interesting topic...
my learned occupation is "industrial mechanic".
I learned in a little company who produce food cutting machines for bread and meat based on V2A. I learned drilling, grinding, welding, milling, lathing, assembling, pneumatics...
I worked two years in installation of entrance doors, room doors, windows, floor, ceiling, more in the carpentry direction,
two years in a steel foundry, where I hammered and pressed tons of red glowing steel (ranging from a pound to almost 2000 pounds) in three shifts. Hot, loud, dirty, quite volcanic...
I pressed steel buffers for the railway industry and as a welder (welding by itself is really cool stuff, as you can wed steel in any compilation, and you know already while welding, if the weld seam is good or not).
I worked for a company, who produce complex plants, that produce plastic windows and doors out of different profiles of plastic bars through cutting and welding the corners together. That is a concert of meticulous mechanics, pneumatics, electronics, control engineering, software.
I worked for a company, which are really big into producing asphalt milling machines, that mills the old asphalt via big turning rollers on which many boxes are welded on, in each of sits a durable chisel, which attacks the asphalt. I welded the big rollers one seam with MAG and the rest in up to seven layers on a UP welding station with up to 700 Ampere. Very monotone.
Since two months I work for a company, which are big into producing toothbrushes (
@Strong Rick ) in a machine shop, whole day of marking, measuring, drilling, pneumatics, screwing, milling and unscrewing, tinkering, a lot of variety, time flies by.
Thee company has up to 50 plants of production lines for toothbrushes of all kinds. Very complex, how a "simple toothbrush" is produced. Times, when hog hair was used, are gone.
The computerized technology changed work in the last years. good for the consuming society but maybe not so good for the individual "at work".
In Germany there is a Term "Fachidiot" could be translated with "specialized idiot", but they are paid well for a reason...
The human being is just the most clever animal on earth. What they can do, invent, produce, build is more than astonishing and horrible at the same time.