pulled in, and stood aside bragging that she was raising a "real blue-collar kid".

Against that background, we're tossing around how we do or don't re;ate to that definition. I think we've already demonstrated that it isn't a particulary useful way to define anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:29 PM

Someone claimed this. "I am the closest thing Mudcat has to a normal blue collar American."

It made me curious.

This is not meant as a swipe at anyone. I am just trying to get a picture of how people feel about themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:57 PM

OBU. We are all workers, and management and labor are necessary to each other as hydrogen and oxygen are to create water.

If you think life's a drudge, and work means pain,
And the New World Order is a world insane,
If you dream a better world -- the dream is not in vain.
Just make it a fact with a Class Act.
If we don't stand together -- together we fall
"Cause "An injury to one's an injury to all."
Sisters and brothers heed the words of the song
What the world really needs is a Class Act.
We can win the world with a Class Act.
          --Len Wallace, 2007, "Songs of the IWW", 38th ed., pp.15-16

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:55 PM

Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer
by Bob McDill, Chuck Neese, and Wayland Holyfield

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

The barmaid is mad 'cause some guy made a pass.
The jukebox is playin' ``There Stands the Glass''.
The cigarette smoke kinda hangs in the air.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

A cowboy is cussin' the pinball machine.
A drunk at the bar's gettin' noisy and mean.
Some guy on the phone says ``I'll be home soon, dear''.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

    No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd.
    We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud.
    But there's no place that I'd rather be than right here
    With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

The semis are passin' on the highway outside.
The four-thirty crowd is about to arrive.
The sun's goin' down and we'll all soon be here.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

    No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd.
    We're a little too rowdy, and a little too loud.
    But there's no place that I'd rather be than right here
    With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:58 PM

You got a collar???

Geeze, wish I had one...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:18 PM

Then again, on summer holiday weekends we generally camp at a little resort and go no-collar-all-over...

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:02 AM

Apologies to those who have heard this before, I am getting lazy in my anecdotes. (Got some tablet for it though.)

When I was a miner, I used to shout "Mint Sauce!" at sheep in fields. Now I am a retired chief executive blah blah blah I shout "Rosemary and garlic!"

Not necessarily funny but does have the sad attraction of being true....

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:37 AM

Here in S.Wales we used to have lots of Collar'y workers!
Here

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:51 AM

I've done all kinds of things ranging from clerical, motherhood, playgroup assistant, school playground patrol, working in a nautical bookshop to working in an engineering office environment. But I don't consider myself blue or white just a worker who could do with a bit of a holiday!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:04 AM

Not sure this qualifies but I did race in the mini-stock division for several years, built my own car, engine, etc and had a VW shop many years where I turned wrenches, did body and paint work and restorations... Sounds kinda blue collar-ish...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:34 AM

EVERYBODY works for somebody else. The self-employed carpenter works for himself (a tough boss), legislators work for the moneyed (and they work to please the stockholders), the farmer works to provide food, even the drug lord words to provide shit to the users.

We're ALL blue collar but just don't realize it.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:36 AM

That's purdy much it, Rap...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: bobad
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 11:41 AM

Workin' For The Man
Roy Orbison


Hey now you better listen to me everyone of you
We got a lotta lotta lotta lotta work to do
Forget about your woman and that water can
Today were working for the man

well pick up your feet
we've got a deadline to meet
I'm gonna see you make it on time
Don't relax
I want elbows and backs
I wanna see everybody from behind

'Cause your working for the man working for the man
you gotta make him a hand when you're working for the man

Oh well I'm pickin' 'em up and I'm laying 'em down
I believe he's gonna work me into the ground
I pull to the left I heave to the right
I wanna kill him but it wouldn't be right

'Cause I,m working for the man working for the man
gotta make him a hand when you're working for the man

Well the boss man's daughter sneaks me water
everytime her daddy's down the line
she says meet me tonight love a me right
and everything is gonna be fine
So I slave all day without much pay
'cause I'm just abiding my time
'cause the company and the daughter you see
Their both gonna be all mine

Yah I'm gonna be the man gonna be the man
Gotta make him a hand if I'm gonna be the man

working for the man working for the man
gonna be the man gonna be the man
Gotta make him a hand working for the man

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:08 PM

I got me one of them 'fancy degrees'.... it, and $3-$4, will get me a beer in 'some' local bars. (turned out when I graduated, the demand for philosophers was ummmmm.... down.

Most of my life I have been under-employed. I worked delivering papers, checking in grocery stores, working as a carpenter's helper while getting that fancy degree, loading boxcars with canned goods (big muscles!) and being a beginning cabinet maker.

Oh.... in that canned goods factory (Stokley-Van Camps) they found out I could read & write, and I spent a year as a bean-counter! Literally! I did inventory in a plant the canned Pork & Beans!.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: olddude
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:19 PM

Took my dog for a walk, his coller is blue ... I like a blue sky

Marge on the Simpson's cartoon with the big blue hair is a sex symbol to me

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:33 PM

pdq... BTOs Blue Collar is a fav of mine... BTO

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:53 PM

"and I spent a year as a bean-counter! Literally!"

There are times I'm glad I've cut down my coffee intake. Chances are I'da had a mouthful, and it would now be on the laptop. Thanks, Bill.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:00 PM

Dave Van Ronk once had the job of painting the eyespot on Mickey Mouse dolls.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:01 PM

"I did inventory in a plant the canned Pork & Beans"

"Pork Counter" would have a different connotation.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:55 PM

I used to wear blue collar shirts all the time. Still do sometimes. Lots of my ties "work" well with them.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:54 PM

Did a count and I have 6 blue shirts.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:40 PM

Lemmee wander thru some of the high lights of the shit I've done at one point in time in my life:

Ran addresso-graph machine
Mowed lawns
Fixed lawn mowers
Rebuilt car engines
Mucked stalls
Worked at a riding stable saddling and hosing down horses
Worked as a draftsman
Worked as a plumbers assistant
Framed houses
Auto mechanic
Race car driver
Built houses
Electrician
Renovated old buildings

And still squeezed in 2 college degrees and 18 years combined teaching 5th-6th grade (2 years), GED in the Richmond Jail, counselor in a drug program and Social Worker...

BTW, I'm also the P-Vine's 'Under-gardener" and rebuilding a dumb boat while bringing this abused house back from the edge...

I'm tired!!! I need a nap!!! LOL...

B~ (for "blue" collar)

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:51 AM

White collar 1957 - 1970 Analytical chemist specialising in brewing. When it dawned on me that the men (and even the women, who were paid less) in the bottling room got between twice and three times my salary. I was at the time assistant chief chemist at Goldwells (remember "Snowball"?), so I gave the boss instructions (quite explicit, as I recall) re the insertion of my rolled up contract of employment in a suitable aperture, and departed.

I was better paid as an apprentice than as an assistant chief chemist, and five years on I was a time served carpenter and joiner.

So off with the white collar and on with the......bib & brace overalls!

Not a blue collar in sight.

When building work was scarce, I did anything I could get, right down to cleaning sewers. Blue collar at last?.........NOPE! Boiler suits.

So never a blue collar did I wear, but still a straightforward working class grafter.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:14 AM

We got any "salt of the earth" working men out there?

Sexist much?

I have done day care in my home, worked fast food (food prep), early morning (4am) retail stocking and modular specialist work (constructing shelves and displays), cleaned houses (between 2 to 5 a day 6 days a week), all of which means I had a very sweaty collar whatever colour it was.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:36 AM

Inverted snobbery rules OK

Sorry, but I find threads like this divisive.

Not to mention, as VT noted, sexist.

What is it meant to prove?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:16 AM

My take: I seriously doubt that JTS had any intention of being divisive. Most people in the U.S. would be aware that there has been a lot of "blue collar" rhetoric around that is deliberately intended to be divisive. This comes accross more as a chance to discuss how any one of us actually relates to the phenomenom, and, as I referred to before, I think we have for the most part taken the opportunity to say in effect "blue collar schmoo color, this doesn't define anyone in any legitimate way."

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:21 AM

Thank you for your considered criticism, though it seems clear that you haven't read and tried to comprehend my subsequent posts.

No it is not sexist and it is only divisive if you make it such. It was a response to a comment in another thread, and nothing more than an informal poll. Plenty of women have answered without taking offense.   
There has not been a single divisive comment until...

"Sexist much?"

and

"Sorry, but I find threads like this divisive."


If you do not like it, there is not a single bloody thing forcing you to read the thread and participate.