I'd never knock factory work. My job at Nortel was on the assembly line making telecom electronics. Pure monkey work (I always said that if monkeys had just a few more IQ points, we would have all been out of work).
Yet it was almost like a holiday. Great pay, easy work, zero responsibility, no stress. Walk out at the end of the shift and I just left it behind. That was nice ... for a while
I volunteered for the 3:30 to midnight shift. So I did all the interesting things I enjoyed doing during the daytime, then went to work at the end of the day (and got paid extra for being on that shift).