I've been in apartment maintenance for the last 4 years, and have gone though 3 companies in that time. In this line of work, I've been severely underpaid, verbally abused by tenants and management, I've been illegally banned from going into units out of management's inability to do their job or understand fair housing law, and expected to do literally every gross thing or lift every heavy thing. These things are not in my job description.
I started in section 8 and low income housing. It's rough of you don't know what you're getting yourself into, and in my line of work I was already pretty seasoned for seeing disgusting things. But management is completely apathetic.
“Ma'am, there's a blood-like stain that's 4 feet by 2 feet in the middle of the living room floor. No I cannot fix that, we need new carpet, and I'm not a flooring guy”
“Well what kind of maintenance worker are you? Do I really need a vendor for this???”
“Yes.”
They paid $16 an hour to start, which was a lot back then, but then I didn't get another $2 raise for 2 years, because they “didn't have it in the budget”…. sure, right, you're just hemorrhaging (they weren't). I always used to think that $18-$22 an hour was a lot of money, but every year it just gets worse, and when I was finally making that, I needed more or I was going homeless.
Within the last 6 months, I found a better paying maintenance job working with a crew of 3 others to manage about 300 apartment units. Its not too bad, I turned out around 50 units in this time, not realizing the fast turn over rate because I'm used to seeing people coming and going a lot. Everybody is stressed out besides me, and it was all because of the boomer head micro manager, Karen (Yes that's actually her name, not a made up name). Even the tenants don't like her, and she's only here like 3 days a week, and they come to the office telling us in the about it. She's pulled me into her office to yell at me, because she was stressed about something to do with maintenance and I was her closest victim, said really off handedly mean things about my co workers and underhanded comments to my face.
I started this new job at an increased $2 an hour, working in much, much nicer apartments that charge anywhere between $1800 and $2900 a month for rent. I thought it would be nice, but even here they just don't care about things unless they have to spend money. In fact, they're so cheap that they don't even cover dental, instead saying they'll “reimburse up to 1000 dollars a year in dental work”. So, what, 1 tooth a year without insurance? They'll let problems fester until a breaking point and then literally say:
“Well, we've had the money in the budget for a while to take care of that, but we just haven't done it”
Like that's supposed to make my concerns go away or fix the problem.That's the actual full response I got when discussing the fixing of outside spigots that had been broken off or damaged beyond use. Its confusing and maddening as one of the only people who knows how to fix shit, and it sucks seeing her so dismissive and apathetic about it all.
The whole time, I've been on Indeed looking for new jobs, positions I qualified for and in places where I don't have to move. And I'm happy to say that I think I finally found my unicorn job. Within just the last couple of weeks, a Gen X property manager reached out to me after reading my resume and skill set. I told her basically all of this post, how little I'd been making and how I was planning on finding a new career path. She offered me a job of $28 to start with guaranteed bonuses and raises, along with full benefits, and dental, to do exactly what I'm doing now. I was so happy I almost cried.
It's taken me almost 5 years of nearly missing rent, only eating one meal a day mostly, scraping together small amounts for gas, not being able to travel, go do fun things without a massive pay cut by asking for my miniscule PTO, family deaths that management was less than sympathetic about and making actual poverty wages, to FINALLY make it to a livable amount of money per paycheck.
If your manager is younger, you have a good chance of finding an ally. Don't trust them too much, they're your manager after all, but don't be afraid to let them know about when you've been outright wronged by a previous employer.