To many people, roofers have a bad reputation. The other day I was talking to someone who is involved in banking and mentioned that I was a partner in a roofing company. He seemed shocked and said, “Well, I guess there is a lot of money there. Crack heads are pretty cheap to hire.” This made me remember how many people have misconceptions about the roofing industry.
The majority of people don’t spend their time thinking about roofs and when they think of roofers they generally think about the danger of the job and how they would never want to do it. Realistically, roofing is not more dangerous than electrical work or even some forms of carpentry (like framing). The reputation comes from the fact that roofing is hard work and one of the few jobs in North America that still requires raw strength and physical determination to accomplish.
This kind of “back breaking” labour is not for the faint of heart and it attracts a certain kind of person. The kind of person who loves a hard days work and seeing money in their pocket after a job well done, almost all of the roofers I have ever known who survived in the industry have been willing to put in long gruelling hours for less money than a journeyman carpenter or electrician would make. The majority of roofers I’ve met are good people and undeserving of a bad reputation of any kind.
The truth is that jobs like roofing are not glamorous and they involve a lot of repetitive tasks. But to assume that it is easy to do and that it is the realm of “crack addicts” is to diminish the nobility of a hard days work.