Right out of high-school (2011) I was scouted out by a local Stamping Company to work in the machine shop for an apprentice position for Tool and Die. (I showed proficiency during the trades program)
I apprenticed there and learned the trade, however it’s a backwater town in Illinois surrounded by backwards hicks.
Im tall and big with a black beard and darker skin tone, and an atheist, so I’m in the minority here. I constantly got “gonna burn in hell” comments or terrorist jokes or Mexican green card shit.
I guess I’m complacent and wanted to learn the trade so I took all the shit for 8 years, my Foreman made me sweep and clean the massive piles of chips for years by myself because I’m the shop (n-word) while the other “favorable apprentices” got to sit and talk and not clean up.
I was a useful idiot, busting balls working my ass off to provide for my wife and pay the bills. But I was learning the trade.
Skip forward to 8 years in:
I’m a Journeyman Tool and Die maker, I’m very proficient at this point, the old timers are too stubborn and stupid to learn autocad and CNC and the other apprentices have left for other trades. So I’m very important to shop jobs and designs and implementation of new tooling.
Then I get hurt, (2019) my ACL, MCL, and meniscus are torn completely (at a bad religion concert pit lol)
all of a sudden all the money I’ve earned and saved is gone, I take money from my 401k to pay medical debt and house bills. I get my surgery and recover for 1 week before I go back to work.
1 week for MAJOR reconstructive surgery.
I’m a big enough man to admit I was in tears for the first few weeks from the pain, getting told to stop sitting down, started drinking heavy at night to help cope (I know I know) then I realized why the fuck am I killing my self physically and mentally for a job that doesn’t give a FUCK ABOUT ME. So I started looking for options.
Then Covid hit, hours are cut, I stayed there another year limping and getting more and more jaded drinking more and more. I’m losing my shit at this point but I gotta keep working.
(Thank fuck we were considered essential)
And by chance meeting one day I got a interview at a different factory.
To wrap it up, I’m at the new factory for a year now, Lead man in the machine shop, making $12 an hour more, UNION, and I’m sitting down writing this while my lathe is cutting away.
I think the years of bullshit from my toxic coworkers and management made me believe deep down I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t WORTH anything else. I got complacent.
You are worth your weight in gold! I got very lucky, but now I understand the importance of mental health and knowing when to hit the eject button at bullshit job.
Never again will I be taken advantage of.
take this as cautionary tale of blind, foolish compliance on my part.