I’m an apprentice mechanic, being that, half my job involved helping the full red seals and cleaning the shop. I am perfectly fine doing this. However there are some mechanics that live for money, they start hours early and stay hours late, also fine. But when those mechanics start rubbing that off to the barely-above-minimum-wage apprentices, then it becomes very toxic.
Just today for example, I had a long day at work, lots of cleaning and oil changed/tire changeovers, it’s now 4:30, I’m now off work. As I’m leaving I hear one of the mechanic yell at me that the oil containers are full and that I should empty them. Fuck that I think,
Me: “it’s 4:30”
Him: “no it’s not”
Me: looking down at my computer “yeah it’s 4:32”
Him: “gooood effort”
Okay whatever, happens all the time, I go clean up my tool bench and head up to the change room to change, he’s up there too changing, he goes on about how I need to put in more effort and that the other apprentice in the room cleans the shop and puts more effort in (we both take out the garbages throughout the day and pretty much do the same work). I then tell him as I’m walking out, “it’s just a job”. That got him pissed off, but I didn’t hear what he was yelling because I was now leaving the room.
As I’m driving out of the parking lot I see him run after the fixed op manager, 100% going to tattle on me. I gave the truck some throttle as I drove past him and ripped out of the parking lot. I can’t wait for the meeting tomorrow.
Lots of people have been quitting here, back a few months ago my hoist was deemed unsafe to lift trucks, it’s still not replaced, I had to do oil changes on the ground for a couple weeks until I was able to move into the tire bay due to people moving around. They also wanted me to come in an hour early some days (so come in at 6) to do tire storage, I said fuck that right away. Many times I’m about to go on lunch and I’m told “wait hold on one more job before you go”, I’m starting to say “fuck that” out loud now.
It’s a shame because most of the people I work with are really awesome, and I did genuinely enjoy the work and stayed late when I first started, but toxic people ruined that for me now I hate waking up in the mornings.