When it was slow enough that I could do it myself I came to like digging, it is sort of a zen thing, put on Rush Limbaugh or music and start digging, your hands and legs can move at the steady and constant pace that suits you while your mind runs free, you learn to stay in constant motion even if someone stops to talk to you the hands and legs and shovel keep doing their motions and in a day or two or three the 5 or 6 foot deep trench is dug , hardpan and roots cause problems but you learn that even hardpan can be defeated, and of course anyone can do backfill.
Once I made journeyman, in the 80s, if the boss caught you digging someone’s getting fired, “I don’t pay you $20 an hour to dig holes”.