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What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#111

Post by JPKab »

dizzystar wrote: post #2

I was a carpenter for the better part of my 20s. Definitely many stories like this that came up. The one that bothered me the most was how many times they looked at me silly for making a "bad" cut, when of course, I was making said cut because the area wasn't square. I had one guy get angry at me for making a frame that was visibly crooked, so I told him he should probably make it square and hang it up himself. When…

I also was a carpenter for half of my 20's. We should start a support group. I think the building mindset has contributed greatly to my mentality for software.

Interesting thing mentioned in the article: Men are pressured to know this stuff, and women are pressured to know how to "cook and be domestic." I should add that I'm guilty of it myself. A work colleague got a flat tire, and he and his girlfriend were stranded until help came because he didn't know how to change it. I gave him flack for it before I realized I was being unfair to him. His girlfriend was much worse to him than I was FYI.

Well, the fact is that the pressure isn't equal anymore. Women, especially younger women, are pretty damned comfortable admitting they are terrible cooks. Annoyingly, I'm a much better cook than any woman I've ever dated, which I must admit is a sign of social progress. Their mothers didn't want them to feel like it was their duty to cook, so they were never taught. But rejecting a useful skill outright has its disadvantages.

My twin brother has very little building experience, but lucky for him at least has the aptitude for it. His wife, a professional who is quite possibly the worst cook alive, has hounded him, in front of me, for not being a "real man" because he can't fix something himself in the house, and now they have to pay somebody else to do it. Over time, he's gotten confident enough to take on stuff himself, but I also advised him that everytime she pulls that shit to think of a very complicated recipe and ask her to cook it for him. When she replies that she can't cook it, give her the "you're not a real woman" treatment so she can see how unfair she is being.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#112

Post by saraid216 »

ams6110 wrote: post #56
saraid216 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about plumbing. So when my kitchen sink went haywire, I called a plumber. He installed a new waste disposal for me and, according to the Internet price listings for the exact model he put in, overcharged me by about $250. When I implied I knew what was going on, he explained it was for warranties, which... seemed implausible unless he was getting stiffed himself. I decided not to take him to task for i…

Parts and supplies (whether for plumbing, auto repairs, etc.) are always marked up about double what you would pay retail yourself. You can buy a water pump for a Chevy Impala for about $50 online. A competent shop will most likely charge you $100 or more, plus labor to install it, but they know it's the right one, they know what other gaskets, seals, etc. they need to replace along with it, they have the tools and k…

> Parts and supplies (whether for plumbing, auto repairs, etc.) are always marked up about double what you would pay retail yourself.

See, this is acceptable, but no one told me this.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#113

Post by saraid216 »

bluedino wrote: post #55
saraid216 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about plumbing. So when my kitchen sink went haywire, I called a plumber. He installed a new waste disposal for me and, according to the Internet price listings for the exact model he put in, overcharged me by about $250. When I implied I knew what was going on, he explained it was for warranties, which... seemed implausible unless he was getting stiffed himself. I decided not to take him to task for i…

Does the computer repair guy charge you NewEgg prices to replace a part in your desktop?

I've never actually needed repairs to my own computer. I live in a very strange vacuum where things tend to not-fail around me. I've mostly chalked it up to the "developer looking over your shoulder" effect.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#114

Post by vitals »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #25
dpeck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Stocking a basic toolbox is extraordinarily inexpensive, there's really no reason not to have one." This is great advice, anyone reading who doesn't have at least the basics please get them. I have a few friends who I help out on occasion and it is incredibly frustrating to not have the basic tools available. Decent screwdriver set Socket set Hammer Electrical Pliers Multimeter Pliers Adjustable Wrench Just these b…

Pfft. A basic toolbox doesn't even get you halfway there. Here's why. Because the basic tools are not the keys to the kingdom. The way it works is this. You NEED to familiarize yourself with all the little connectors, fasteners, bolts screws and materials. Hundreds or thousands of them. Got a nice drill? Great. Guess what you better know what masonry bit is, and that you need to use a smaller bit than what you think,…

Doing any kind of handyman type project requires just as much preparation as the actual work. And it could be days worth of reading, just so you know exactly which fastener to use. But that's exactly what I do very good for my programming job - learning and applying my skills.

If you approach your projects with that attitude, things become much easier. Moreover, most trades people are not very good at learning or analyzing. They just do things one way or another because 'they have been always taught to do it this way' by some master carpenter/plumber/electrician when they just started. So the whole trades industry is full of misconception and myths.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#115

Post by AutoCorrect »

JPKab wrote: post #111
dizzystar wrote: post #2

I was a carpenter for the better part of my 20s. Definitely many stories like this that came up. The one that bothered me the most was how many times they looked at me silly for making a "bad" cut, when of course, I was making said cut because the area wasn't square. I had one guy get angry at me for making a frame that was visibly crooked, so I told him he should probably make it square and hang it up himself. When…

I also was a carpenter for half of my 20's. We should start a support group. I think the building mindset has contributed greatly to my mentality for software. Interesting thing mentioned in the article: Men are pressured to know this stuff, and women are pressured to know how to "cook and be domestic." I should add that I'm guilty of it myself. A work colleague got a flat tire, and he and his girlfriend were strande…

so are they still married? :)

Being broke makes you learn things too: for most of my 20s (and 30s, and 40s) I haven't had the money to pay people to do things for me. So I learned to do them myself - not always expertly, but they get done. I think a lot of people have fallen into the fallacy that 'time is money', and spend their time on Mad Men instead of fixing stuff around the house.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#116

Post by vitals »

Zimahl wrote: post #103

In defense of the modern male, things just aren't as simple as getting on a whim of building "walls and sidewalks, installed woodstoves, laid tile, added electrical circuits and plumbing fixtures, fixed furnaces". There are so many codes these days you can easily do something not to code and it cost you twice as much. Changing light fixtures and faucets is one thing - major construction is another. As an example, my…

Most construction codes are not all that hard to interpret for someone who deals with 'code' all day(albeit a very different one)

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#117

Post by SilasX »

r00fus wrote: post #29
trhtrsh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Budget cuts. You can't write a standardized test for woodworking, so schools stopped teaching it.

Schools were forced to stop teaching anything "arts", effectively, by NCLB (which is basically designed to destroy public schooling and give that to private industry). Many schools would love to get more arts back in their curriculum, but their funding goes away if they don't focus on those damn tests to the exclusion of all else.

You mean, NCLB revealed how most schools were failing to teach the most basic things needed for success in the real world, which they somehow were able to convey to the "carpenter-track" students just decades ago?

Seriously, I hear a lot of kvetching about schools burdened by having to "teach to the test". I never very little about which specific parts of the test are unfair or about things students shouldn't be expected to know.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#118

Post by tangledweb »

I'm not sure how closely tied the "please do this easy task for me" behavior is to gender.

I see it as a pretty common bad habit in lots of people and tie it to ignorance rather than insecurity about gender roles. If you don't know much about an area it's hard to tell what tasks within it are easy or hard, so it's easy to assume that all jobs done by other people are easy.

I've seen it expressed as "this is just a website, so I assume you can have it done by Friday" or "sounds like a 10 line Perl script to me" or "I need a favor. I'm sure it will only take you 10 minutes" or "What took you so long?", but the pattern is the same.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#119

Post by juiceandjuice »

johngalt wrote: post #106

For me the hardest one to give up was car maintenance. I grew up working on cars, and if I wasn't in IT I'd probably be a mechanic. Unfortunately keeping all the tools and supplies necessary was too much of a hassle for a single late model vehicle that requires practically no maintenance. It doesn't bother me to have someone mow my lawn or fix the way my doors hang, but handing the car keys over for an oil change is…

The oil change thing was much easier when I had a garage/driveway/flat street and I had a lifted jeep cherokee (which broke a lot, but was easy as hell to fix and change oil). With my car now, I can't even find ramps that are appropriate for it. Luckily I bought my (Subaru) new in 2009, so I just take it in for maintenance when required.

Also, living in an apartment is weird because it's not your house. I want to replace the kitchen cabinets, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to. I'd love to be able to just own my own house, I even dream of just getting an old house and redoing the electrical, fixing it, getting a 203k loan, but that's not very easy in the bay area.

I don't have any trouble letting other people do stuff for me, but I usually want to be right there talking to the person the whole time, usually learning whatever new things I can.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#120

Post by Macsenour »

A friend of a friend once spent 20 minutes verbally beating me up for not knowing how to change the spark plugs in my car. I finally shut him up with: "I just upgraded my PC with a new HD and doubled the ram. When you're done I'm going to Fry's to get a new video board because the new Nvida chip is out and affordable".

I learned to have zero issues with the "man tasks" thing.

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