Since a big part of the world in TLW is boys singing up due to extreme poverty, what kind of jobs do you think they worked back home? They’re all at least 18 and able bodied men, so I would assume they contributed to household bills in some way. I don’t get the feeling they were out there getting degrees and were more laborers - also why I can’t vibe with those uni AU settings, most of them seem like they would be in trade jobs. (Barkovitch??? Pursuing higher education??? Perish the thought. No hate to people having fun in the sandbox though ❤️ )
I think the way most of the boys seem like they would be in the trades in the movie is more a side effect of the world they live in and the fascist regime they have to live under than anything else to be totally honest. Also idk like....Barko doesn't think his actions through and he has Really Really Bad Impulse Control but I don't think the idea of him pursuing higher education is like, inherently unthinkable or bizarre or anything? Like the guy doesn't have much in the way of emotional intelligence but we really have no reason to think he's like, particularly lacking in "book smarts" so to speak, and he clearly does have an interest/passion for photography, so when people have him as pursuing that in their college AUs it doesn't strike rly me as out of character. Idk I knew a handful of Barkovitch-adjacent sorts when I was in university so Barko getting a higher education in another world isn't unfathomable to me. Also frankly I think his issues with impulse control would be a much bigger problem if he was working in the trades, bro would get himself hurt quite badly I think, he would be losing digits lol
And while you're for sure correct that all the boys work given that they're all able-bodied desperately poor young men, I don't think the jobs they'd be working are even necessarily like, especially revealing about their characters or skills? Like I think they'd all just be working the jobs they could get given their economic situations.
But okay that is enough needless examination of the premise of your question lmao sorry I'll actually answer now, my bad I just 💖 overthinking things.
Here are some ideas I have for the kinds of jobs the boys may have been working before going on the Walk! These are mostly vibes based but I'll include my reasoning
Ray Garatty:
I think Ray- while still not wealthy or anything by any means he is also poor- is among the more privileged and comparatively well off boys- we see his house in the flashback to the night the Major killed his father, his mom has a car and is able to afford the ingredients needed to make him his favorite cookies from scratch before sending him off (and chocolate chips are fucking expensive rn like I can't imagine them being cheap in an alternate universe 1960s-70s fascist dictatorship USA), the way he talks about not being a "money freak" when Art talks about being there for the money, etc, etc.
Like I do think Ray and Ginnie's financial situation is still precarious, they are still very much dealing with poverty, but they're better off than many.
So while I do think Ray for sure works to help keep him and his mother's heads above water I don't think he has to work quite as much as most of the other boys, I think he has one full-time job and maybe he picks up the occasional bit of extra seasonal work around harvest time if he sees an opportunity. For his regular full-time job...We don't see much of Freeport, his home town, but what we do see looks very worn and seems to be lacking in larger industry, so I think maybe he'd work at say, the local grocer's or something of that nature, bagging groceries and manning the till.
He's on his feet a lot, it's not a well-paying job, but one he was frankly very lucky to get given the lack of opportunities in town.
Pete McVries:
Pete is definitely someone who's working multiple labor intensive jobs, likely with sporadic hours. He's picking up whatever work he can find, he's clocking out of one shift and then clocking right into another somewhere else. Pete's very built and he also has wild and crazy endurance on the Walk- he & Collie are the most well off physically throughout the Walk and Pete says it himself, he's been Walking his whole life. I think the work he's had to do for survival as he's moved around is ofc a part of that, so I think he picks up a lot of like, construction, demolition, and warehouse gigs.
Prob does a lot of under the table work as well since the circumstances of Pete's life up have sort of forced him to be something of a drifter with no real connections- not that I think he isn't charming folks on at least a surface level wherever he goes, that's an important survival skill of his and a big part of how he always manages to find work. Also while the majority of the jobs he works are very manual labor intensive that's more a side affect of those sorts of jobs being the easiest to find/pick up than anything else- Pete is a guy with many skills, a lil bit of a jack of all trades I think, and life has for sure forced him to be quick on his feet and a fast learner. He'll take just about any work he can get, the "move and/or break heavy things" jobs just happen to be what's more likely to be immediately available.
Hank Olson:
This one is definitely influenced by a fanfic I read (but cannot remember the name of for the life of me...curses....) but he works very long hours on the assembly line at a manufacturing plant- on his feet for very long periods of time and it adds to him being able to, for a long while, disassociate out of his body while on the Walk.
He's used to being extremely physically sore while doing repetitive, incredibly monotonous tasks and he's used to zoning out during his shifts so he can keep it pushing. Not much else to say here he just does work on a factory line, look into your heart you know this to be true.
Art Baker:
So Baton Rouge's biggest industry irl is the petrochemical industry- ExxonMobil has a big refinery up there plus and Dow Chemical has a big plant right by there as well. As someone who also grew up in a city where the petrochemical industry dominated everything I hate to do this to Art but he'd for sure be working a lower-level job in one of these plants/refineries. Long, miserable hours, feels like everyone you work with either is or will get sick in some way sooner or later, and fuck it why not pick up smoking? Helps to get some of that awful taste in the air out of your mouth and besides you're probably gonna get cancer from the damn job sooner or later anyways.
Is This Projection?- maybe a lil bit.
But Also it is based on what the dominant local industry in Art's hometown is soooooo.....Plus again, the hours are long and you're on your feet pretty much the whole damn time, so it's definitely the kind of job that gets you used to moving while dead on your feet.
Collie Parker:
Another "multiple jobs" haver, I think he works two jobs to help support his family, he's got a day job and an overnights job. For his day gig I think he works in construction & demolition, maybe properly in the trades I can very easily picture him as a welder (though I don't think he particularly likes or dislikes the work, it's A Job and they need the money, he doesn't dwell on it beyond that).
For his overnights gig...Sioux Falls has a lot of food processing/meatpacking plants, they're some of the biggest employers in the area, and meatpacking plants always have crazy long overnight shifts, so I think it makes sense he'd be working at one of those.
It's work that's a hellish combination of dirty/gross, very physically labor intensive, and also mind numbingly boring at the same time. Collie certainly prefers his construction work, but that occasionally dries up and there's never a shortage of hours available at the plant. Most days Collie works his construction job, then heads to the plant, comes home around 3am-ish, has a quick shower and gets maybe 4-5 hours sleep on a good day before getting up to spend some what little time he has before he's off to work again with his family. He has such great endurance on the Walk in large part because he's very used to running on empty.
Billy Stebbins:
Stebbins definitely works a lot, I think we can infer he's very close to his mother and since she presumably raised him alone they'd both definitely have to be working very very hard to stay afloat, however given how goal-oriented and focused on the Walk he is I do think he was much pickier about the work he sought out, specifically looking for work that would help him to build his muscle/endurance as well as his mental ability to cope with like...Monotony.
I think he's mostly worked a variety of warehouse jobs- you're on your feet all day, moving back and forth across an often pretty huge space, getting a lot of steps in, building a lot of muscle and endurance as you move heavy shit around, plus it's soooooo fucking boring, so you have to get good at keeping yourself entertained in your head. Warehouse jobs seem like the sort of thing Stebbins' would seek out for these reasons, plus it's the sort of low-paying work that's comparatively easier to find. He is leaving his shift at one warehouse and walking to the next.
Gary Barkovitch:
He is NOT working in the trades or near heavy machinery!
If he did at any point He Would Not Have All His Fingers, Barko's too impulsive and too jumpy for all that, he'd get himself hurt.
He would get into the trades an able-bodied young man but he would not be so able-bodied when he left the trades I fear :/
Beyond that it's honestly hard to say...I lean towards saying Barko's had to switch jobs a lot, so he's had a pretty wide variety of jobs out of necessity.
Factory gigs, cashier, seasonal work picking crops, gas station attendant, line cook, working on a fishing boat that one time (almost died, got fired), working in a coal mine that other time (almost died even harder, got fired harder as well), janitor, warehouse worker, etc, etc. Like if they've ever been hiring near-ish to his area and he was able to get to em, he worked there for at least a bit. He's also someone who's had multiple jobs at once but I don't think he was great at managing the multiple schedules, would run late a lot, Gary does not strike me as a guy with a great grasp of how the passage of time works (we have this in common I fear)
Richard Harkness:
Harkness clearly has remarkable endurance given how long he was able to keep going on the snapped exposed bone of his ankle, plus he seems to have a pretty insane level of pain tolerance so I'm thinking he's got the sort of job where some level of pain/injury tends to be kinda inevitable, so you just get really good at blocking it out for as long as physically possible. Miner maybe?
He's like, very built, he could've been swinging a pick-axe for hours on end a day and it's an industry where you have to deal with a lot of physical pains. Harkness is always the hardest for me to answer questions like this for since I just don't know him like that but like...He's got great endurance, he's surprisingly shredded, and his ability to tolerate pain and keep going is crazy.
I'm gonna say he worked as a miner or maybe worked in logging, not a job he enjoyed in either case- he wants to be a writer, we know this- but it's the work that was available to him and he & his family would've needed the money so like with all the boys whether or not he was happy with his job was never gonna be a factor.
This was very long and messy sorry I am running on 3 hours sleep and I 💖overthinking, but hopefully my answers here made at least a little sense!
