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Comment by spfzero | Hacker News Reader

So true. I helped out sorting produce at a food bank for a company organized event. Clearly we were an imposition on the workers there who were far more efficient and then pulled away to spend a half hour training us to do their job poorly for three hours.

Great for coverage in the company newsletter though.

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I'd give a call-out to Habitat for Humanity in the US (providing lower-cost homes to qualifying families).

From the builds I've worked, they seem more than happy to exploit your muscle and tell you exactly what needs doing. It helps that home construction is mostly repetitive (nail this way, 100 times).

Also, surprise finding that about 1/4 of IT colleagues don't know how to drive a nail.

1/4 seems low

There's "I can make this nail go in if I work at it for a while" and "in straight with four hammer blows".

It was generally "I don't understand what 'smack it hard' means."

When you're driving 16d's, no sense beating around the bush.

I'm probably one of the people who thinks they know how to do it, but in reality don't.

Imho, it's mostly the right weight hammer + accuracy. Sadly, the latter of those lessons was personally learned only through the smashing of many a finger, to the tune of my grandfather's amused laughing.

That's where nailers come in handy. Using a hammer is kind of like coding on an Apple II.

Great organization there, and the people donating time do actually work enough hours to amortize the training time. It’s less useful from a corporate publicity standpoint though because of the time investment. Plus your employees are being trained into an opportunity for work that may be more satisfying and still decently paid, and then leave.

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