Have you ever heard the idiom, 'Hard work pays off?' How about this one: 'A day of hard work has never hurt anyone?' I've thought before that someone looking to gain from hard work may go out to the middle of nowhere, and begin swinging a mattock to dig ditches just for the heck of it, for the sheer enjoyment, satisfaction, and health effects attributed to hard work, and of course, with a cultural expectation for it to be a healthy and safe exercise that inevitably must pay off in some way. That's some of the hardest work with the most rudimentary tool I can imagine anyone doing on their own, so surely they'd be paid off well, and be in good health afterward, correct? No, we all know that's not true; you're sure to be blistered if you're lucky enough not to break your back, or accidentally allow fatigue to cause you to drive the mattock into your foot, and if you work long enough, and hard enough digging ditches in the middle of nowhere, then you're certain never to be seen, heard from, or paid ever again; you'll die from hunger and exhaustion if thirst doesn't get you first… That's some of the hardest work I can think of, and it doesn't pay off, doesn't pay well if you find a paid gig doing it, and there is no shortage of injuries from the days of the chain gang working with a mattock, but this is a made up scenario to show that these idioms may not always hold true. Do you know of any real scenarios, like people getting dismembered or killed from working with machinery, that may be exceptions? What about instances where people have retired from careers performing grueling, back breaking labor that never paid off for them? Do these idioms always hold true?