The Game, the Weather, the Work

Three things you can talk about on a job site: the game, the weather, and the work.

The game covers all sports. Doesn't matter the season. Steelers in fall, Penguins in winter, Pirates in summer even though nobody believes in the Pirates and honestly that's part of it—complaining about the Pirates is its own bonding ritual. You can spend forty minutes on a bad bullpen decision and feel like you've had a real conversation.

The weather is obvious. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy. Construction is an outdoor job and the sky is always doing something worth commenting on. "Gonna rain." "Supposed to clear up." "This humidity, man." You can say "this humidity, man" every day from May through September and it always works.

The work is the work. How the pour went. Whether the inspector is coming. Who screwed up the measurements on the north wall. The work is safe because it's external. It's out there, not in here. You can talk about a structural problem all day because it doesn't have feelings.

That's the list. Three topics. Nine years in construction and I could count on one hand the conversations that went beyond those three categories.

Tommy Kovacs was on my crew for four years. Good guy. Reliable. Showed up early, left late, never complained about overtime. We worked side by side five days a week, sometimes six. We ate lunch in the same truck. We went to the same bar on Fridays. I knew his order (Yuengling, always), his football opinions (bad, usually), and the name of his dog (Bruno, a pit mix).

Here's what I didn't know: Tommy's wife had left him. His mom was sick. He was three months behind on his mortgage.

I found out all of this after he stopped showing up. Just gone one Monday. The super said he called in, then didn't call at all. I texted him: "you good?" He said: "yeah just dealing with some stuff." I said: "alright man let me know."

I did not let him know what "let me know" meant because I didn't know either. Was I offering to listen? Help him move? Lend him money? I left it vague on purpose, because vague is safe. Vague means I care but I don't have to prove it.

Tommy came back two weeks later. Lost weight. Quieter. I handed him a coffee and said, "Rough couple weeks?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Steelers are gonna be trash this year." He said, "Always are."

And that was it. That was the check-in. That was the entire emotional support structure of two men who'd spent four years within arm's reach of each other.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: that's the problem. Open up. Talk about it. Be vulnerable.

And sure. In theory. But you gotta understand the context.

On a construction site, your body is your paycheck. If you're distracted, you get hurt. If you get hurt, you don't work. If you don't work, you don't eat. The culture of not talking about problems isn't some macho performance—it's functional. You need the guy next to you focused, not processing a custody battle at thirty feet in the air.

So the silence becomes a tool. Like a hard hat. You put it on when you clock in.

The problem is: you forget to take it off.

“The silence becomes a tool. Like a hard hat. You put it on when you clock in. The problem is: you forget to take it off.” Click to tweet →

I went home after Tommy disappeared and my girlfriend, Katie, asked how my day was. I said "fine." She asked if anything was wrong. I said "no." She asked if Tommy was okay. I said "he's dealing with some stuff."

Katie looked at me for a long time and said, "Do you know what the stuff is?"

I didn't.

"Are you going to ask?"

I didn't know how.

Here's what I've figured out so far, sitting in this truck eating a cold sandwich: the three-topic rule isn't protecting us. It's just familiar. We keep the conversation on the game, the weather, and the work because that's the territory we've mapped. Everything beyond it is unmapped, and unmapped is uncomfortable, and discomfort on a job site is something you avoid because discomfort usually means danger.

But it's not dangerous to ask your buddy how he's really doing. It just feels like it because nobody does it and the first person to do a thing always feels crazy.

“It's not dangerous to ask your buddy how he's really doing. It just feels like it because nobody does it and the first person to do a thing always feels crazy.” Click to tweet →

Tommy's back on the crew. He's okay. Not great, but okay. Last Friday at the bar I said something I'd never said to another man on a job site. I said: "Hey, if you ever need to talk about the stuff—the real stuff, not the Steelers—I'm around."

He looked at me like I'd spoken in a foreign language. Then he said, "Thanks, man."

Then he said, "You see that Penguins trade, though?"

We're getting there. Slowly. The long way around, through hockey.

But we're getting there.