Why I quit being an electrician Reddit

Posted byu/[deleted]7 months ago

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Hey all, I’m a first year apprentice from Australia and I’ve been doing it for about 3 months now.

I do residential work so just new houses and a bit of service work, just regular domestic stuff. The first couple months I didn’t mind it too much but recently I’ve had no motivation to go to work. Early morning starts aren’t for me, I finish every day feeling super drained and burnt out, and I wake up dreading going to work.

Not to mention being on and in roofs, under houses, very hot and cold temperatures, muscle fatigue, etc

My boss and colleagues are great best I’ve ever had and I get treated well, it’s just the work I’m not enjoying I have a feeling labour might just not be for me.

I also hear a lot that the money is good as a sparky but from what I’ve seen most electricians that work in the city (commerical/residential) only make just over 100k (AUD) a year which is good but I’d expect more after a 4 year qualification.

Just need a bit of advice, if I don’t enjoy it now is it worth just quitting and finding a new career or is it something I’d start to enjoy if I gave it more time

Thanks

Background: I’m green as hell. I started school before actually getting with a company. Spent thousands on school & tools. Finally got on with a commercial company, 2 weeks in. My boss said he will see how I do & apprentice me in a month from when I started. So I’m not even registered. I’m doing poorly & my foreman threatened to fire me a few times from things I was messing up on. On my fourth day he had me run pipe and operate a scissor lift. I’m not osha certified & nor have to wear a hard hat. I never operated one before & its in a sketchy area. He only gives me 30 second explanations then walks away & expects me to do it. At first I told him I was having trouble getting use to the lift & I didn’t wanna f- anything up. He told me to figure it out, it’s apart of the trade, & if I can’t do it he will hire someone else too. (Figured out how to do it & now I’m good) anytime I ask a question more than once he will get fuming mad. Then when I do something & it’s wrong he gets even more mad & says I should’ve asked. I’m scared they’re just using me for labor & then they’re gonna fire me while getting 0 apprenticeship hours. If I should leave the company how do I do that this early? I just don’t want to be a quitter either. But I literally get anxiety going to work now

If you had to quit being an electrician, what would you do? from electricians

What do you feel are some of the main reasons apprentices or journeymen quit? from electricians

So today I told my boss of 6 years unless he pays me $27/hr I’m leaving. He said good luck finding someone to pay me that with my experience. I got three offers already!

Start off, I'm 25. My background is raised by single mom with the standard mom and dad divorce fighting and putting the child in the middle. Dad was an Electrician, mom is an accountant. Both hard working middle class. Growing up I got into partying and drugs and kissed school good bye, at the age of 21 I was tired of working fast food gigs and decided to jump into the Electrical field. Thought I loved it, fast forward to December 2018. I only worked 40 hours in December because the past 6 months I woke up hating my job, hating my life, hating the person I've became. Construction turned me into such a negative, toxic person, I couldn't take it anymore and I quit. No fall back plan, no parents to fall back on as they can only supply for themselves and my farther and I don't talk anymore.

The past 6 months I have worked ridiculous hours and I've came to the conclusion that there's more than life than being okay with hating your job just because it supplies your wants. I never had time for ME, time to do the things that make me happy, keep me sane. I let other peoples influences of "have a career, life is great." into my head, and I'm finally realizing I HATE my job, with a passion! I want to be able to wake up and put forward the extra effort to excel my career choice. Not have to drink two energy drinks to feel any type of energy towards your work. I've spent the past 5 years chasing this apprenticeship to finally see that it's not for me and it has me freaking out that I'm too late to choose something different. To the point I'm about to leave states with no plan to try and start a new life because currently Denver is too expensive to live in (currently paying 1,500$ for a 1 bedroom).

My initial reaction is to go and attempt to fall into my passion, Fly- Fishing, and become a guide or even just work in a shop in a town where rent isn't outrageous. With days passing by and my brain finally having time to sit down and rationally think, school keeps coming up.. I have been looking into outdoor oriented career choices like Park Ranger, Outdoor Education, Environmental Science or even to the extreme of Outdoor Behavior Rehabilitation for at risk kids to share my love for the outdoors and how it steered me away from drugs and partying. Is 25 for first time stepping into school too late, starting fresh on Gen Ed's. With my passion being outdoors is there any career choices that don't require a degree? Or with my interest would a degree be the safest option?

Thanks in advanced

I'm planning on quitting as an apprentice. I've had this job for almost 3 months, and don't get me wrong. It was cool to learn more about an electrician and how they work. It gave me a better understanding of what an electrician does.

It's just that I dont see myself being an electrician as a long-term thing. I respect the job, but it just doesn't give me that motivation to continue doing it like these journeyman say they have. I've been an apprentice for painting, then later on became an apprentice as an electrician.

I'm searching for a job that will motivate me, but I dont think it's going to be a physical job. It's not because I can't handle it, because I can. I just don't see myself doing it long-term. I'm planning on learning more about real estate or even software engineering.

MY QUESTION to you is.... Am I quitting too early? There's this guy that's been in the field for a year already and people say that I'm expected to be better than him, because he's not taking this job seriously. I feel like I've did the best I can to take this job VERY seriously just to see if it's something that I'll like to do long-term.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn and advance, but it turns out it's not that great.

Just over a year ago, I started a job as an industrial maintenance electrician. I am the youngest guy in the group, next older than me has 20 years of experience as electrician. Most of the colleagues are great, but because of our electrician boss, I started hating every second of this job.

Our boss has a huge amount of knowledge, knowledge that he keeps for himself so that when there is a little more complex problem, we need to call him from home. He just has a need to feed his ego. For every problem, he would, instead of trying to protect us, he blames us, his electricians in front of the bosses.

A month or two after I started working this job, he sent me to pull some wires and wire some relays. While I was arranging wires, suddenly, main switch of the machine turned off and we spent few hours finding the solution to fix the problem. Next thing you know, he blamed and attacked me for causing a short and that I'm the reason why machine didn't work for few hours. Next day, everybody knew about this, even the CEO of the company started asking me questions what did I do. Nobody believed me when I told them that it's not my fault since I didn't even started to connect the wires.

A week or two after, my colleague was also pulling some wires in the same electrical closet. Same thing happened, machine suddenly turned off. Long story short, there was one bad connector and even the light tap or vibration would cause it to loose contact and machine to turn off. Ofcourse, I didn't even get an apology or a single word from him.

This is just one case out of few others and because of all this, I'm now under stress everytime my boss sends me to do something, because even at the smallest mistake, he will start going crazy and blame me for everything.