Column | Lego for grown-ups

You have to listen to your body, you often hear. Mine was beeping a while ago. I listened carefully and heard a small voice that said: get away from your computer, go do something completely different. Well okay, fine then. I applied as a stacker turner in the port of Rotterdam.

The stacker turner is an assistant of the crane master. You stand on a platform between the legs of the crane, about fifteen meters above the quay. Next to you is an Ever Given-esque ship. Every two minutes a sea container drops in front of you. Then it is your job to rotate the stackers – heavy couplings – in the corners of the container. So that the container can snap to another. Very mindful work, I thought. Lego for grown-ups.

I took a course, got a certificate, a helmet and a bright yellow jacket. The next day I was able to get to work on the Maasvlakte. My colleagues were mostly Turkish or Moroccan citizens of Rotterdam, with the same helmet and yellow jacket, but more grubby from the lubricating oil.

Friends asked if I had gone undercover. Like Günther Wallraff in the eighties. This German journalist disguised himself with a sticky mustache as a guest worker and did all kinds of miserable work to expose abuses. A bit like our Jeroen van Bergeijk does now, little has changed.

But no, I just applied under my own name. I had written that I had studied Greek and Latin, that I was a writer and that the computer was driving me crazy.

The stacker turning turned out to be surprisingly fun and not that heavy. Colleagues were generally jovial and helpful. From the crane I had a magnificent view of sand, sea, steel and robot cars. The evening services paid double with the bonus of beautiful sunsets. I was insured and could go through my back without any worries if necessary.

I even had time to read. For example, books by contemporaries who did really miserable jobs. Like Constantly by the French writer Joseph Ponthus, who worked in a fish factory. Or Seasonal work from German Heike Geissler, who was an order picker at Amazon. Note that they did not do this work out of curiosity, but out of pure financial necessity. A salient difference with Günther Wallraff. Many highly educated Europeans today don’t need a sticky mustache to see exploitation.

As a stacker turner I got up to three tens per hour net. Much more than when I write pieces.

Anyway. It turned out not to be a dream job. Because it remained: flexible work. I knew that word from the newspaper, but I didn’t know what it really meant. It means, for example, that you wait by your phone until the screen glows with the message that your body must be fifty kilometers away on the Maasvlakte in two hours. Call it a surprise schedule. It soon turned out to be impossible to combine with a normal life. Kids who have to be picked up from school don’t like surprise schedules.

And then my job compared relatively favorably with flexible work in, for example, home care. It is no coincidence that port work pays well: the port of Rotterdam is pretty much the place where strike action was invented. The older dock workers told me stories about how the whole port collapsed in solidarity when something went wrong. That’s how they forced good jobs. I found the stories of those old men very inspiring. Togetherness is an excellent compass in the me era.

Fortunately, my own generation is increasingly concerned about society. Climate, racism, abortion. But when it comes to work, we often put our hands in our own pockets. Even if we break down from the stress, even if the body squeaks and creaks, we are not going to strike; rather we go to the gym, do yoga, do breathing exercises, listen to podcasts about time management, wear pedometers, impose sleeping rituals on ourselves, take an ice cold shower – that poor body is not only blamed for what is socially wrong, but also that cold shower. The jug goes into the water until it bursts. Then we call it a crestfallen burnout, which is nothing more than your body’s wildcat strike against time.

You don’t strike on your own, at least those harbor bitches remember.

Arjen van Veelen replaces Floor Rusman this week.