I'm sick of people saying trade work is a golden ticket that gets you out of whatever shitty situation you're in. Trade work is my shitty situation. Disgusting work. You're outside or in half-finished buildings dealing with freezing cold air, awful heat, rain, mud, dust, and everything else. Half the time there's no decent place to wash up, eat your lunch, or use the bathroom like a normal human being.
You work around reckless people, people burned out by the job, angry people, shady people, addicts, and men whose last achievement was in high school and who decided to take it out on everyone else. And you're treated like an animal by managers who still think standing around unpaid before your shift is a badge of honor, then they sit there arguing over 20 minutes on your timecard like the money is coming out of their kid's college fund.
You breathe in unknown dust, glue fumes, insulation fibers, metal grime, concrete dust, and whatever else is floating in the air that day. Solvents, oils, sealants, caulking, and random toxic stuff get on your hands, arms, face, and sometimes in your eyes. You wear boots that destroy your feet, gloves you can't feel anything through, glasses that fog up, ear protection that barely keeps up with the noise, and a nasty hard hat all day. And with all that, your eyes and hearing still are never fully safe.
The physical part is constant, but so is the mental part. Everything is loud, urgent, heavy, sharp, hot, spinning, falling, or waiting for one stupid mistake to take a finger, a knee, or your back. Your body gets used up fast. Knees, shoulders, wrists, spine - all of it takes a beating, and if you can still move normally when you're 45, you're doing better than a lot of people.
And people still look down on you. The pay isn't the fantasy Reddit keeps selling unless you tie yourself to a union path or take the risk of starting your own business. And then your choices are either maybe you'll do well, or maybe you'll drown in debt, insurance, callbacks, employees, taxes, work vehicles, and customers who think skilled labor should cost the same as a pizza. And honestly, even if you manage to make it work, there are plenty of people sitting in air conditioning writing code who still make more.
If you start a business, congratulations, now your job comes home with you every night. Messages after dinner, estimates on Sunday, chasing your money, fixing someone else's mistake, and thinking about payroll when you're supposed to be resting.
The whole industry has gone downhill too. Quality standards, pride in the work, training, the way people treat each other - all of it feels worse than it used to be. It's a tough sector. If you have to choose one, be a plumber or an electrician, but don't believe the fairy tale.
There's a reason there aren't enough people lining up to do this work. It's a motherfucker of a job. All those comments saying "get into the trades, bro, the money is great" feel like propaganda to fill a miserable but necessary layer of society that everything else depends on.