The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 267: Chuck Klausmeyer—A Prick in Congress

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

They say you can't judge a book by its cover and that is certainly true with this week's special Labor Day episode.  It begins with a true story written by Mike about a particularly industrious Dirty Jobber, and it ends with Mike and Chuck discussing the origins of Labor Day, America's work ethic crisis, and the pros and cons of labor unions.  

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And this is the way I heard it, episode number 267. And Chuck, after a careful consideration, I've decided to call this one a prick in Congress. What do you think? I think that's a very good call. Very good call indeed. That's the title of the story you're going to read, isn't it? Yes, this episode started out as what we used to call in occasionally. and I was going to celebrate Labor Day by reading a story that I wrote some years ago, called a prick in Congress.

But of course, as some of you may know, Labor Day is also the occasion of MicroWorks' – that's hard to say. It is. Awkward to hear, really. It is. It's hard to say and annoying to hear it. But MicroWorks' birthday is also today. You know, what is the rule of that? So happy birthday to us. Yeah, happy birthday to us, right.

More importantly, is it micro workses or micro works? When you have two Ss like that, it ends in an S and then you add an apostrophe. It's the, what is it the... Possessive. Possessive, exactly. And so I think it's fair to say micro works instead of micro workses. Well, I mean, I hope it's more than fair. I think anything other than that really makes you think, gosh, the guy I'm listening to just had a stroke or something. He stuttered, yeah. Yeah, it sounds awkward, and it looks awkward on the page, too. Part of what I pride myself in not doing is getting bogged down in the sort of semantics and pedantry that you thrive in. That's what I'm here for, to just pull you by the ankles down into the mire of pedantry. Yeah, and by extension, a few hundred thousand people who are just dying for us to get to some sort of point.

The point is this, my friends. They probably are. Yeah. The point is it is Labor Day. and that's a big day for our country. And it's also the birthday of MicroWorks, which is a big day for me and for Chuck. And for, I hope, the 1,700 people we've assisted over the last 14 years

with a series of work ethic scholarships. So I was somewhat flummoxed as to which occasion to celebrate. Because a lot of people just assume that I started MicroWorks on Labor Day because MicroWorks is in fact a celebration of hard work and skilled labor, which it is. But Labor Day, of course, has come to mean a great many things to a lot of different people. And I thought perhaps, Chuck,

without veering too far outside of my lane, without kicking the hornet's nest, without poking the bear, without engaging in any other animal kingdom metaphor you might like to indulge. I wonder if perhaps we could have a conversation about this weird time that we're in right now, We're on Labor Day, right?

Here we are on Labor Day, looking at 11.5 million open jobs in this country. You can Google decline in American work ethic right now, and you will find page after page of articles. These articles didn't use to exist. So we're having kind of a work ethic crisis in our country. And micro works, I'm really realizing, not for the first time, but maybe for the most intense period, microworks has some real differences to Labor Day. And yes, I think we should discuss those things. What say you?

I think we're going to explore all those things, but I think the thing that really ties both MicroWorks and Labor Day together is the concept of work ethic. And the story that I believe you're going to read is just the epitome of work ethic and entrepreneurship, a bunch of other things. but work ethic is really the thing. The work is the thing.

And before we go on, though, I want to say there was one other thing that happened on Labor Day 2008, and do you know what that is, trivia-wise? Tell me. Oh, Fred King died. Fred King was buried. Yeah.

Oh, he was buried that day? I thought he died that day. It was one or the other. I sure hope that he didn't get a reversed. That I brought it up and now we don't have it right. Well, again, for those who've been, you that don't know, Fred King was our high school music teacher, and he was a huge influence in both of our lives. Talk about a work ethic, man. That guy was extraordinary. Yeah, 2008 was a big

year for me. Dirty Jobs was the number one show on cable. I started MicroWorks, launched it on Labor Day. The same day, my mentor died. And so, yeah, you're right. It really is an interesting combination of things. Interesting because today, and again, I don't want to turn this whole thing into a rant before I read you the story that I'm dying to share with you. But Labor Day today is used by many people as an excuse, not just to celebrate hard work and skilled labor, and not just to remember the many important advancements that have been made over the years with respect to workers' rights. Labor today, for many people, is used as a cudgel against corporations, against entrepreneurs, against business owners, large and small. That's right. That's right. And this is the thing I really

want to get to. This idea that the only way to celebrate work is to vilify the management. The only way to honor the employee is to attack the employer. That's where we are today, in my estimation and we're suffering, I believe, from a real crisis in the work ethic space. That's our purpose. That's the thing we're trying to correct. And so to talk about all of this on Labor Day, I think does pose an interesting challenge because we're going to ruffle some feathers. But look, just to get right to it, years ago, somebody said, Mike, was there a single dirty job that inspired microworks more than anything else? And the answer is, yeah, there is. That's what this story is about. This story is about a single day I spent years ago of work, hard work, skilled

labor, and at the end of that day, it was pretty clear to me what I wanted to do. And if this sounds familiar, you know what, Chuck, I think I'll post the video because we actually made a video based on this story a couple years ago for the Sweat Pledge, also a big part of MicroWorks. Yes, as I recall, it's to exemplify Sweat Pledge number 12. Mm-hmm. Which is? Look at you. Now you're going to run and you're going to get a sweat pledge.

I love this. Ow. You are such a producer. I just stepped on something sharp. That really hurt. I believe that all people are created equal. I also believe that all people make choices. Some choose to be lazy.

Some choose to sleep in. I choose to work my butt off. So there you have it. Boom. In defense of work ethic is a little story I'm going to share with you right now. It's the true story of this. day that inspired micro works. It is called a prick in Congress for reasons that will soon be made self-evident. I do hope you enjoy it, almost as much as I hope you enjoy this heartfelt message

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to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $3499 a month. At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. A couple years ago, I went to Congress to see if anyone there was still up for an honest day's work. Turns out, there was.

Dave Morales has worked in Congress his whole career, but holds no elected office. He's a third-generation cattle rancher in Congress, Arizona, a tiny town in the Sonoran Desert. Dave is also a fan of dirty jobs, so when he rode in to see if I'd like to help him transplant a cactus, I said, sure. Dave Morales looks like work. He's deeply tanned and big all over, probably 300 pounds. He wears an enormous cowboy hat. and a fat mustache that conceals a permanent grin.

Unfortunately, there's not much to grin about in Congress these days. Another drought and the lousy economy have forced many ranchers there to rethink their business. Today, Dave pays the bills by selling his cacti, which grow in the mountains behind his house. Yesterday I was a rancher, he told me. Today I'm a landscaper. Go figure. My crew and I flew to Phoenix in early August. We spent the night in nearby Wickenburg and headed over to the Morales Ranch at the Crackadon.

Dave led me across the dusty yard to a big pickup truck with a large iron cross built into the bed, not standard. His sons, Dave Jr. and Daniel were loading supplies, a tamping bar, three sledgehammers, two picks, a saw, an axe, some two-by-fours, a by fours, a by fours, a by box of nails and a case of water. There were also several long strips of indoor carpeting skewered with dozens of cactus needles. Once loaded, Dave drove his truck toward a sunken arroyo that snaked through the back of his property and headed toward the hills. My crew and I followed in a tiny Hyundai, the last available rental at the airport and the only obvious choice for off-road desert adventure. After 20 minutes, of random twists and turns, Dave informed us via walkie-talkie that he was looking for a very

specific cactus near the top of a very specific hill somewhere off in the not-so-specific distance. Why his sights were set on one particular cactus was unclear since we were driving past hundreds of identical candidates. They were all around us, towering spires of thorny defiance poking out of the unforgiving terrain like enormous green lawn darts. Eventually, we rounded a corner and came upon a bulldozer, parked at the base of a long, sloping ridge. We got out of our vehicles and walked over to the big yellow machine. Where'd this come from, I asked.

I parked it here last night, said Dave. We're going to need it to build the road. I'm sorry, it sounded like you said, build a road? Dave grinned under his mustache. I'm sorry too, Mike, but we need to build a road to get to the cactus. As is often the case with dirty jobs, there is no such thing as a singular task. So I wasn't shocked to learn that the business of transplanting a solitary cactus would require a few additional steps. I did not, however, anticipate the construction of a highway in the middle of the desert.

Really, I said, a road. straight up a hill? Relax, said Dave. It's only a few hundred feet. It's not like we're going to pave it. Why not just yank the thing out and carry it down here to the truck, I ask? This was maybe the funniest thing Dave Jr. had heard in a long time. What's so funny, I asked.

You're telling me four guys can't carry one cactus down a hill? Now, Daniel joined his brother in a chorus of snorts and cackles as Dave turned and pointed toward the top of the ridge. there, backlit by the dawn's early light, I got my first look at our objective, a massive sororo anchored into the hilltop a hundred yards away. If central casting were looking for America's next top cactus, this was it, 14 feet tall, as wide around as a manhole cover, with two beefy arms curling up and out of its massive torso. It appeared to be getting, giving me the finger.

Holy crap, I muttered. That's big. Big ain't the problem, said Dave. The thing weighs two tons. That's 500 pounds a man. You really want to walk it down here? Sensing the rhetorical nature of his query, I responded with another question.

How old is that thing? Well, said Dave, based on its height, I'd say 200 years, maybe more. It was probably standing right there when Jefferson was president. clearly this was a cactus with a history, but as we trudged up the hill to give it a closer look, I realized that its resume did not include a willingness to relocate. The base was completely encased in a slab of solid granite,

and the needles that protruded from its leathery hide looked like pungy sticks, patiently waiting for an opportunity to slide into something soft and fleshy. Wouldn't it be easier, I asked, to take a different one? maybe one of those back there by the truck? This got the brothers laughing again. Dad doesn't do anything easy, said Daniel. And besides, this is the one the customer wants. I sighed and looked at Dave.

Okay, then. What's the plan? Dave laid it out in simple terms. First, we would build the road. Then we'd back the truck up the ridge and raised the iron cross from its rusty bed. Then, while the cactus was still in the ground, we'd secure it to the cross. There would be much hammering and swearing and, according to Dave, a strong likelihood of bloodshed. Then, the real work would begin.

The trick was to remove the cactus with the roots completely intact, which meant digging well below the rocky surface. Once the roots came free, a hydraulic motor would lift the cross skyward, pulling the cactus. us up and out of its hole into the bed of the pickup and off to greener pastures. If we work fast, said Dave, we can beat the heat and be out of here in three hours. This time, I was the one who laughed. On dirty jobs, the only thing that takes three hours is three hours. And sure enough, three hours later, we were three hours behind. The heat was affecting our cameras and causing technical delays and my own level of expertise on on a vintage bulldozer wasn't helping.

By noon, the road was finally completed, but by the time we got the truck and the cross and the cactus properly situated, it was almost 2 p.m. and 110 degrees in the shade. I have no way of proving this, of course, as there was no shade to speak of. But the bloodshed, Dave had predicted, well, that's a matter of public record.

I had been stabbed no less than a dozen times, trying to wrap strips of carpeting around the contact points between the cross and the cactus. For the record, the longer needles drew the most blood and gravitated toward the area under my fingernails. But the short ones were no less painful. They got below the skin and stayed there, working their way farther and farther in.

Anyway, the real work, as Dave called it, finally commenced. And though it was four against one, I couldn't help but think the cactus had the upper hand. Armed with a sledgehammer from the Civil War, I assumed a position on the downward slope and began to work on the granite surrounding the base. My first swing bounced off the rock like vulcanized rubber

and sent the hammer flying straight back toward my head. You got to swing it harder, said Daniel, like Dad. Dave stood across from me with an even larger mallet, which he swung with the ease and speed. of a wiffle bat. Stone splintered, dirt flew, sweat poured. Dave Jr. stepped in with a pick, and Daniel stood by with a shovel to clear away the debris. I swung harder and managed to chip away at ancient rock without knocking myself unconscious. At first, the saguaro seemed indifferent, humoring our assault the way a horse tolerates a few flies. Then, as we began to expose

the root system, the cactus began to fight back. No matter how careful I was, more needles of various sizes found their way into my shoulders and arms. Under Dave's mighty mallet, the rock slowly gave way and the hole grew deeper, but the cactus itself remained solidly anchored into the hill. It appeared to have a core of solid steel with a giant magnet buried somewhere beneath it. The day dragged on. Blisters popped and oozed, sunscreen and sweat streamed into my eyes and little silver dots danced in my periphery. Pausing for a refreshing bottle of boiling water, I marveled at the intractability of this primitive plant and quietly cursed my decision to accept Dave's invitation. By 3 p.m., things had gotten personal. I had come to see the cactus as Excalibur and myself as a nudge.

night on a hopeless quest. When I broke my second pick handle of the day, Dave gave me the iron tamping bar with a chisel forged onto one end. It was far too hot to hold, but just right for cauterizing blisters, which is precisely what happened the second I grabbed it. By 4 p.m., Dave had employed his entire arsenal of tools to no avail. One of our four cameras melted from the inside out, And I began to giggle for no apparent reason. A delirium was descending upon the whole scene as the desert and everything in it conspired to drive us back to civilization. Meanwhile, the cactus stood firm. I could spend pages walking you through every detail and every setback of the Great Dirty Jobs Cactus Crucible.

And maybe I should. people don't write about manual labor much anymore, at least not the way they used to. And believe me, that afternoon in the desert would have brought the great ones back for an encore. George Plimpton would have waxed poetic about the steady rhythm of sledgehammers swinging in a Sisyphian counterpoint. Studs Terkel would have captured the closeness that manual labor can foster between fathers and sons. And Charles Carault would have turned a simple. confrontation between a big man and a big plant into something even bigger. In their hands, Dave Morales would have become Hemingway's old man, plucked from the sea,

and dropped into Elliott's wasteland. An homage to all those scratching out a living in the rough terrain of their own metaphorical desert. Anyway, that's a long answer to a short question. time during my visit to Congress, I decided to look a little closer at our country's relationship with hard work, as well as my own. A few weeks later, on Labor Day of 2008, I launched Microwworks. For the sake of a good story, I'd like to tell you that my decision occurred at the precise moment a two-ton cactus broke free of its 200-year-old address. But I really couldn't say

for sure, since I was hallucinating at the time. The actual decision was probably made, that night after we finally got that cactus out of the rock and onto the truck and into somebody's front lawn on the other side of town. By then, the sun had set, and I was too tired to drink the beer I'd been thinking about all day. Almost. Dave and I said our goodbyes. He and his boys were headed home with great news. A casino in Las Vegas had just called with a rush order for 50 cacti. It was a month of steady work, and it would begin at 4.30 a.m. the next morning. The Moraleses were jubilant. I was dehydrated. Back at the hotel, I liberated another doseki from the mini bar and jotted a few lines in my journal before passing out.

Most of it is illegible, but the gist of it had to do with starting over, with reinvention, with, what it must be like to find out that the path you've been on has come to an end, and that the only way forward is on a road through the desert that you have to build yourself. I fell asleep before I finished the beer, but my last conscious thought, as I pulled another needle from my sunburned shoulder, is still scribbled at the bottom of the page. Hard work really is the thing that matters most, and in spite of all the pricks,

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40 bucks off your first order. Good ranchers.com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch get good ranchers now. All right then. Chuck, what do you say? We begin with a compliment from you. I think that's a very good story. I think it was well executed. I think the video we made a couple years ago was very good. And I get it. That's an amazing day.

That's a day that is cemented firmly. There were no shortcuts. There was no stunt coordinator. There was no stunt double for you. You worked your off that day. You know what? Happily, not literally. But yes, two things.

First of all, that's all true. And I didn't know any of it at the. the time. You don't get to know about those sorts of days until the world spins a bit and you look back and you go, wow, a lot of things fell into place and I just didn't quite know it then, but I know it now. The other thing I knew about that day, and it was maybe, I think, one of the more important lessons of dirty jobs. And I hope some of the things we try to instill through the foundation, now 14 years old, the idea that for all of that pain, for all of those exploding blisters, for all the dehydration for all of the futility of trying to get that giant green plant out of the

intractable granite, there was humor. There was laughter throughout the whole day. And there's something about work ethic. And obviously, that's the thing I want to jump into. But there's something people forget about it. You know, when we think about work ethic, especially with regard to labor, we think of hard labor and we think of drudgery and we think of pain. Well, you know what? It is hard, but it doesn't have to be painful. And this whole idea of being cheerful, of finding humor, finding a way to laugh at the cactus, even as it gives you the finger. Right.

Trying to find a way to laugh about the fact that the tamp bar is so hot, it's carterizing the blisters that just popped on your hand. Being it on the joke, that's a part of work ethic, too. It reminds me of that old expression whistle while you work, you know, because that's kind of what it is. It's finding a way to enjoy something that some could look at as drudgery. I wanted to ask you, like, outside of what you did in dirty jobs, what was the most strenuous, hardest labor that you ever did? What job did you have?

Because I think it's the same for both of us. Oh, really? I do. What, tearing tickets at United Artists? No, that was not so strenuous, really. but it was a job that you got very much like the United Artist job that you got through me because my mom worked at the place. Was it that warehouse?

Yes. Yeah, that was where we unloaded box cars and stacked pallets for at least an eight-hour day, yeah, sometimes even longer. Boxes of peaches that weigh like, I don't know, 30 pounds a piece and you got to stack them on pallets about four feet high and then the pallets need to be moved. You're on a dock, so you're outside. The warehouse is right there. There's maybe a little overhang, but it doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing or windy or whatever. You still have to do the job. And the job has to be done by people who move these things. And man, that was hard work. But it was hard work. We had a good time, I think. Well, we did. But we also knew it was a summer job. We also knew that this was a step. This was a rung on some sort of ladder. that we had just started to climb as kids. And there were many other rungs on that ladder.

Where things get a little squirly is, what do you say to the guy or the woman who is in a job like that, and it's the last rung they're going to get to? For whatever reason, they don't want to climb anymore or they can't climb anymore. It's just, right? So Labor Day seems to be rooted in the idea

that those people doing those kinds of, of jobs are fundamentally victims. That's how we set the table. We set the table with those who work are oppressed, and those who oversee them are the oppressor. I'm generalizing. I know that. But in a real general way, look, that's how Labor Day came into being. And thank God it did. 1882, countries getting into the Industrial Revolution. People are working seven days a week 14 hours a day. Child labor is out of control. There's no OSHA. There's no safety. You know, this is a time when unions were desperately needed. Desperately needed. And they came into their own, right? And so Labor Day, we're supposed to look back at the kind of job you just described,

and we're supposed to look at America's workers, and we're supposed to feel a measure of gratitude and wonder because that work ethic built the country, and all of that is true and fair. But man, don't you feel like today a lot of people still look at the wide world of work as if it's still 1882, as if we haven't made the progress that we've made? That bothers me. And it's probably a strange day to complain about Labor Day, but it's one of the reasons that it makes me a little uncomfortable because our country today is not what it was in 1882. And the state of work is a very, very, very, very, very different thing. You know, I don't have a vast pool of friends

to draw from, I mean, I know a lot of people and everybody I know works. That isn't my experience with most people, that they're angry at their boss or that they despise the work they do. If anything, Labor Day for them has become just a three-day weekend. You know, it's a chance to get a day off, to maybe take the Friday off before and go away for the weekend, you know, and do something fun. Grill some hot dogs, go to the beach, do something like that. It's sort of the official end of the summer. That's what it's come to mean anymore. I don't feel, you know, it's not about the, I don't think we have those problems like we did between management and labor. They still exist to a degree probably in the jobs that I'm not involved in. Are you sure? I mean, think about it. Look,

I just saw within this week, employees at Apple have refused to show up for work. Tim Cook, the CEO of arguably the most influential and powerful company on the planet has said, he literally said the words, please, please come back to work. We need you at a lot of, work, we need the community that results from the interaction that can only occur when humans rub elbows with humans. We need your enthusiasm. We need your attitudes. We need your passion. We need it all together. Otherwise, the whole will never become larger than the sum of its parts. And that's what we need to be. We need you here. And they say, no, we're not doing it. Now, we can talk about the fact that they went on to argue that such a demand was rooted in racism.

We can have that conversation, but there's really no need because when it comes to work ethic, that makes the point. Employees at the most powerful company in the world are saying, no, we'd rather do it this way. So when you look at that and when you combine it with 11.5 million open positions that companies simply can't fill, well, then you have the basis for, for a conversation. Why can't companies fill those positions? Now, my friends on the left will say it's because the evil, wicked business owners are greedy and rapacious and refuse to pay a fair salary. But Chuck, you and I know that's not true. You and I know the stigmas and stereotypes that keep people out of welding, for instance, are rooted in the mistaken belief that you can't make a decent living. But you can. You can make six figures all day long, right? What's going on?

in a country today when millions and millions of opportunities can't be filled and millions and millions of people would rather not work, would choose not to work. Now, my friends on the right are going to say, well, the problem is those people are fundamentally lazy. Those employees are lazy. And my friends on the left will say, no, no, their bosses are greedy. If their bosses paid a better wage, that's what I mean to say. That's where we're stuck today. And I respectfully disagree. We are having a work ethic crisis today because we don't know how to explain the existence

of millions of unfilled jobs. Half the country says it's because the opportunities suck, and the other half of the country says it's because people are lazy. I think they're both mistaken to a degree, but I look at that, and I see the makings of a lot of cognitive dissonance on a national holiday that was founded 128 years ago in order to celebrate the very thing we're now bemoaning.

Well, to your point about Tim Cook and Apple and the people at Apple, I think there's a lot to unpack there, right? First of all, we've just come out of two years of basic lockdown. And everybody learned, hey, wow, a lot of work can get done where you don't have to be in the office to get this work done. And I think we're also in a time where there are all these open positions. It's kind of an employee's market. You know, if this were real estate, it's either a buyer's market or a seller's market. It's an employee's market rather than an employer's market. And employees are able to do this, A, because there was a lot of government money thrown around for the time. And there should have been because the government came in and said, hey, you've got to shut this down. You can't go to work.

you got to stay home, you got to take one for the team. And so the government needed to step up and needed to give people money. Now the problem occurs in that also it's like, okay, now it's time to go back to normal. And Tim Cook says, and normal is you guys coming in here. But these employees have spent two years now not going into the office and going, hey, you know what? I still got my TPS reports done or whatever, you know, the thing from office space. I still got that done. What's the big deal? Why is that? this and they feel like they've got a little leverage now. They can muscle a little bit. We'll see if that wants. That's right. They got a taste of a different life that they like a little bit more.

And I don't begrudge it. I don't blame it. And I understand it. Look at our own company, right? No one comes in on Friday and everybody else sort of staggers out through the week, right? It's like, what am I supposed to? I've been in one day this week. That's it. One day. Right. Now, we have a different kind of business. Apple is a different kind of business than ABC plumbing supply. I run a foundation that attempts to encourage more people to explore careers that cannot be performed from home. Plumbers can't say, hey, yeah, I'm going to keep doing my job from home. I kind of think the lockdown. Electricians can't do that. Right. And so, again, sometimes I'm guilty of doing the very thing I'm most critical of, which is painting with a broad brush and making

sweeping proclamations. Companies are different. People. People. are different. But while I disagree with Tim Cook on a bunch of stuff, I don't disagree with the idea that it's not just about the TPS report. It's not just about checking the boxes and getting your tasks done. It's not even just about doing your job. It's about showing up. Because when you show up, other things happen that go above and beyond the business of implementation. And when you reduce a job to a checklist and just the brute routines of completing a task, well, then you go back to our summer job that you just referenced. You know, get the crate off the truck. Use the dolly. Use the handcart. Stack it here. Do it again. Then do it again. Then do it again.

There are so many different ways to think about it. But one of the things that has gone missing is the idea that merely showing up your presence at the. office at the work site is important in ways that transcend your actual job responsibilities. Yes. Look, I loved that job that we did. I absolutely loved it. And you know what? We did it in the winter as well, which is why I remember the sleet and the snow and the rain. And it's like you had to wear a coat, but you didn't wear it all day. No. And at the end of the day, you were covered in sweat, even though it was 30 degrees out, and you used a lot of muscles and you felt like you had done something. You know, I've heard you say before, it's like if you work at an office, you know,

your desk looks the same in the evening when you leave as it does when you arrive in the morning. And that's just not the case for somebody in the trades or who's doing manual labor in that way. Even that job, as mindless as it felt, it's like there's a train box car that's empty that was full and there's two 18 wheel or trailers that are empty. that were full. Yes, but I'm trying to draw the distinctions and the parallels and the similarities between Labor Day and MicroWorks. Labor Day and the general celebration of the worker, as we understand it through that lens presupposes that the people we're talking about, which for a summer was you and me, it presupposes that those people are going to be there not for the summer

and not just for the whole year, but for maybe a decade. In fact, it might be their job. And so every that said comes through that lens of this idea that that's what these people do and they can never do anything else and they've got to the top rung of their ladder and now we need to treat them not just fairly but with great deference because this is as far as they're going to go. Microwworks does not do that. Microworks affirmatively says, look, there are no bad jobs, but it's a journey. If you're willing to go to where the work is, if you're willing to learn a skill that's currently in demand. If you're willing to show up early and stay late and take a bite of the poop sandwich when it's your turn to swallow, then you're going to move past the loading dock and you're going to

move past all that entry level stuff. And you will climb. And that's why Ed Morales is heroic to me. He was a rancher. I said, Ed. His name's Dave. That's what I was just thinking. I really hitched on that. I worked for four years at a place called American Eagle Out for this the guy named Ed Morales. Now this is Dave. Dave is a hero to me because he didn't start out as a landscaper or a cactus removal guy. He started out as a rancher. He had land. He had, well, actually, I don't know where he started out, but when I met him, that's what he was. He raised our food. And when the bottom fell out of that market and when he was unable to take care of his family, by doing the thing he set out to do and by living up to the identity that he had embraced,

he didn't throw up his hands and quit. He pivoted and he looked around and he said, now what? Maybe it's not cows. Maybe it's not cattle or pigs. What do I have? I have cactus everywhere. Who wants them?

Rich people down in the valley. And as it turns out, a casino in Vegas. Right. That's the story of the lockdowns. That's the story of pivoting. And that's a big part of what is really important to me, Chuck, with Microwworks, is to find people who think like entrepreneurs, who aren't merely willing to spend a day yank and a cactus

out of the living rock of Arizona, but who are willing to do whatever it takes to get to the next rung. And that's the thing that I want to celebrate on this day, whether it's through Labor Day or whether it's through microworks. Shameless plug! Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble. daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble.

It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at Microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants, thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label.

I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend $100 and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old-fashioned every time. It's my favorite way to support Microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at Noble Spirit. P-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go.

I think that when you said you want employees who think like entrepreneurs. That was the whole lesson that Robert Kiyosaki got from his rich dad. This guy didn't pay Kiyosaki or his best friend who happened to be. the rich dad's son, didn't pay them, and they hung out in a warehouse all day. And they had a lot of time to think. And it was like what they did with that time was to come up with ideas of ways to make money where they didn't have to stand around in the warehouse. You're right.

If you're going to do that job that we did on the docks for 10 years, you're going to be a broken person at the end of it because it will destroy your body. You'll feel 10 years older than you were. Yes, but even worse. you're going to feel like a victim. You're going to feel like you were used up. You were going to feel like you were discarded. And I don't want people to think that I'm making a case for employees or companies who misuse their people or who treat them unfairly. That's not it. The problem is there are many jobs in the workforce that aren't designed to be careers. They're designed to be the thing you do

as you grow and improve and think and pivot and change. Maybe it's a romantic notion of work, but it's one that I have because I know too how easy it is to get trapped. You get married. You have kids. You get a mortgage. You dig in. It's hard to move.

It's glib to say, oh, just go where the work is. I get all that. But it doesn't change the fact that the real power the real opportunity, the real choice is with the worker who is willing to constantly better him or herself, learn new things, pivot. That's so important. And I can't stand it when it's left out of the narrative. We had a conversation just this morning, okay, about a similar thing in that your feeling is that your work life, your business, it's always like a shark. Sharks have to keep swimming, allegedly. I don't know.

You know, I've never met any sharks. I've never asked them. But from what I'm told... I posted two weeks of Shark Week, Chuck, twice. Well, then you must be an expert. Yes, they also have two penises, by the way, just so you know. That's just, that's wrong. You can Google it.

You can look it up. I don't want to. I don't want to look up with a shark's second penis or what. I don't want to see his first. Anyway, but my point is that you're either moving forward or you're moving backwards. You're never just... standing still. And I think that you're right, there are a lot of people in this world who get a job, understand the job, figure out the job, do the job, and then stop thinking about what's next.

It's like, okay, I got to do this. You know what? And I get home at night and I'm tired. And then I get up the next morning, I go, I got to go do that job again. I know how to do it. I'm going to do it. And then I come home and I'm tired. And then rinse and repeat. And what I hear you saying is that as a people. We need to ask, we need to do a little self-reflection and say, we should never be too content. I mean, contentedness is good to a certain degree, but we should never be so content that we're not looking for a way to improve our situation, you know, or our bottom line even. So let us then dare to touch the third rail. The topic that makes everybody's sphincter slam shut whenever I weigh in on this.

But let's talk about unions. Let's talk about organized labor. That was a great thing that came out of the original protests for Labor Day. That's a great thing that transformed the Industrial Revolution and made our workforce sensible. Today, in my view, people still look at unions as you're either for them or against them. And if you're against them, you're a greedy, rapacious, capitalist, and if you're for them, well, then you're for fairness and you're for the little guy and so forth and so on. And I feel like work has changed radically over the last hundred years,

over the last decade, over the last three years. We're in a completely different world right now. And you just made the point perfectly. If you believe, as I do, that you must always be in motion. if you think careers are like pop flies, as I do. It's either going up or it's coming down. There's a moment where the pop fly is just hovering there. It's just hovering there. But it's super brief. It's super brief.

And it's not really defying gravity. It just looks like it. Because in a flash, it's going to start to fall. What I have seen so many unions do is attempt to grab, that moment, crystallize it, and keep it there forever. Keep that moment where the ball's neither going up and are coming down. Just fix it. Okay, these are our representatives. This is what they do. This is what they get paid. Their raises will be baked in. We'll negotiate this. We'll negotiate that. But basically, you're a union member. You just worry about your job. We'll take care of everything else.

You don't have to think like a shark anymore. You don't have to think about your next career. You don't have to think about your next pivot. We'll take care of all that for you. You just show up and do your job. There's a lot of comfort in that. I respect it. I really do. But it's not for me.

And the people that MicroWorks looks for... Look, of the 1,700 people that we've assisted over the years, I don't have the exact numbers, but I know that many of them are working in trade unions right now. And I think that's great. I also know that many of them are working in Florida and Louisiana and other right-to-work states. And I think that's great too. So am I allowed to think both of those things are great?

Well, a lot of people say no. No, you are not. You must pick aside and stick with it and fight to the death to defend it. And that feeling, that feeling to me is more synonymous with the traditional, trappings of Labor Day, which are wrapped up in the traditional trappings of organized labor. That feeling is more synonymous with that than it is with the ethos you just described, which is learn a skill that's in demand. Go to where the work is. Distinguish yourself. But don't fall in love, for God's sakes. It's a job. Do what you need to do to get yourself well positioned

for the next one. Become indispensable. that's the relationship that I think should exist between a great employee and a great employer. This idea that, you know what? Everybody who works for MicroWorks, Chuck, right now feels indispensable to me. I don't know what I would do if Mary or you or Jade or Libby or Laura or, you know, you guys leave. That's terrible. I don't want you to leave. On the other hand, last thing I would want to do is keep anybody there if it's time to do something else, something great.

with your life. I'm glad you brought this up because there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. So Chuck quits on Labor Day, MicroWorks' his birthday,

and you do it on a podcast. Oh my gosh. Listen, if I quit, it'll only be because I'm preempting you firing me because you've threatened to do it a thousand times. Well, that's funny because Chuck, I didn't want to bring this up today,

but here's the thing. Oh, no. On Labor Day. I'm all days. Fired on Labor Day. That might even be a better title than a pricking Congress. Fired on Labor Day. How are we celebrating Labor today? 128 years after it's founded, give or take. How are we celebrating him? We're taking the day off. Let's celebrate the willingness to work hard and do what's necessary by throwing another Bratworths on the grill, jamming it down our well-muscled throats and swelling up like the ticks we are. What are we doing? You celebrate Christmas, if you're a Christian, by going out and giving, by delivering meals, by doing something consistent with the holiday. You celebrate Halloween by putting on a scary thing and scaring hell out of your best friend.

Great. It makes sense. Why in the world do you celebrate Labor Day by sitting on your ass? Because it's the reward for the labor. It's the you deserve a day off because you labor so hard the rest of the days. That's what I think. But I want to go back to what you were saying before about the unions and try to get you in even more trouble. Good.

Do you think that the, okay, good. Do you think that the unions are what killed Detroit? Well, Detroit didn't die. Detroit isn't dead. Much like the career of an individual, like Dave Morales. Detroit is in the process of some kind of pivot. Dave Morales reflects a micro pivot. Detroit is a macro pivot.

Detroit, in the late 70s, I think there's one and a half million people living there. Today, it's something like 500,000. You can't have an infrastructure that big. You can't have a city that big. And have 500,000 people suddenly living there. Same thing happened in New Orleans after Katrina. You know, you can't keep the power on for 20% of the homes that were currently on the grid.

You have to redo the grid. So did unions kill Detroit? No. Sorry, hold on a second. Let me be more specific because I don't mean Detroit. You're absolutely right. Detroit's in the middle of a pivot. What I mean is did unions kill the automobile industry in Detroit?

Well, geez. I mean, the short answer is yes. But it's more like the automobile industry was the victim of a mob. They got caught up in a riot of sorts, and the unions were part of that mob. There were other things in the mob, too. There were other forces at work, big socioeconomic forces, political forces, and so forth. But I know what you're getting at, and the unintended consequences of a great union, doing great work for its people, the big unintended consequences, you don't want a union or an employer,

assuming the role of a parent, you don't want to infantilize an employee. You want to empower them. And so I'm not saying unions do this, but I'm saying that you set the table and it's very, very easy to start to abdicate a lot of things that ought to be your responsibility to some other entity, be it your employer, be it your union boss, whatever it is. So I do think in a general way that that is one of the unintended consequences that came from the organized labor movement. But I also think, and maybe this is a bit of a stretch,

because I don't have a ton of experience. I know enough about Detroit, and I work for Ford for eight years, and I've seen big, big labor and management disputes before. But to me, you know what it always comes down to? It comes down, like on a film set, if you see a cable stretched across the ground in a way that looks like, you know what, somebody could trip over that.

It's dangerous. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And if you bend down to touch that cable, some steward is going to yell at you. Somebody somewhere from, I don't know, IOTC or one of the, they're going to be like, no, you don't touch that. That's the job of this guy, this woman, and they're in this other union. There's so much pressure to stay in your lane as a worker that I wonder sometimes how the worker has the opportunity to distinguish him. by going above and beyond. There is no above. There is no beyond. There's merely your job description. And if your job description precludes you from taking a thing we call initiative,

well then, we have begun to reward the precise kinds of behavior that we ought to be discouraging and vice versa. So to that extent, yeah, to the extent that unions, infantilized their members to the extent that they discouraged initiative. Yeah, those things worry me. You know, again, I'm not saying that all unions are guilty of this, not in a million years. But I am saying that employees feel different when they are constantly told what to do, where to go, when to take a break, the factory whistle, right? All that stuff, all those old systems. They need to evolve too. They need to pivot too.

And finally, to be fair, maybe I'm wrong about the working from home thing. Maybe that's a kind of pivot to that needs to happen in certain kinds of jobs. But I don't think it's the thing that needed to happen in Detroit, certainly, 30, 40 years ago. And frankly, I still don't think it's the thing that should happen at Apple. When you mentioned, I get it, I want to speak to a couple of the things about unions in a positive way in a moment, but your don't touch that cable story reminded me of that old joke. Do you know this joke? How many Teamsters does it take to change a lightbulb? Tell me. 34. You got a problem with that?

So yeah. That's great. That is the point. Look, any good thing taken beyond the parameters of its logical reach stops becoming a good thing. That's the moral of every work-related story I know. It's the guts of the unintended consequence of every single thing we're talking about. Look, I'll tell you a story. This is not something you don't know. Our dream, not so long after we were unloading those crates and peaches and bananas and all that stuff, not so long after that whole loading dock thing.

Our dreams came into focus, a dream of working. in entertainment, a dream of somehow getting paid to narrate shows and be in commercials and you doing plays and sitcoms and me impersonating a host and down that road we go. And I worked so hard to be a member of the Screen Actors Guild. It was so important to me. I wanted to be an Aftera and the Screen Actors Guild. For you, it was what? Equity. Equity was the way in. I bought my SAG card as soon as I could. Because of equity. because of equity, yeah. That's right.

So I couldn't get into SAG. I couldn't get into AFRA because the agents wouldn't send me out for SAG and after jobs unless I was in SAG or after, but I couldn't get a SAGER after job unless I had an agent who was willing to send me out to get the work. And so I'm caught in this thing. And you know the story. I got into AGMA. God, what is with the acronyms with unions?

The American culture of musical artists. So you snuck into SAG through equity. I snuck into SAG through Agma. And what happened? I finally get in there. Now I'm up for union commercials. Now I'm up for union radio work. I can audition for anything I want now, sitcoms, movies, all of it.

Well, nobody's hiring me. Apparently, I'm not a movie star. And, you know, I mean, so many auditions. So many auditions. Sure. I finally get a crack. I finally get a break. It's QVC.

It's 1990. I'm like, this is unbelievable. It's my first steady pay. paycheck in my chosen field, my trade, if you will. And I call SAG and I tell them about it and they say, well, this is, no, it's technically this is after. You're going to need to talk to after, but they're going to have a problem. I call after and sure enough, yeah, QVC is not a signatory. They're not part of that. So I'm in violation of global rule one if I take the job at QVC. Yeah. And there I am, 28 years old, 27 years old. I got to make a decision. And you know what I said, look, I'm going to

Follow the money. I need the right to work. I need this job. And so the union said they'd throw me out if I took it. Well, they didn't. And so I stayed in the union. And a few years later, your new home came along. A show I wound up hosting for 15 years in Baltimore. I called after a, hey, no, you can't do that. Absolutely not. That's not a union show. You can't do it. So I did it anyway. And then, of course, the cherry on the Sunday is dirty jobs. Discovery was at odds with the unions back in 2003. They said, no, you don't do it. You're in violation. So what am I supposed to say? I'm sitting here on Labor Day, and I'm absolutely 100% convinced that our country would not exist the way it does today without unions. Unions saved the working class. They saved management as well.

They came along and they massive reforms and massive changes and it was all good. And then one day, it's not that it was bad. It's just that it wasn't universal. And the kinds of rules and the kinds of laws and the kinds of regulations that might impact

a rodbuster, an iron worker, a plumber are very different from the sorts of things that might impact a voiceover guy or a guy who's just trying to find a toehold in the entertainment. industry. Yeah. But dude, those guys turned the screws, man. And they not only told me not to do it, they not only told me I'd be thrown out if I did. They told me, they told me to find the nearest mirror and walk up to that thing and look long and hard at the guy looking back. And you ask that guy,

what kind of man he is that would violate his union brothers. Oh, dude, I got it in both barrels. So, wow. a lot of people might have just said, well, okay, you know, I'll stick with the machine. And that really chucked more than anything else is what I mean to say. MicroWorks offers work ethic scholarships to people who believe that the foul ball is either going up or coming down, that the shark has to keep moving. And employers infantilize their employees by offering them a long list of benefits designed to keep them there. And unions, God bless them, oftentimes wind up doing the very same thing. And that's, in my view, not in the best interest of millions of people who are working for a living.

The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure. But if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, We need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before, with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA.

And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of the job. this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely

positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skillsusa.org slash Mike. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S.S. USA. Well, I have a story of the strike of 1999 going into 2000. This was a big commercial strike. It was a really big deal. And at the time, I was doing really well in voiceover. And I had several territories with McDonald's. So like every two weeks, I would go in and I would read six, commercials two each for these three different territories. I don't even remember where they were. There were similar commercials, but they were different enough. And this was all through the union.

And so I was doing this for a while and making a ton of money. And so along comes the strike. And I know the strike's coming up. The McDonald's people know the strike is coming up. In fact, they are front-loading. Everybody is preparing for the strike by getting actors to do more and more commercials in advance of the strike. And I go to him, I go, look, you know, I can't, you know, I can't, you know, They're like, oh, we totally get it. It's on strike, blah, blah, blah. I said, I'll help you as much as I can up until the time that the strike starts. It's, okay, fine, you know.

And we front-loaded a bunch of stuff, and I got even more work leading up to it, okay? But then the strike went on for over six months or about six months or whatever. And it didn't take long, you know, because every two weeks they were changing this stuff. It didn't take long for them to hire someone else. They hired a non-union actor, okay, which is all well and good. They're within their rights to do that. They didn't come to me and say, hey, do you want to cross over the? this line because I kind of made it clear that I was not going to do that. But what happened was

is when the strike is over six months later. And I haven't worked for them in six months and they've used this non-union actor for that. Do you know what the union did? The union didn't go to this actor and say, hey man, you are a scab and you should not have done that and you curse upon your house and go into the woods and be alone. No, they said, you're going to have to join the union now. And so this guy kept that job. So he, by walking across the line and saying, hey, I'll do that job, he's not in the union, right? Right. He gets the job.

He does it for six months. Now he's in the union. He's doing the job that I had. And that's when I kind of went, wow, wait a minute. This doesn't seem right. Now, that's the bad news story. But the other thing I wanted to say is that I'm going to get a pension from SAG. I'm going to get a pension from AFRA, okay, the two unions that I'm vested in.

Equity. You know, I didn't do enough work to get that. But this is a good thing. And I also know that I made more money for the jobs that I did do inside the union because they kept track of stuff. They made sure that I got paid residuals on things, which was good. But these two pensions, when I was in my early 20s and it looks, yeah, I'm in SAG. I'm working as an actor.

Woohoo. You know, I wasn't thinking about retirement. I wasn't thinking that one day I'd be pushing, you know, 60. and going, what am I going to do when things are tired? But they were thinking of it. And that to me was a really great thing. And I tip of the hat to the unions for doing stuff like that, for our unions anyway, right? We're both going to get pensions in those.

And that's, have I gotten smarter about money? Yes. But when I was in my 20s, it was like, woohoo. That's right. But yes, yes, and yes. All of that is good. But wouldn't it be better to inspire people in their 20s to, to not wait for the union to take care of this for them?

That's the point that I was going to make. That it's less a labor thing and an education thing. Well, now you're getting back to... You're a very good co-host because this is how the plane starts to land. This is the point of microworks. And it's the thing that makes microworks different from a union play or an employer versus employee play. It's the reason that I was happy to have Robert Kiyosaki on the same. podcast and the reason I would welcome any other, like Dave Ramsey, especially Dave. Yeah. Because guess what? Financial literacy is a part of any sensible definition of work ethic.

And if you look at our sweat pledge, you'll find it. It's right there. I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money. money to pay for a lifestyle I cannot afford. Right. You can't talk about work ethic without talking about financial literacy. And part of what the union does, again, not a criticism, but an observation seen through the lens of unintended consequences. They're there, little actor boy, don't you worry about it.

We'll take some of your hard-earned money and we'll put it over here in a pension fund that we manage little actor boy. What you need to do is you just go out there and you do what you do. You concentrate on the art. Yeah, right. So, fair enough, fair enough. But anybody who looks at that dynamic

and doesn't conclude or believe like whack-a-mole, something else is going to pop up somewhere else as a result of that. There's going to be an unintended consequence. We're encouraging people to abdicate the fundamental things they need to embrace in order to live not just a successful life, but to have this thing called job satisfaction.

The best way to be satisfied at your work is not to depend on your employer to satisfy you. It's not to depend on your union to protect you. The best way is to arm yourself with a skill that's in demand and possess yourself of a level of ambition that will keep you moving forward. That's what I wanted to do 14 years ago. I wanted to try and do something that would allow me to get in front of people and say these things.

I'm not looking to get elected for anything. I just believe when I look back at my experience in the unions, when I look back at the great good fortune I had from mentors like Fred King and my dad and my granddad and so many people in my life, my mom right now, Chuck, my mom had the number one bestselling book in the country. You know why? Work ethic. Every day for 60 years, that old broad, she never stopped writing. She never stopped.

I find myself, you know, surrounded by examples that really make me believe, yes, yes, yes, I know the sweat pledge is kind of hokey and some people have criticized it. But that stuff still matters. That stuff is still for sale. Today, more than ever. Because back to the existence of opportunity. opportunity either exists or it doesn't. And when half the country is telling me that there are no opportunities out there, I point to 11.5 million open jobs.

And I say, really? Really? And they go, well, those don't count because, because why? Because they're not union jobs? Because they require, because you can't be at home when you do them? Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it. I just want to say the opportunities are real and they're there for, anybody who is willing to take the responsibility to chase them down. Agreed. Get the cactus. Get the cactus out of the rock, man. Yes, that's it. That's all you got to do. Yeah. Get it out of the rock.

It's going to hurt. Speaking of getting cactus is out of rocks, what are you going to do with your Labor Day weekend? Because in real time, we are doing this before Labor Day weekend. Well, that's going to blow the listeners mind. I don't know if they can even, that's a lot to process. You're asking me what I'm going to do now on August 31st for September 5th, essentially. Well, I mean, there's the third and the fourth, but I'm talking the weekend, the Labor Day weekend. It's a weekend. Okay. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to write three episodes of Dirty Jobs. The shows have been shot. They're being put together now. We have eight that are going to premiere later in the year. I'm going to look at the next tranche of three. I write

the VO for all these things. You know, the production company sends it to me and I look at it and then we tweak it and then we go back and forth. Each one takes about five hours to do. So I'm absolutely going to do that. I'm going to write raps for How America Works, which is coming back for season three, by the way. October 17th, I think. So How America Works is on Fox Business. It's basically dirty jobs without a host. I'm familiar with it. Well, maybe somebody listening isn't, Chuck. Okay, maybe not everybody is just so far up my ass. Should I dial back? The indignation? Maybe a touch.

Ignore him. Listen to me. Season three of how America works is back. It is a lot like dirty jobs without a host. And this show, by the way, is important. It really gives you an honest look at dozens of different industries that really help the country work. Some are union shops. Others are not.

We look at aluminum. We look at salt. We look at cargo. We look at infrastructure. We look at steel. We look at entertainment. We look at big, big industries and how they work. People are like, Mike, why are you doing this thing at Fox and Fox Business? Well, I'll tell you why, in part, because I love the show. But the end of each one of these episodes now, I get to invite people on camera sitting right in this chair. I invite them to go to microwworks.org and investigate careers in the industries that we profile. So I don't take much credit for it, but it's all kind of come together. Dirty jobs, How America Works, and MicroWorks, all crammed together. Even this podcast, here we are talking about all of this.

It's pretty cool, Chuck, because those 1,700 people we've helped are real, and they're out there, and they're thriving in their chosen field. I don't care if a union is involved or not. I don't care if they're married with kids or not. I don't care if they're living in Maine, Florida, California, or Seattle or somewhere in between. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that we find people who sign the sweat pledge who believe it. And then we help them do what can be done.

And then we direct them to people like Dave Morales, who went to bed one evening a cattle rancher and woke up the next day a landscaper and prospered as a result. Those people give me hope for the country. Those people, I think, represent the future of work. And while I am 100% down with celebrating another Labor Day, either in the backyard with some Bratworths or with a conversation like this, I am even more enthused, bias aside,

about celebrating another year of MicroWorks. Grateful for everybody at my modest little organization, including, and at the moment, especially you. because here we sit, looking back, reminiscing about a summer job from 1978, sitting here today, trying to figure out how to give away another couple million dollars to people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. I say, happy birthday to you, my friend. Well, happy birthday to you as well. God bless Fred King and rest his soul.

Let's keep microworks going. We gave away $1.5 million this year. And then the Charles Koch Foundation came around afterwards because we had so many people apply that we couldn't give stuff to. They came around and we were able to give another 30 more recipients $3,000 each because of them in the last minute. You know what?

Thank you for pointing that out. I didn't properly thank them on the Facebooks, but this really, here's a good runway to put this plane down on. You were talking about that summer job. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that thing in years. I mean, like, I've got a bunch of jobs that I sort of think about, you know, my first job on a trash truck for the state and blah, blah. Oh, right.

Yeah. I had forgotten about that one. But seven, eight years ago, I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I was invited to give a speech. By all means, continue. I was invited to give a speech at the... Dun, dun, dun. That's a very controversial. It shouldn't be, but it is.

It's the oldest club in the country. It's a men's club. Its members are, by and large, very successful people. Presidents of countries, presidents of this country, in many cases. Captains of industry, Titans. I was invited to speak to these guys, and I did years ago. And I was preparing to leave. But these men, they came up.

They just kept talking to me. They wanted to talk, and I was invited to stay for a couple of days, and I did. And the moral of this story is hundreds of men. in the twilight of their years, liked what I had to say. They enjoyed my talk about work, and all of them, to a man, Chuck, they wanted to tell me about their first job. Right. They wanted to tell me about the time in their life when they paid their dues, when they were just getting started, when they were on the way up. They wanted to talk about their hopes and their dreams and their passion. And they wanted to tell me how they

cheerfully bit in to the crap sandwich when it came around to them. Right. And it was gleeful almost. And these old men, they just, they just reveled in it. One of the guys who I met on that trip happened to be Charles Koch. He has supported our foundation ever since generously. And it wouldn't have happened but for a story of work ethic. That's what's for sale.

Those are the scholarships we offer, work ethic, scholarship. It should go without saying that microworks.org is the place to go if you want to investigate that. And God knows we still accept contributions if you find a little Geltafroiken, little Daxan jingua, little De Niro burning a hole in your pocket. Amazon Smile. Yes, that works too. Amazon Smile. Great way to do it.

I do that. Yeah. Anyhow, I hope you guys have a great labor day. And somewhere between the Bratworths and the beer, drink a toast to MicroWorks. And I'll join you virtually for that. See you next week. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile.

Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go on life and leave us. A review I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review

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