“All you guys do is push a button and sleep.”
I’ve heard many versions of this disparaging remark about bridgetending during my nearly 22 years on the job. I find it both frustrating and hurtful, especially since it couldn’t be further from the truth. This job requires a great deal of independent judgment along with an unwavering focus on safety. Many of us get up into the machinery and do maintenance. Many have saved lives. On a daily basis, we prevent accidents and injuries by keeping the traveling public from doing incredibly foolish things.
And yet most people don’t even know we exist. It seems to be a common belief that these bridges are automated. We often work high up in a tower, and no one sees us. We work alone, and are a rare breed. We’re quiet. Most of us enjoy our solitude. Some of us have sought it out in order to heal.
There are relatively few bridgetenders in the world, and despite my best efforts with my Drawbridge Lovers Facebook group, we aren’t connected to each other in any meaningful way. We are up in our towers, and scattered thinly across the globe. We’re easily forgotten. The disparities in pay and benefits in union locations vs. non-union locations is startling.
Also, just like everyone else, we have lives and families and feelings and experience our fair share of drama. If we’re having a problem, there’s rarely someone to talk to about it. We get to spend our entire shift ruminating about our issues, with very little opportunity to gain perspective from others. Sometimes this is a recipe for disaster.
On the day I wrote this, a fellow Seattle bridgetender died. I didn’t know him. He worked for the state of Washington, whereas I work for the city of Seattle. You can see the bridge he worked on from one of our bridges. And yet we rarely talk to one another. That’s a pity, because we could share best practices and safety procedures. We could expand the number of people we know who “get it”. But some of us just want to be left alone.
Despite our seclusion, news tends to spread quickly within our individual enclaves. My coworkers and I knew of that bridgetender’s death within 2 hours of his body being fished out of the water. At first we were confused. Had he fallen in? But the bridgetenders on that particular bridge, I’m told, do not do maintenance, so how on earth did he wind up in such a precarious position? Was there foul play involved? We do tend to disrupt people’s commutes, and road rage is real. (I’ve been shouted at and had things thrown at me.) And for some reason, drawbridges seem to attract mentally disturbed pedestrians.
But no. the police are now saying that this is a suspected suicide. I’m waiting for this to sink in. Right now, all I feel is a profound sadness. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but if this man was hurting, there are always bridge operators on adjacent bridges, even in the wee hours. If only he thought to reach out. But we’re too busy towering ourselves off from one another to form that kind of connection.
Now one of us is gone. And the rest of us, those who know, have taken a moment to stare out over the water in an attempt to figure out why this happened. It’s such a tragedy.
I hope the man now rests in the peace that may have eluded him in life.
If you or anyone you know is in crisis, please call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
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