You work hard, right? Early meetings followed by mid-day meetings followed by late meetings.  Email, voicemail, office politics, endless talking about what to do and how to do it. You come home at the end of the day, you’re worn out!  

I used to think that way, and I guess it’s true that white-collar work can leave one feeling mentally exhausted.  But I had an experience recently that reminded me that there is another world of work out there that demands something more than just staying awake in a meeting.  If you want to work hard, try hauling lobsters for 12 hours off the coast of Maine.

I realized this sweaty and exhausting truth during a recent visit to Vinalhaven, Maine, an island about 15 miles out of Rockland, in the Penobscot Bay.  Despite the annual invasion of “summer people” who enjoy its natural beauty, for 1,200 year-round residents Vinalhaven has been and remains a working island, devoted in large part to hauling lobsters out of the dark and frigid waters. 

We have a friend whose family has lived on the island for generations, and who has made his living as a lobsterman for 40 years.  During our visit last week, our friend agreed to let me join him and his brother as they “hauled.”  Here’s a partial agenda for the day:

The process of actually getting lobsters out of the trap and into the boat’s holding tank is a carefully choreographed series of movements among the boat and the crew.  The first challenge is to hook the lobster buoy--—the color-coded marker that indicates where the trap lies on the ocean floor—winch the rope holding the trap, and then hoist the 40-pound rubberized wire trap to the side of the boat.  After untying the trap’s lid, you reach inside to remove any crabs, seaweed, and the occasional fish.  Female lobsters and those smaller than the legal limit get tossed overboard; keepers are thrown into a large plastic bucket.  You untie the empty bait bag and replace it with one of the full bags you stuffed previously.  The clean and re-baited trap is then moved to the rear of the boat for its eventual return to the ocean.  You do this ten times for one string. 

While motoring to next ten-trap string, the lobsters you kept have to be “banded,” which entails placing small rubber bands around their claws to prevent them from killing one another in the holding tank.  Dropping to your knees for steadiness, you clasp a thrashing lobster with one hand and manipulate a small hand tool with the other to grab the rubber band and stretch it so you can slide it overthe claw.  It’s a plus if you can avoid shooting yourself in the eye with the rubber band. 

After about your third string, here’s what happens: you sweat profusely in your rubberized overalls, your hands are raw (despite wearing gloves), your knees burn every time you drop to the deck to band lobsters, your lower back protests as you move clean traps to the back of the boat, you absorb the general odor of dead fish, you bake under the rising sun that has burned off the fog, you fight off the queasiness forming in your belly as the boat rises and falls on the ocean swells, you wonder if you can avoid embarrassing yourself in front of experienced lobstermen.

And did I mention that while you are grabbing all these crabs and lobsters they are trying to avoid your grasp?  If you want a sense of what getting pincered by a crab feels like, staple your finger and multiply by ten.  At least a stapler will let go.

Hauling stops at about 1:30pm, which would be good news except that you have another two-and-a-half hours ahead of you getting back to the harbor, selling your catch (almost 400 pounds) to the lobster buyer, refueling the boat, loading six more crates of dead fish for the next day’s bait bags, and washing down the deck. 

Hauling lobster is about as physically tough as a job can be (and is among the most dangerous, according to the government), and by the end of the day I had an appreciation both for the physical demands involved, as well as a sense of how gentile white-collar work is in comparison.  In fact, there is no comparison.

I understand that a diverse, sophisticated, and advanced economy like ours offers all types of work.  It is remarkable, however, to experience the exhausting labor required for hauling lobsters and to realize that this kind of physical work was once the most common characteristic of almost every job.  That’s a helpful thought to keep in mind the next time someone complains about having to attend so many meetings.