Question for Plumbers/gasfitters.Work related

[Tekmar1]

I was just wondering if any other plumbers out there feel the way I do about the job.I have been plumbing/gasfitting now for 11 years(Service work only),and I can't stand my job anymore.Now I should say that I work on average about 45-65 hous a week depending on the work that week.I tried to cut down on my jobs but even if I try to work 40 hours a week I still don't like it.I am tired of dealing with customers who complain about the bill(even though sometimes I tell them the price before hand).

Here is the situation I got myself into,I make good money working with a good employer but if I quit I will be in serious finacial trouble because I will not get a job as high paying as I have now.So I guess I am wondering if this has happened to anyone else,and what did you do to get back what you use to love doing.

P.S.-Not sure if this is the right place to post this but there are alot of plumbers around here.

[master plumber mark]

everyone gets burnt out doing this....

I had some great guys working for me years ago
that thought the grass was greener working
somewhere else but they never set any goals for themselves...

one guy I tried to encourage him to get his plumb lisc. but
he would never do it.....

the last I heard, the fellow is "drying out" down in Kentucky delivering pizzas....


So to keep yourself happy

the only goal I could advise you to do if you already have not

is to get your Masters --Contractors lisc... and think about going into business for yourself...

that certainly changes your viewpoint...

[Gary Swart]

Life's a bitch and then you die! There's no such thing as a perfect job where you never get tired of at least some parts of it. Suck it up, and go on with your life. Be glad you have a trade/skill that you can use to make a decent income. There's alot of guys that would love to trade places with you.

[Cookie]

Gary that is not true. Life is not a bitch and then you die. It is to live, and the true measurement of how well we live our lives is by how happy we are and the good we do for others.

[jimbo]

Have you taken some vacation recently? I find the stress level builds up after a long stretch with no time off. Plan something....anything. I like to just get up and go.....anywhere. Recently drove to San Antonio, TX for a Navy ship reunion. Did the Grand Canyon, meteor crater, etc. etc. on the way out. Just fun, and no work!

[Cal]

Cookie ,,,, No disrespect intended ,,, you better stay out of this one ," Without expierence , there is no true knowledge"

Dude ,

Understand what you are saying. There are days when every muscle hurts , we banged our head ,knee wrist & elbow to the point of swelling BEFORE mourning coffee and what do you have to thank you ,,,,Some plumber wannabe , do-it-yourselfer climbing up your ass over a few bucks !

Remember early on when it was all new and fun to learn ? A hard days work was the thing that made ya grin on the ride home after work.

Whether someone said "Thank you " or " You saved my day" didn't really matter 'cause you know YOU DID !

These are good things. If they don't float your boat anymore ,,, find something that does.

But you'll ALWAYS be a Plumber .

Good luck

Cal

[Cookie]

That is right, I don't work. Read my post under Mensa. No offense taken, since, yer right I aint no plumber. Guess you got to be plumber to know what work is.

[Cal]

No Mam'

I just meant the man is burnt out ON PLUMBING work . It's something that can only be expierienced after doing it EVERYDAY for years . Same as anyone else's job ,,, just our field of expertise.

C

[Cookie]

I got the same sentiments from what he wrote, which is why I posted what I did under Mensa, giving him some information, cause knowledge is power, no matter which or what field you are in. By the way, I have noticed in any field, if you are not happy with what you are doing, usually you don't do your best, and that is not fair to anyone.

[RioHyde]

Tekmar, I know what you're talking about....I guess most of us do. I came up through the ranks doing commercial work. A friend of mine started a service business and asked me to come aboard. I did so and after three years of doing service plumbing I was completely burnt out on it...I mean to a crisp. It got to the point that I didnt even want to get out of bed in the morning. Just the thought of my feet hitting the floor and having to deal with customers made me want to literally throw up. I went back to commerical plumbing and found that enjoyment in my job that had been missing. Now, I'm not saying that I regret the three years working in service plumbing. I dont. In fact, I learned ALOT while doing it. However, and thank God for this, some people are cut out for service and some for commerical...some for both. You could give the commerical end of things a try and see what you think. After all, even if you find (as I did) that the change just isnt you, you can always go back to service.

Just a thought.

Good luck man

[Randyj]

Tekmar... I am definitely experienced at burn out and not being appreciated. I'm no youngin' either. I got into plumbing to get away from everything else. I LOVE plumbing but don't like working for other people/companies. I spent 8 1/2 years working for a manufacturing company where I started sweeping floors and ended up as plant manager who trained several of my bosses including the company owner. I never was paid 1/2 what I should have been and that is not just imagination talking. I was replaced by a guy who worked for 40% less than I was making and he lasted 6 months...just long enough for my boss to steal all of the accounts he brought with him. I got into the retail business but was constantly confronted with female employees trying to make out with me to get their better benefits and no one wanted to work after they had been there for a few weeks. Customers were always telling me how much they could get something for at the flea markets or Walmart. Finally, defeated and depressed I tucked my tail between my legs and spent 4 years getting my plumbing license on my own. I had the skills and knowledge from doing maintenance work here and there but still have had very little experience working for a plumbing company. The short job I had was thru a temp agency and we did a heck of alot of commercial work in the 3 months there. Within two weeks I hated the job and did not like many of the typical construction worker types that I had to work with. I'll do any kind of work people hire me to do but enjoy the plumbing and tile the most and I know most about those (and am a good auto and outboard mechanic). I'm totally independent and I love that .... before I was in the pet shop and feed store business and loved that for 13 years... At least now I'm in a field that I can run out of a van or pick up truck, have a very small overhead, no employees, and few customers...and still make a living working 2 or 3 days a week. Working for myself and mostly just small jobs I make as much in one or two days as I've ever made working overtime for someone else ...BUT... there is a heck of alot of risk that goes with it...absolutely no security! I like the small jobs because recovering from losing $50 is a heck of alot easier than recovering from getting ripped off for $5,000 OR MORE! Most people I know face some degree of burn out. I've probably had 20-30 jobs in my lifetime but I know others who can get up every morning to be a zombie at some comfortable job with a few perks... I'm not one of them. I have to have a change of pace and am easily bored.... I love learning and doing new and different things. I couldn't handle driving in the same circle day after day after day... but I know people who have done it for 40 years.... they retire, get a company pin, live maybe 6 months and die.... I'll probably do like my dad... work till the day I die...and wouldn't want it any other way.

Maybe you need to discuss the burn out issue with your employer and ask him/her to help you find a solution for it.

[master plumber mark]

Once back in the late 70s I had a commercial plumbing construction job where I actually
had to wake up my drunk boss every few mornings...

that taught me something...about burn out....and the job did not last too long


Randi...... I agree with you %100

yes thier is some risk in running your own business
but once you blast off, it dont really take much to keep you in orbit..

On average I make more in one or two days than many
peopel make in a month...

I choose what I do, I dont DIG anymore..
I dont do commerical work,

I have not used a plate tamper or jumping jack in 35 years.....
I can pick and choose what I do .....


So......When ever I get the blues,

all I got to do is think about when I used to have to wake
up my drunk fat assed boss on Fridays
to sign my paycheck....



that gets me back on track....

[Randyj]

This is what I look at every time I walk out my front door.... takes away any motivation to get a real job... It is a seasonal reservoir lake. In the spring and summer all of that sand is covered with water. Water level is down about 12 ft at this time.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b304/friendsncompany/Lake%20pics%2012_26_06/SP_A0132.jpg

[Dunbar Plumbing]

Every once in a while I get to a burnout stage but then I realize how good I truly have it. I'm a business owner and that makes some of the luxuries of self employment okay but the constant spending is wearing thin. I wish I could slow it down but in true business sense, I can't.

I really appreciate all the advice I gathered on this site with credit cards though, priceless. I ran a card last night at 4 in the morning that otherwise if I would of said no.....I would of been $350 poorer for replacing a sump pump in the middle of the night. They got a check valve too if that helps. :D


When you start dreaming about doing plumbing, it's time to step away for a bit and take a V K.

Going into business is a risk all to it's own, better have a largely padded bank account or at least available funds through a cc to get through the monthly operation costs. << If you are legit you have to follow that logic.

Even though I did good doing a service call on my own accord last night,
I lost a call at 11:00am because I was sound asleep, I lost another call at 4pm because the guy had a 2 month old State Aurora tankless water heater that wasn't working << shelled that one away like it was a deadly disease.

I lost another one at 8:30pm because I was 4, yes 4 minutes in delay of calling the number back as I was on the phone taking a personal call.


Oh well, people don't have patience and neither do I. No point of chasing the call because then it looks out of desparation and that certainly isn't my pipe to smoke.

If you want security, tie into a company that will tube feed you work until you establish a customer base. Remember though, if that company who gets you work has a change of heart, you better be prepared for the customer base you now lack.

I put in a really solid week, 8 days and even though my left hand is partially numb, my right hand is sore, my back hurts and I look like rotten potatoes,

I love my profession and I'll do it all over starting tomorrow morning at 8:30 disconnecting a kitchen sink from a granite countertop. I guess the granite guys like replacing their product twice since they can't figure out how to do it right the first time.

[master plumber mark]

I see from your last post that you

are finding the plastic to work out pretty

good at 4 in the morning...

I have found that most people would rather give
me a master card over a check almost 75% of the time....

what has your batting average been so far???

[Randyj]

I don't have a way to run cards... maybe I should look into that. I know I'll be faced with it sooner or later.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

So far I've been averaging around $1200/month and the demand for using plastic went down AFTER the discussion was brought up.


All I did last night was call a number, enter a code and the account# and it kicks back an authorization code. The bill comes at the end of the month.

It was just a stumbling block I didn't want to cross in business if I didn't have to but now that it is behind me I wouldn't be without it.

Growing pains of the biz but now that it's just like anything else, it's worth it.

I'd recommend it Randyj; I went through my bank even though the costco offer is hard one to pass up. I just don't have a costco close by and wanted the dual benefit.

[Gary Slusser]

Tekmar, what I think I hear you saying is that you have a difficulty with the customer relations part, not the plumbing that you loved.

I think if you learned how to deal positively with the customers, and maybe put in a few less hours, or found something new (specialized maybe) in service plumbing that got you excited, you'd be yer old self.

I'd sit down and come up with a ranked list of what I disliked and why. The why is critical and what you need to know before you can change something to make customer relations easier or less stressful etc.. I suspect you may need some sales training or possibly to change your opinion of 'sales'. If you think about it, absolutely nothing happens until something is sold. We sell our ideas, or ourselves every time we tell someone something. Yet most people say "I could never be a salesperson". I'm selling you on my thoughts of what you wrote, or you'll buy all or part of it. The most important part of sales, is selling yourself to the person you're talking to.

I think you need to be able to justify the bill but just be sure to go deep enough into yourself that you get down to the real 'why'.

Basically sales is nothing more than informed communication; or BSing people into believing you know what you are talking about but BSing gets you into trouble. I may be wrong but if you knew what to say to the customer that is going on about the bill, you might be smilin' and feeling good by the time you got in the truck instead of cussing this'er that and feeling bad. Does any of that make sense?

[Randyj]

Boredom, stress, lack of motivation, trying to decide what to do next because I'm pressured in so many different directions... most days I struggle just to make the decision to get up and go...and in which direction.... I like to get up and go to a new job every day! That is the one thing I like about service/repair work.

[Cookie]

Gary, like your map, the East coast? I kind of know that area. Now, I wonder what happened to Telemark?

[Gary Slusser]

Cookie, I'm not sure what map you mean but assuming the one on my web site, yes, it's in central PA.

I'm not sure what hapened to him, maybe he quit his job and just doesn't care what we have to say anymore... lol

[Randyj]

I took a job as a truck driver for a while. It was the fastest burn out I've ever had. At first I thought it was easy and I was making relatively big money for sitting on my butt riding around and enjoying the sites. Within a few weeks it was difficult to just force myself to get in the truck. I was absolutely bored and lonely. It probably happened only because I had a very small accident where I put a ding in a trailer, then got stuck in the mud by following instructions at my delivery point, then got lost by following directions I was given by the dispatcher. Then got fussed at for all the above and had to deal with an irate store manager because he got to work 2 hours early to meet me and I was more than 2 hours late delivering due to the bad instructions. The store owners and the public in general did not give me much respect. I would drive to restaurants and delivery points where "truck drivers" were not allowed to use the public restrooms. I got very tired of driving all day then getting to a destination and having to unload and drag a pallet jack up hills and thru doors that were too small... and all the time some woman sits watching me while she filed her finger nails and tells me to unload the pallets of boxes. I got very tired of what was expected of me, not what was required of me...and very tired of being treated like I was beneath the rest of the world. Sometimes I think people disrespect me as a plumber....until they need a plumber... then I get LOTS of respect when I fix a problem in a few minutes which has plagued them for a very long time and they couldn't figure it out.... but it does get to me when they complain about the bill and I'm giving them a very very low price! I unstopped a drain at a restaurant when I went there to eat breakfast and the manager offered me a "free meal" for my hour of time .... go figure. I know how people want me to clean up after a job and I try to do a decent quick clean up.... but if they want me to spit shine everything they certainly don't want to pay my hourly rate for maid service. Yet others don't want me to clean up anything because they're afraid I'll jack up the price for my time. I enjoy plumbing and most of the customers but it's a few of them who really make dealing with the public a depressing experience and ruins my day.

[Cass]

The only job I have never burned out of...yet... is plumbing. I doubt I ever will because I like it. Right after 911 calls dropped off drastically and I had to supplement my work by delivering meals. I burnt out of that in about 6 months right when things started to pick up again so it worked out O.K. That job was from 5 AM to 1 PM. Then I would go do service work.

[master plumber mark]

Cass....have you noticed that the bottom is starting to

fall out of the copper market???? It reached a high of almost

4 dollars a pound back in mid November,


yesterday it plummeted another 22 cents on the futures market to something like 2.25 a pound...

a stick of 3/4 m was 269 per foot, it is down to about 1.89 now..

and falling...


so their wont be as much copper missing from houses soon...

[Cass]

Yes, the scrap price is only $1.00 / lb. now

[Gary Slusser]

Cookie, a bit farther east than Altoona; the Lewisburg/Milton area. So East central PA. If you're into maps, go to www.google.com and download google earth! Man what a program and it's free.

As to burnout... personally I like to call it bored and needing a new challenge.

I've had many 'vocations' or jobs since 5 years in the USAF mantaining nuclear weapons with lots of high explosives. I like my current one a lot but owning tractor trailers and driving all over the country and maintaining them was right up there too (Randy, ya gotta have some Cowboy in ya... and a powerful CB, preferably in a Peterbilt).

Power company lineman was the toughest mentally (nothing to fear but fear itself); back in the day we climbed with climbing hooks, none of today's pansy bucket truck stuff! 90' wooden transmission poles were especially exciting).

[Cookie]

Actually, I think the lineman's job is considered the most dangerous.

[srdenny]

Master Plumber Mark,
As of 1-04-07, the closing price on Comex was $2.60/lb.

[kd]

So far I've been averaging around $1200/month and the demand for using plastic went down AFTER the discussion was brought up.


All I did last night was call a number, enter a code and the account# and it kicks back an authorization code. The bill comes at the end of the month.

It was just a stumbling block I didn't want to cross in business if I didn't have to but now that it is behind me I wouldn't be without it.

Growing pains of the biz but now that it's just like anything else, it's worth it.

I'd recommend it Randyj; I went through my bank even though the costco offer is hard one to pass up. I just don't have a costco close by and wanted the dual benefit.
What is COSTCO offer? Do they have a credit card machine or system for service people?

[Gary Slusser]

Cookie, nukes in 'Nam.... I've never heard of that but everything was classified and need to know, which I didn't have the need to know that. He may have meant some nuclear artillery shells, I doubt it was any of our arsenal of nuclear weapons. I guarded weapons we transported in convoys on regular roads behind a special farm like tractor and loaded ready to go in 5 minutes notice bombers with nothing more than a M1 and 45.

Lineman is fairly dangerous but mining and truck driving along with a few others are much more dangerous.

I was never stressed working on nuclear weapons or the explosives or nuclear material (I've held a lot of it, maybe a ton total, in my hands with nothing but rubber gloves). We were always 'detached' (isolated and hush hushed) from the other areas of the bases we supported. We didn't have a lot of the spit and polish stuff 'regular' AF folks suffered. We really worked hard, and did so for up to a week at a time, 24 hrs/day about every 4-6 weeks with little sleep and no time off, out on the flight line in all kinds of weather, but when we could we played hard too. We were a very highly trained close nit small family type group. Unless we were on leave, we were always on 30 minute or one hour 'alert' status, meaning no matter where we went, we had to be back in that length of time ready to go (to war). The Cuban missile crises got me into quite a few short lived reflective moments though... I was in England at the time. Afterwards it was 25-30 years before the public learned just how close we came.

Sorry, I don't go to movies; last was like in 1993 and I hadn't been to one in a decade or two before that. I've chosen to live in reality. lol

I did a temporary 6 month refueling stint in the containment building in a nuclear power plant. Talk about guys being burned out! They worked for the power company for on average 20-35 years (the same I was a lineman for) to be able to 'bid' into the plant jobs and didn't know anything else and were scared to death of quiting for something else and totally miserable. It was hell working there due to the politics and negative attitudes and back biting childish BS they were involved in. The union had a lot to do with that. I've worked at a lot of places and that was the worst.

Of all I have done, I have one regret. In 1967-68 the Army wanted me to go into their helicopter training program and offered me WO 1 (warrant officer) if I would enlist for just 2 years. I wanted to do it but I put them off because I thought it was wrong because I was married and you know I would have went to Vietnam flying gunship helicopters... and she was from Holland were I was stationed after England and her BIL was a fighter pilot for the Dutch Royal AF but she wasn't supportive of me going. She had no one here but my parents, so I didn't do it. I've always regretted that decision.

[Cookie]

Gary,
Supposed to be laying down, just had surgery this morning.

Ok, I had to check his records, they were some kind of shells, not nukes, Oh, well...I am allowed to be wrong once in a while, and trust me on this one, I hate admitting it!

Your post was interesting, Gary.

[master plumber mark]

Master Plumber Mark,
As of 1-04-07, the closing price on Comex was $2.60/lb.


this means that dummies like me with plumbers copper
will get about $175 at the junk yard...

[Dunbar Plumbing]

What is COSTCO offer? Do they have a credit card machine or system for service people?



http://www.terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8559&highlight=accepting+credit+cards

Read Terry's response

[Cookie]

Ok, Gary, I found this site, and checked it against a few others. Number 1, IT is, FISHING...

Who would imagine? Here is the URL: Lineman I think came in fifth.

http://www.daytimer.com/E-Talk/15-Most-Dangerous-Jobs-in-the-World/0/False

[Gary Slusser]

Cookie, I hope you're doing well. The list is interesting and proves that all things change. You better get more rest.

BTW, I don't see any avitars here, I have them turned off, but... I see I have one out at the front of Terry's forums, and it is a map of the NE US. That must be the map you were talking about.

[Randyj]

Haven't heard from Tekmar since this thread started.... wondering what's up with him.

[Cookie]

Thanks Gary, I am working on getting well; doing ok, just trying to fit in alittle bit of work for tomorrow, tonite. Yes, that map is the one you referred to.