The heavy lifting

The heavy lifting is the hardest or least enjoyable part of a job or task. Cleaning toilets is the heavy lifting of housework.

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WotD: The heavy lifting

Before you make up your mind that today’s picture is not worth looking at or liking, you should hang around long enough to learn what the heavy lifting means.


The heavy lifting is the hardest or least enjoyable part of a job or task.


When it comes to housework, for example, cleaning the toilets is a chore most people would rather avoid.

This is why I chose a picture of a person cleaning toilets to depict the meaning of the term.

Now that I’m on the subject, I might as well ask why this job usually falls to women.

Stereotypically, men often say that women are more delicate and cannot work as hard as men.

So, when it comes to cleaning toilets, where is a man when you need one?

Let that question run through your mind for a while.

If you come up with an answer, let me know.

In any workplace, a few people are always experts at avoiding the heavy lifting.

They are either mysteriously absent or suddenly busy whenever the least desired tasks are assigned.

There’s an expression in English that goes ‘sh** runs downhill.’

It means the heavy lifting and dirty jobs always fall to those with the least seniority and experience.

Perhaps it’s all a part of the on-the-job learning experience.

If you want to make it to the top one day, you have to pay your dues by going through the school of hard knocks.

Perhaps all the managers have had their turns doing the heavy lifting, but I doubt it.

The next time you find yourself getting stuck doing the dirty jobs, think of it as a character-building experience.

Remember that you may be a manager one day, and it’ll be your turn to watch someone else do the heavy lifting.


Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 74.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.