I (25M) studied industrial design. It's a tough industry to get into, but one that I'm passionate about. After finishing my degree, it was hard to find work, as told by a coworker, it's difficult to get hired with no experience.
So I made a decision, I did a welding course. My plan was to study welding and then machining. This way, I could enter the industry as another worker and hopefully work my way to doing design which is what I'm really good at.
After finishing this course, in my country, you are placed in a local company as a kind of “internship”. I got assigned to a small, family owned, machinists workshop. Literally my dream, I couldn't have hoped for a better place. I got along with the boss, we shared some hobbies like 3D printed and he did some talk about 3D software to see if I knew what I was talking about.
Once the internship ended, he took me to another company of his father that did magnesium injection. This company is failing, and many have jumped ship, in particular everyone in the maintenance team. He told me he didn't really need a welder, but he wanted me to do maintenance for these machines, that I don't know nothing about, and some welding for the machinists workshop. I told him my plan of learning machining next and he told me that was no problem, as long as I don't care about a degree (which I don't)
On paper, this was a dream come true, I entered this company as a second official, which was a true favour on his part. And I quickly learned a lot about these machines to the point that they call me when something goes wrong and sometimes I go there on weekends and evenings.
The problem? I haven't got paid, in fact, this work has costed me money. I paid to get forklift certified as I was asked by my boss, I paid gas to get here (I had to ask my brother for money). I've been here for two months now and I obviously know that the company is doing badly and there is not money to put anyone but it's disheartening, like literally, I suffer from ADHD and depression and this is not helping at all. Some of my coworkers, which were very happy with my work, have noticed my hope is gone and man has it gone quick… Btw, no one told me about the money problems before signing the contract, a coworker (really nice one btw) told me afterwards.
But I feel trapped here, If I go I'm unemployable, literally. I also feel like I would be missing a great opportunity to learn many things and become what I've always wanted to be but I have to pay for a lot of things. They keep moving the day I'm going to get paid and idk
I've always hated this system, I chose this line of work because I felt it was real and it was truly accomplishing things. I mean, I can design stuff to fix some problems in this world, weld or machine something to bring it a second life… I did the best I could why can't it get easy at some point? Is that too much to ask for? To get paid for your work? What do I do?