What’s the difference between plumbers and pipefitters?  Pipefitter’s parents were married.  What’s the difference between pipefitters and sprinklerfitters?  If pipefitter’s parents got divorced, they’d still be cousins.

     The facilities on construction jobs are atrocious.  There’s always one port-a-pottie for about a hundred ugly guys.  It’s basically a stagnant bucket of piss and alcoholic shit with the lid always left open.  Nice.  Never anywhere to wash your hands.  But there’s usually something funny written on the wall.  Like “sitting here, cheeks a-flexin’, just gave birth to another messkin.”

     Yeah, lot of classy guys on the construction job.  No women.  When a woman comes on the job, every guy stops and stares.  Total objectification of the female form.  I think, “Hey, guys, there might be a person in there.  Let’s put the tongue back in the mouth and quit acting like chimpanzees.”

     But if you say something like that they’ll think you’re a homosexual, and you don’t want that.  I was at break one time with eight electricians and said something about Rosie O’Donnell being okay.  Every one of the eight expressed the intense desire to kill all the homosexuals in the world.  I was just thinking “Gee, I’m glad my walk-in closet is so big.”

     They call electricians “Sparky” on the construction job.  I hate that, because sparks never fly when I work with electricity.  I prefer “Wireman.”  “Wireperson” is even better, but that takes you back to the whole “kill all the homosexuals in the world” thing, and I prefer to avoid those conversations.

     I’m always the best-dressed worker at the building site, but that’s not much of a challenge, because the uniform there is ripped blue jeans and a Pantera t-shirt.  The t-shirt is optional.

     It’s always nice when you can count on working with alcoholic, drug-addicted, slovenly brutes every day.  A reason to welcome the morning!  At least, I tell myself, I’m not slovenly or brutish.

     The worst music gets played on construction jobs, like worn country tunes by men (which gives me the chills) who are probably homosexual posers (which doesn’t, really).  Or “classic rock,” like ZZ-Top or Lynyrd Skynyrd or (you’ve heard them a thousand times before).  So when I can, I play motivational metal for the crowd.  Like Seether’s “Gasoline” (Gonna get some gasoline and burn her house down.)  It’s a love song.  Just to remind the beasts I’m not as nice as I look.

     Yet I’m the only one who trims his eyebrows.  Me and the transvestite.  Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?  What’s wrong with all those other guys?

2026 R.M. Reliable Electric