I'm an underground coal miner and hate my job.

It's bad for my health. Not only am I working around heavy machinery, but I'm breathing in coal dust giving me slowly giving me black lung - stone dust giving me silicosis - diesel fumes giving me cancer.

There's plenty of little annoyances underground. Summer is far too hot underground and Winter is far too cold. The electrical cord of my cap lamp constantly getting caught on things. Bits of coal falling from the roof down the back of my shirt or into my boots. This can be cleaned out, but water getting down your boots or in your jocks is going to ruin your shift.

I don't really like the people I work with. If I cared about football, fishing or cars I'd be fine, but I have totally different interests. I might sound unhappy, but a lot of the miners very unhappy people, dealing with marital problems and alcohol/drug abuse. A good portion of them are bad tempered and have little self control, so even if they aren't bad people it can be easy to start disliking them. I'm supposed to be working with men but they gossip like desperate housewives and this is industry wide.

The pay isn't as good as it was 5 years ago in this industry. The coal sold from our seam was worth $300/t back then and is now selling for ~$70/t. Our wages and worker's rights have collapsed too and it's now an employer's market; easy to get sacked, very competitive to find a new job. There's going to be a lot of competition for limited jobs for a long while because coal companies are still going through mine closures. AngoCoal is sacking something like 85,000 as of this week. Peabody Energy just several years ago was the largest private sector coal company in the world worth $16b, but today is worth $300m and I reckon will go bankrupt next year. Coal is dying and the skills in underground coal mining are not really transferable to underground metals, because the mining techniques are totally different. Coal used for making steel isn't going redundant, but it's heading this way for thermal coal. All the workers in thermal coal mines are going to lose their jobs and it just means more coal miners to compete with.

So yeah, trying to get out.