Stepping Up, Reluctantly

Welcome back to On the Job. On this episode, we're hitting the road with Cody, a carpenter who travels from city to city building massive sets for a touring theater show. It's a demanding job with lots of responsibilities, and as we'll hear today, they were responsibilities that he didn't necessarily sign up for, so stick around. When you think of a carpenter, you probably picture someone with a hammer and a saw, but for our guest Cody, that image couldn't be further from the truth.

Often when I tell people that I'm a carpenter, the first response is how can I help them in their home remodeling? But I think the easiest way to let them know is that I almost don't handle a single piece of wood the entire tour, and that tour can last up to thirty straight weeks.

Now. Typically we like to use full names here to give people their due credit, but preferred we keep it informal because while he loves his job, it didn't come without some struggles and he wants to make sure that doesn't ruffle any of his higher ups feathers. So Cody it is. And for the last three years now, Cody's been living a life on the road, one arena after another, one city blending into the next.

I just celebrated City one hundred in Columbia, South Carolina. At the completion of this contract or tour, I will have completed one hundred and four cities in thirty months.

It's a life of constant movement. They load in, build their structures, then the bright lights come on and people enjoy the show. Then almost immediately after it's breakdown time. Then load out and off to the next place to do it all over again.

Life on the road is extremely fast forward. My production travels as one massive unit of roughly ninety people. We eat together, we share the same hotel rooms, and we work in the same arena each week in a different city. So every week that we unpack our lives, at the end of the week, we know we have to pack our lives.

For Cody, life on the road is a balancing act between the excitement of a new city and the exhaustion of living out of a suitcase.

And I think living life and fast forward isn't for everybody, But I have a great mental fortitude and willingness to engage in as many experiences as I can in a short amount of time.

Though for all that mental fortitude, he does on occasion lose track of where he is.

Most recently in Columbus, Ohio, I woke up and I needed to get coffee, because caffeine is the golden liquid when you live this type of life. Well, upon return from getting coffee, I went back in the hotel and I went up to my hotel room. My key didn't work, which is the ultimate kick in the shorts when you're so tired. So I went back down to the front desk and I said, Hey, my key isn't working in my room. The guy said, that makes sense, You're in the wrong hotel. And I had walked into the wrong

Before signing up for this rambling existence, Cody was living a very different kind of life, rooted in community.

Prior to this, I was an athletic and program coordinator for Clear Creek County and the High Rockies in Colorado, west of Denver.

Cody loved being part of a small community and that's part of the reason he went above and beyond at his coordinator job to keep things running smoothly.

The next thing you know, the volleyball team is missing a player. Okay, let's get in the company truck and go pick timmy up. Oh and guess what, it's game time? Where's the referees? Oh? Wait, Cody, throw on the pinstripes because you're doing that too. Well, wait a second, who's going to pick up the chairs? After all the fans leave?

But despite all his efforts and the extra time he put into the job, being a small town athletics coordinator wasn't the road to riches. In fact, it barely kept Cody fed.

It got to the point where I had the local market texting me when the meats were being put in the freezer and would be sold at half price. Because I'm also a competitive strength athlete as well, so that takes a part of my finances each and every week as I try to achieve something bigger in that world. So my life looked like the gym work and outreach with the community, and I do very much so enjoy that.

That ceaseless struggle just to get by started to wear Cody down. As much as he enjoyed being such an integral member of a small community, it was coming at his own expense.

For the first time in my life, I think I honestly told myself that you need to take the leap for your financial future, and you need to sacrifice what you love, which is a sense of community and meaning, and you need to put that to the side for an extended period of time to have a better future.

So when his girlfriend, who was a traveling performer, said she could get him a job on the next tour with her, Cody realized the time for that sacrifice had come.

The quick, skinny, and the easiest way to say it is a nice old dose of nepotism, if we're being honest, she pulled some strings. My interview lasted five minutes and thirty four seconds and I was expected to report to the student in Florida almost immediately upon being hired.

That began Cody's new life on the road, going from city to city helping the lead carpenter build these massive structures.

My particular production is held up by chain hoist motors which have one ton and two ton capacity, and essentially all my production or my set pieces are steel and has multiple curtains hanging from it. So picture of the big curtains that you'd see on a stage show or a Broadway or if you've ever been to a local production that curtains. Just times it by about twelve and that would be what you're looking at.

And that's how it went for a while, learning on the job, occasionally asking the lead carpenter for help when he encountered a problem, but incrementally gaining confidence in his ability to do the job. But that said, he would by no means call himself a master of his trade. To reach that level, he knew took years of understudy or an unexpected tragedy.

In my case, I watched my boss fall from about four feet off the ground and his leg snapped and it looked like gumby, and I knew immediately it was most likely a broken leg.

Coming up after the break, Cody rises to the challenge, whether he wants to or not.

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We're back with Cody, who was working as an assistant carpenter for a nationally touring theater company until the guy had him. The lead carpenter broke his leg on the job and was sidelined for the foreseeable future.

Twenty minutes later, the expectation was that I brought the show to Fruition and take over his responsibility with only six months experience under my belt.

Miraculously, Cody managed to get everything done in time for the show to start, and when the bright lights flashed on and the show began, only then could he breathe a sigh of relief. But his relief was short lived, because soon after he was called into the office.

I went in, They sat me down, They said, you're now the head carpenter. This is your pay increase and moving forward, do the best you can, but we don't have anybody to assist you for the near future.

When Cody recalls that meeting, he says, it wasn't much of a conversation.

I don't know how much asking was involved in that meeting. However, I do very much so respect and like the two people in charge that called me in for that meeting, But I certainly don't think no could have been the answer.

In those early days, Cody was overwhelmed by the responsibilities that had been thrust upon him, and rightly so.

I'm responsible for hanging upwards of eleven thousand pounds over audience members as well as sixty of our performers heads, and no one prepared me. I am self taught almost to the core.

On nights before a show, Cody often found himself staring at his hotel ceiling, worrying about the work that awaited him in the morning.

As I just get nervous about the safety and I care about what we're putting up for a production, and when all of that encircles in my head. At night, you can loose some.

Sleep, and unlike a typical job where you can close your laptop and drive home to decompress, being on the road meant Cody could never really escape that stress. It was an endless cycle, with no pause to catch his breath, no physical distance to let the weight of the job slip off his shoulders. And on top of all that, he was barely making any more money than he was before.

If we're talking financial gain from taking on, it is so minimal. I'm not going to say out loud how much it is, but if I did, it's laughable.

Cody says. That's why some people in his line of work are perfectly happy to stay in a supporting role instead of stepping up to the lead. The negligible increase in pay is not worth the leap and responsibility, and it turns out that reluctance to rise to a higher position is a growing trend throughout the country. Business Insider recently reported that nearly half of all Americans would decline

I think that if you can put your personal life above your work to a certain extent, that's not a bad move, and I don't think that makes you any less of a good employee.

But for Cody, even though he didn't feel like he had much of an option to decline taking that position, he acknowledges that he probably would have said yes anyway, for better or worse. He's a type of person that goes all in.

I would say yes again with parameters of seeking some higher knowledge and having more support, because when it starts to roll, that snowball is going downhill. There's no plateau and there's no up. It's only down until it's over.

To his credit, though, Cody has managed to keep that snowball rolling about as smoothly as anyone with only six months of experience could. And when that initial run, Cody signed himself up for the next tour around the country as its head carpenter.

I'm coming up on my one thousandth show, and I have seen our production. Once you just wear black and you stay in the shadows, and to not be seen is to be seen.

But just because he's not sitting in the audience doesn't mean Cody isn't taking pride in the fruits of his labor.

I feel a great joy for the performer that has put forth up multiple decades of their life to train and to possibly play a character that they've always dreamed of. And when they get a loud applause and they hear that all their hard work has come to fruition and the crowd has enjoyed their performance, that brings me great joy.

Cody knows that this road life can't go on forever, and he looks forward to the day he can set down roots somewhere and once again be a part of a community, maybe back in that small Colorado town. But for now, as the saying goes, in Cody's line of work, the show must go on. For on the job, I'm Avery Thompson.