Chapter Five Responce: Construction and Electrical Wiring (Zachary Shirk)

In the fifth chapter of Mike Rose’s book “The American Worker”, Mike interviews a professional electrician, and construction worker. The chapter is called Reflective Technique: Electrical Wiring and Construction, and in it Mike talks about how different craftsmen, like electricians and construction workers take such pride in their work. An example of this would be during the interview with the electrician. “We try hard not to show our straps, Mundo. We want to show as little evidence of the electricians being here as possible,” (107).
Upon reading this I immediately thought of my job. I work maintenance at an old cemetery, and when a major storm rolls through the area, it often destroys a couple tombstones, by blowing them over. It is the job of my colleagues and I to fix it quickly, before too many people notice. We have to make the stone look exactly how it did before it broke. If someone that is just walking by can notice that the tombstone had been fixed, it means we did a poor job repairing it.
In the book Rose says “The previous electrician’s signature is woven into the braid, but anonymously so, and completely out of sight, seen, if at all, by another electrician,”(108).So after the electrician leaves, his work will be forgotten, and will not be thought about by anyone else, except other electricians. This is similar to my job at the cemetery. Unless you had seen the tombstone before it broke, you would not be able to tell that it had been fixed. But at the same time, anyone that has ever fixed a stone can instantly tell that a stone was broken at one time.