I did a bunch of warehouse jobs when I was at uni. Some of the most depressing and soul crushing jobs I've ever had. The worst ever one I had was pulling a massive roll of sandpaper to a line and then another guy pressed a button to cut it. Then we lifted the cut sandpaper on to a pile. Repeat for 8 hours.
I didn't stay in that one past one day, far too boring.
Let's not romanticise these jobs. I think you're confusing the endorphins from exercise, which most warehouse jobs don't need, with the job.
I think you can both have true experiences when it comes to this. Some people enjoy the monotony of repetitive tasks, whereas others want to gargle glass after 10 minutes of it. I certainly know I don't want to work a job that physically exhausts me every day, but some people do enjoy that. I don't think it's romanticizing to say that good-paying warehouse work with proper benefits would be a boon to a LOT of people.
The thing with hard working jobs is that you need to consider pension. Probably you wont bei able to do heavy lifting stuff fulltime in your sixties. What then?
I think their point is about rich people who don't need a job or money, but now treat hard labor jobs as gym work.
These sort of people can always go back to what they were doing after they got fit from the gym work, and of course they can always do another gym work sort of job at will.
This is far different than somebody working these jobs to put food on the table.
I'm a software developer, but I did these kind of jobs when I moved to New Zealand under the Working Holiday Scheme. The minimum wage what I got for these jobs was more than what I earned as a software developer back in Hungary. It wasn't just free gym as we needed the money to support ourself, but it was still relaxing to not care about the big picture and only do what I was told to do without any responsibility.
I didn't stay in that one past one day, far too boring.
Let's not romanticise these jobs. I think you're confusing the endorphins from exercise, which most warehouse jobs don't need, with the job.
Most warehouse jobs completely suck.