When I worked in the Pentagon, I had a job that I really didn’t enjoy at all. Actually, “enjoy” is not the word I would use—because at the end of the day, I enjoyed the atmosphere, as it was full of a lot of great people all trying to make sense of the world each day. What I didn’t like in particular was my assigned task. While I didn’t really see it at the time, the job description involved a lot of spreadsheet management and bean-counting that really is not suited well for my brain. It almost wasn’t until I was finished that I realized how much I hated the tasks, but loved the job for the people who helped make me appear to be competent.

What made me realize how bad the job was for me came in the form of a farewell gift provided by my coworkers. It was one of those gag books that you’d find in the “I don’t know what to get a person” section of Barnes & Noble. The book was called 50 Jobs Worse Than Yours, and my friends had all made comments in the pages of the random occupations made within. One person had added a page in the back, and had stuck in a crappy printout of a photograph I had taken of him in Steph Curry. One day we had heard that the Golden State Warriors were visiting the Pentagon, and so we both ran around the building until we spotted a group of NBA Champions walking around. It didn’t take long at all.

Without thinking, my friend yelled, “Steph! Steph!” and the man himself turned around. Steph generously stepped away from the group as we—two uniformed military officers looking like crazed 10-year-olds—ran towards him. Before I could even remember that photography was prohibited, I was snapped a picture of my friend all buddied up to one of the best guards in the NBA. They both had big smiles That was a great memory amidst a crappy job. 

I was thinking about all this because recently, I got a chance to poke around an old Roman quarry called Fossacava. It’s the (one portion of a) site where marble was manually carved out of the ground 2,000 years ago. The whole area, however, continues to house over 80 active quarries continuing to carve out Carrara marble to this day. It’s a remarkable environment not only from the highway, but also from overhead. An unfamiliar eye in winter might look at the ridges and confuse them for being snow-covered.  

The zig-zagging drive to reach the quarry is doable enough with a car—although to attain the highest reaches of the ancient quarry, four-wheel drive would be recommended. Still once you get to the old quarry, you are presented with panels and illustrations that depict how slaves and freedman once carved out massive pieces of the white marble, and then transported it down the mountain to be shipped by sea. The entire process is a sight to appreciate, even if you’ve only approximate sketches of what kind of back-breaking labor this must have been. Talk about a job worse than yours.

And then as you walk around Fossacava, you have a soundtrack of machinery hard at work continuing the same labor. Think of the Tonka Truck Front End Loader from your childhood—ostensibly used to clean up all of the tiny Lego and Matchbox cars on your bedroom floor—and transform it to adult life. In the distance on other mountain sides were vehicles picking up big piles of marble pieces, moving them down the mountain, and then dumping on top of big grates so that smaller pieces would be sifted out.  It almost looked too simple in the execution (and indeed, the modern process for producing marble slabs is wild…not to mention expensive and still rather perilous).

Of course in the days since my impromptu visit to Carrara, I have been down a good number of English and Italian language rabbit holes in order to learn a bit more. I will admit that I have gone from somebody who once visited Galleria Borghese—a museum renowned for magnificent marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Canova—and I was in awe at the emotion and detail of the pieces. I have slowly opened my brain from being that person, to someone who got to stand at the site where the proverbial rough material was first procured—and feel baffled at how any of these was ever accomplished in the first place.

I know it is quite human to look at our own life’s work, and then contrast and compare it to the work of others. Which job is crappier? What aspects about each job make it challenging? Or a complete slog? I will admit that while visiting my sister’s house, I went into a room with a treadmill, and sitting down next to it was her firefighter’s SCBA.  The internet tells me that this thing weighs 30 pounds, and she of course would use it alongside the treadmill to stay in fighting form for her job.  It might not be the work of slogging through marble 2,000 years ago, but still all I could think was that this kind of activity sounded way tougher than mine. I won’t say worse, but once again, really tough.

I’m not sure if I have any parallels to make here in terms of the various crappy jobs that we all have—or whether we all come out on the other side with great memories like one day meeting a NBA star. But there is something to be said in exposing oneself to as many diverse aspects of society as possible—both past and present. If you have the time or interest to watch the (subtitled) video explaining how the marble was transferred down the mountain, it’s enough to make your heart stop. I shudder to think how many people were thoroughly mangled up in doing the labor…and indeed how many people are operating the quarries today while missing digits or retiring from the activity with bad backs and the like. 

I count myself as pretty fortunate to be doing a job where I’m not operating a series of lifts and pulleys to move massive pieces of rock around—nor am I waking up at all hours of the night to sling a million pounds of firefighting equipment onto my body and then running into a building. All of that sounds like Stuff Megan Would Suck At. Every job is of course relative, and with a little luck, the best moments come in interacting with those around you who make life bearable (I say this while leaving the quarry slave labor portion out of the discussion). In every case, I’d say that at least a healthy dose of empathy for what it has taken to shape our society…that bears thinking about and appreciating. No matter what crappy job you might be holding.