A guy's gotta get thru the day somehow. Roofing is damn boring work. I did it summers, after school and weekends from the ages 8 to 21. It is 2nd only to sheetrock.

I thought you had to be a convicted felon to roof. Maybe that's just in Canada.

Hee. Sounds entertaining, Specks.

I painted houses for years and yea, it's boring as hell (with brief periods of terror), you do what you can to get through the day without going nuts. At least your roofer doesn't have classic rawk blasting all day like the crews I usually worked on did.

And yea, most roofers and painters I've known had at least been in county jail a few times if they weren't actually felons. When I ran work crews, I was happy if they weren't actually smoking crack on the job site and left their Glock in the glove box. One guy had three or four bullet holes on the side of his truck. I said, "Hey Gary, where'd you get those bullet holes?" He said, "Aw, some chump tried to pop me after I ripped him off."

I haven't roofed, but I painted houses for half a year, for a few years running.

My best work partner was a woman named Lynn that worked for me lifeguarding, and we got along so well that I hired her to paint.

We would get a job for a house, use some of the up-front to buy a gram or so of coke, and then proceed to carefully snort it up during the job. A line first thing in the morning, a line right after lunch, and a line for the road. The houses got painted quickly and well.

Steely Dan was the music of choice. We were pretty benign as far as the residents went.

I doubt, though, that this represented a long-term, sustainable business model.

Wow. I never thought of doing coke and working.

So far, one guy has quoted the guy from The Goonies ("Hey you guuuuuys!" and "Ruth! Baby Ruth!"), sung that horrible lady lumps/humps song, and did a pretty good rendition of the chorus of "Waterloo" by Abba.

I guess they got to do what's right for them.
Because it's their time.
THEIR TIME!!
Up there.
Down here, it's our time.
IT'S OUR TIME DOWN HERE!!

At least they aren't cranking dead rock...for starters. Sound like a joke of a crew doing manual labour, which is deadening in itself, but add to that a humourless lot, the day, the week, the month really really drags. I've been doing painting [commercial & residential et al] and yep, worked with those that just got out of prison...nope, didn't ask why.

OTOH, loooong time ago I drove cab. One 7am, a suit going to the business district asked if I minded. No. Opens his attache case, closes it and starts snorting lines. Yep, nice start to the day buddy. Working as a scenic artist [prior to the house painting] a group would be smoking dope from the get go, 7am. At lunch [1/2 hr] they'd down 3 pints. Then back to 'work'. Never quite understood how they could function, day in and out....guess they hated their jobs. Like the lawyer. The pay was good though.

A roofer on this hockey stream said he fell 3 stories off a roof [I asked if he was a stunt man] — he survived, his doctor said it was because he was in shape. He also boxed. Ah, the stories eh?

Oh the cranking dead rock was a couple months ago.

I haven't seen them snorting anything. Yet.

*moan*, the dead rock.

Dead rock? Dead rock? Huh. Punk kids. No respect.