Jobs That's Take Your Breath Away

Jobs That's Take Your Breath Away - "Wind can stop your heart," Richard Capozzi says. "It has a lot more strength than people think. It catches your seat and pushes you. It can lift you up, swing you left, right or spin you around, and tangle your ropes. That's when you get down." Throughout the years, he's developed a sixth sense for bad weather.

Jobs That's Take Your Breath Away - High Rise Building Window Cleaner: On a cold day, the wind can be pretty biting when you're 22 stories up on the outside of a building. At least that's what Richard Capozzi says. And he'd know. The veteran window cleaner has served as owner and operator of New Haven County Window Cleaners LLC, a high- and low-rise building window cleaning service, for almost two decades.

It's an occupation to be taken seriously, he said. It requires competency, and ingenuity along with a healthy dose of controlled fear. "There's no such thing as 'afraid,' " he explained. "Each time you calculate your equipment, everything you're using, everything you hook up, it helps control the fear."

Wearing a plethora of safety equipment and attached to a lifeline, he and his crew perform controlled descents down the side of high rise buildings in what's known as a bosun's chair to do the obvious: clean windows.

And it's not just with a bottle of Windex and a handful of paper towels. Sometimes the windows have 10 years' worth of grime and oxidation, which requires chemical applications and repeated cleanings to restore them to their original splendor.

The gig is largely weather-dependent, and if the wind is blowing greater than 15 to 20 mph, the crew doesn't go out. But sometimes, there are unexpected gusts, much like rogue waves on the ocean. And when they occur, according to Capozzi, it's more than a little spooky.

"Wind can stop your heart," he said. "It has a lot more strength than people think. It catches your seat and pushes you. It can lift you up, swing you left, right or spin you around, and tangle your ropes. That's when you get down."

It's not a job where you take risks, he said, especially because he's not only responsible for himself, but also for the other members of his cleaning crew. Throughout the years, he's developed a sixth sense for bad weather. "You can almost feel it in your bones when you've done it for so long; you know it's coming."

Capozzi said the best part of his job is the sense of accomplishment he gets when he's completed a challenging project. "When the job is done, you turn around and the sun shines on that building, so you see the before and after and it's sort of like, I win. I did it. And then I point to the building and say, 'See you next year, buddy.' "