The Woman Under Your House

PHOTO BY KAREN DAY

BY ARIANNA CRETEAU

Raised as a farm girl from Rigby, Idaho, Lynette Sawyer learned that feeding pigs or shoveling manure were not gender-specific chores. Sawyer now credits that experience as the source of her success at her current job—which includes squeezing into tight crawl spaces, fixing emergency gas leaks, and avoiding deadly critters. In other words, Sawyer should be featured on the tv show Dirty (and Dangerous) Jobs.

Lynette started her career with Intermountain Gas Company 40 years ago, when the expected roles for working women were limited to receptionist or secretary. However, she quickly recognized that a desk job was not her calling.“The way I was raised, there were no boys’ jobs or girls’ jobs. If you got a job to do, then I’ll do it,” said Sawyer, beaming a big white smile under her orange hard hat.

She took pride in serving as the office Jack-of-all-trades. “I did all the other jobs when they were on vacation. I was a fill-in when the cashier went to lunch, I did dispatch and answered phones. I would do everything,” she said. “Sitting still was not an option.”

From secretary to meter reader to her current role as a service technician, Lynette says that farm life taught her to “just look straight ahead and get the job done.” That kind of mental fortitude is required when brushing past black widows toward the smell of gas somewhere in the dark beyond her flashlight beam.

There was once another woman who did this job. “She only lasted for a year,” Sawyer said. Despite the creepy-crawly job requirements, Sawyer doesn’t see herself as a trailblazer in a male-dominated field. “I like what I do,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s helping people.”

The responsibilities of a service technician include responding to gas emergencies, handling outside line breaks, turning gas on and off, meter reading, fulfilling disconnect orders, and more. Proficiency with a shovel and wrenches are a must. Neon yellow vests and orange hard hats are the required fashion statement. Sawyer used to spend most of her time responding to work orders located in the North End of Boise. “There was some scary stuff,” she said, shaking her blonde curls.

One example of a 100-year-old house call highlights just how dangerous her job really is. It was the typical unfinished, dirt-floored North End basement which the owners casually mentioned had bare wires hanging a few inches above her head and an infestation of Black Widow spiders—but only after Sawyer completed the job and crawled out from under the house.

“Truth is, I’m deathly afraid of spiders,” said Sawyer casually. “But I get tunnel vision. You just can’t think about it. You’ve got to do your job.” Too bad Sawyer is planning to retire in a few years. With that kind of iron will, she could probably qualify as a Navy SEAL.

Idaho’s spiking real estate prices have brought massive remodels to many ancient North End homes, as well as a plethora of new, modern homes in Meridian- “with no crawl spaces!” said Sawyer, smiling slyly.

Today in the Treasure Valley, Lynette works alongside two other women, a testament to fewer gender-specific job limitations in all careers. Being a service technician, however, is not a glamorous job. In fact, throughout her career, Sawyer may have passed through your home, relatively unnoticed and unknown, but vital in her skill set. The mechanisms of our lives are dependent on anonymous thousands every day, the nobility of their labors often overlooked and our societal debt mostly unacknowledged. Indeed, the world is built by dirty and dangerous jobs that somebody else is doing- like the woman under your house, Lynette Sawyer.