Hot Men At Work

So what if he's probably getting splinters, women also deserve some eye candy.

For all the female fanservice stuff out there, there are male equivalents, too. This is the male version of Wrench Wench.

Builders, plumbers, and gardeners tend to be big, strong men, so why not have them with their shirts off, regardless of health and safety issues? And if the steelworker or blacksmith's hot, sweaty body can be outlined by flickering flames, what is a burn or two?

There is also the possibility of something termed "builder's backside" (plumber's crack?) being seen.

This trope has a rather intense brother, Firemen Are Hot, and two bisexual cousins, Fair Cop and Good-Looking Privates.

Examples of Hot Men At Work include:

Advertising

• The classic Diet Coke ad, where everyday at a certain time, a bunch of office women flock to their window to watch a construction worker (model Lucky Vanous) outside strip off his shirt and enjoy said drink.
• The Cleaning Hunk's various incarnations for XtraPine, still present on YouTube but no longer at www.cleaninghunk.com (or probably on TV either).
• One commercial featured a bunch of women trashing their apartments in increasingly-insane fashions, just to spend time with the hot maintenance man.
• GE Energy had one of the most bizarre examples ever. Notable for containing Hot Men and Women At Work. And that's without even mentioning the interesting choice of theme song which seems to push this commercial into Go-Go Enslavement territory.

Anime

• Sengoku Basara has Katakura Kojuurou, resident Battle Butler to Blood Knight extraordinaire Date Masamune, who apparently unwinds from a long campaign by way of vegetable gardening. While he's not shirtless (his gardening clothes are actually more modest than his battle gear), there's something undeniably hot about a Samurai who can garden. The fact that he's prime Mr. Fanservice with a sexy scar and loads of Ho Yay with his boss doesn't hurt either.
• Invoked by Mori in Ouran High School Host Club during a manliness contest - to increase his chances of winning, he chopped wood without a shirt ("for some reason").

Comic Books

• The artwork of Tom Of Finland, mixture between this and Leather Man.

Film

• Far From Heaven has a white woman fall in love with her big strong black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert.
  • Inspired by the plot of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, with the gardener role played by Rock Hudson.
• Using another gardening example: in Something New, Sanaa Lathan's character finds herself getting a little hot and bothered watching Simon Baker dig up roots in her yard.
• The Full Monty. (Although most of them were out of work, and only one really qualified as "hot." But "sexy working-class guys" was at least the idea behind the plan.)
• The gay poolboy in Legally Blonde also qualifies. This trope is taken farther than normal with him, as his "uniform" was a thong.
• The opening scene of Tamara Drewe provides the audience with a nice view of a handsome male character's naked torso as he's chopping wood outdoors.
• The chef in Jumping the Broom for some reason has a scene outside in nothing but overalls catching fish.
• In Om Shanti Om, one of the dance numbers requires the main character to be dressed in nothing but jeans, work gloves, a work helmet and possibly a lot of body glitter.
• In Cannibal one of the main characters looks longingly at a pair of shirtless carpenters working just outside his window.

Live Action TV

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 did this in one episode (San Francisco International), with a shirtless Dr Forrester and Frank doing some repairs in Deep 13. Dr Forrester is in nice shape.
• Charlotte in Sex and the City fantasizes about the gorgeous rose gardener—and eventually kisses him—during her first marriage. Her mother-in-law proclaims that she's proven herself part of the family once she finds out about the fling, heavily implying that the other women of the family have had similar dalliances with the staff.
• Show Within a Show example- CSI, "Two and a Half Dead".
• At least one episode of Desperate Housewives, with Edie walking past a construction site.
  • John, the MILF-loving gardener played by Jesse Metcalf with whom Gabrielle had a long-term affair.
• Occurs in a Poirot episode, with a gardener, Adam Goodman. He turns out to be an undercover agent but he is one sweet looking guy.
• True Blood
  • Jason Stackhouse as Road Crew. Also Hoyt.
  • Terry and Lafayette as hot cooks.
• Brilliantly parodied in The IT Crowd when Jen has to distract a woman to sneak Roy out from under her desk, by looking out the window and saying: "Ooh, a builder working with his shirt off.. just like on the television." All the women run to take a look, to reveal a pale, flabby guy staring vacantly back at them.
• In The OC season 2 premiere, the Cohen's house was being remodeled by burly construction workers. The neighbors have started calling their house "The Manhole".
• In a first-season episode of MythBusters, preliminary testing required jackhammering a large hole in M5's sidewalk twice. Adam wore his usual t-shirt, Jamie spent most of those sequences shirtless.
• May be part of the reason why Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs has gotten so popular.
• Ty Pennington in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
• Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a construction worker. Anya, watching him work, imagines having sex with him.
• Appears in an episode of Las Vegas when two window washers are doing work on the Montecito casino's many hotel windows while shirtless. Justified because they were specifically paid extra to follow this dress code to placate the guests.
• Mentioned at least twice on Frasier - once when Roz mentions that she intends to spend her vacation getting her house renovated, in the company of 'hot sweaty construction workers'. On another occasion, after a bad date, she expresses her intention to go home, put on something slinky, rip out her sink and call building maintenance.
  • Also, the character of Joe, who we first meet when he comes to fix a scrape on Frasier's hardwood floor, and who catches Daphne's eye.
• Michelle on Full House makes a killing selling lemonade to the construction workers outside. When she mentions their shirtlessness, Stephanie and Becky race outside to get a good view.
• This was basically the idea behind reality-tv show Joe Millionaire. A bunch of women were told they'd be romanced by a rich, handsome young bachelor. The twist was that he wasn't really rich; he was just a construction worker. But they still got the "handsome" part.
• A chapter of Two and A Half Men saw Enrique Iglesias playing one of these.
• Piper's whitelighter and eventual husband, Leo, in Charmed. He initially poses as a handyman, and there are a couple of lovingly focused shots of his butt. And a Shirtless Scene or two as well.
• On Body of Proof, Megan visits her landscaper boyfriend at his job and doesn't hide her pleasure at finding him shirtless. Seeing as he's played by Estrogen Brigade Bait himself, Jamie Bamber, one can hardly blame her.

Music Videos

• The Village People.
• In the video for the Aerosmith song "Crazy", Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler drive past a hot shirtless tractor driver who catches their attention.

Western Animation

• Happens in The Simpsons, with the Springfield steel workers. "We work hard, we play hard!"

Bart: Dad, why did you take me to a gay steel mill?

Real Life

• When a dance club called The Throckmorton Mining Company was under construction, there was a huge sign up that read MEN AT WORK, ENTER IN REAR.
• You can get really nice print fabric with pictures of men who fit this trope on it. Construction workers, firefighters (of course), and lumberjacks—just to name three of them. All cheeky grins, winking, posing to optimally display one's posterior in jeans, and a lot of them disturbingly resembling John Sheppard.
• There was a promotion by a certain dishwashing liquid that would send you plates with pictures of men like this on it. Just get 3 of the codes and you could have plates with sexy firemen and pool boys on them.
• A classic image in Nazi and Soviet propaganda.