I’m a computer butcher. More formally, I’m a disassembler at an electronics recycling place. We mainly do computers, but we take just about anything that isn’t radioactive (aka fire alarms) or has some kind of gas in it (refrigerators and stuffs).
My average day involves taking old-ish computers apart (mostly late 00’s to mid-2010’s) and sorting the parts: CPUs, GPUs, motherboards, laptop batteries, button batteries (aka hearing aid batteries), heat sinks, plastic, power supplies, RAM, metal, wires, and what’s left tm. That’s where my job ends. Save for RAM and CPUs which get resold if possible, the parts are melted down for their metals somewhere else; mainly gold, copper, and probably steel. As for hard drives, we shred them before sending them out. Not wipe. Shred.
My main tool is a drill with a bunch of different screwdriver bits. I have two short extenders - the first one in the drill chuck, and the second one in the first. I actually have a few seconds, which I put different bits in to swap them out more easily. My other tools are a set of wire cutters, a hammer, needle nose pliers, a few hole-making drill bits, a left-turning drill bit for dealing with stripped screws, and a couple magnets I got from hard drives and speakers that I use for picking up stray screws.
Is it monotonous? Yes, but it’s enjoyable, almost like speedrunning or grinding games. It’s particularly interesting when you get a bunch of the exact same model (office buildings and such) and basically start speedrunning. I’m also able to listen to music (aka YouTube) while I work, so that helps a lot.
I’m not realllllly supposed to do this (my boss is cool with it), but sometimes I get bored and build stuff for a few minutes. I turned an old drill and other nicknacks into a classic sci-fi raygun, and attached some HDD magnets to my bench and belt for more convenient tool storage, to name a couple.