Being a painter. Is it worth it?

I left my current profession to go paint at a custom/resto shop with the dreams of doing something I loved....It made me hate painting and was a miserable experience. I truly wish it would have worked out, but too many other factors and a toxic work environment made me realize that I could never paint for anyone ever again.
 
Evil_Fiz said:
I work in the IT field so I will attempt to give you some guidance as best I can:
- The IT field pays pretty well but you need to have a few years of experience before the higher wages kick in.
- You typically get a raise by changing jobs/employers rather than getting promoted from within.
- You can expect to be put on an on-call rotation at least once a month where you will be expected to carry a pager and be available 24/7 to deal with outages and problems.
- Just like with automotive paint jobs, when something goes wrong everybody tries to blame someone else for the problem. There was a saying at my old company, "if it's not working it's networking" :D
- I love the IT field and have been at it for over 20 years. The hours are good and there's no heavy lifting or paint fumes. Well… There is heavy lifting when you have to install a new server in the rack.
- BONUS – in today's market a lot of IT jobs are remote or work from home. I've been working from home for the last 7 years.

PM me if you want to have a more in-depth discussion,
Emil
Click to expand...
I also work in the IT field mainly in older mainframe systems and applications support. I agree with Evil as you have to change jobs to get get advanced in pay, but also in changing jobs you'll learn new ideas and methods from other people you work with. Ive been free lancing the last 20 or so years as where I live there is not much IT work available. Be prepared to travel to larger metro areas to find jobs. I also found that private companies you'll learn more as public entities have a lot more red tape to fool with when changing production jobs. With a good solid background its not to hard to find remote work from home jobs, but I have found you loose the oportunity to learn new skills from others. I have been in the IT field for a little over 50 years and have made a decent living.
 
I
elwood said:
Look up the poem " I bargained with life for a penny" Says a lot.
In some of the Bob Proctor videos I've watched he asks the question " What do you want, what do you really want? " In the book Think and grow rich , Napoleon Hill says that most successful people already know what they want so decisions are arrived at fairly quickly. And very seldom changed quickly because they already knew what they wanted to do.
Click to expand...
I read think and grow rich about 15yrs ago. Great book, so is rich dad poor dad
 
This is an interesting topic for me. When I was 14 and in highschool I was in the shop class. I remember wyo tech and some other program coming to recruit. Shop class was fun for 4 yrs. When I graduated I got a job at a Honda repair shop and later at a cadillac dealership working on transmission. Just a helper. Making like 7 dollars an hour in 1998. I quickly learned that I enjoy working on my own cars, not other people's bundle of problems. 10yrs ago was first time I ever held a spray gun. I've been in Healthcare for 22yrs. I'm a Radiographer, or xray tech for layman's terms. It has treated me well, but I'd never go back to a hospital setting. (Id rather drive the walmart truck or even mow the grass on the side of the highway). Just like any other career they want to get as much out of you in a shift as they can. Everyday I wonder what it would be like to just work out of my backyard and quit the career. I've known people that have done it. But they also didn't have a career with locked in benefits and a state pension....so, I just continue to go to work. (10 more years). 75k is pretty good money IMO, but also factor in how many hours are you dedicating to the JOB (just over broke) as Dave Ramsey would say.
 
Averaging out commissions just rewards the slow and punishes the fast. I would never work under such a system myself, even though I am probably on the slower side. Straight commission is the only way to go, that way you get what you worked for, no more, no less.
 
My god child works at a Audi dealer body shop ( been there 8 months ) as a helper with 2 brothers as a team in Northern Va. The body men make $ 100k or so a year,I am glad he is on the body side and wants to learn everything he can then one day open his own shop. He travels 1 1/2 hrs to work each way so that is getting old but makes more $ then I ever have LOL.
 
Reading the above posts, some mention a toxic environment. Another thing I hear is shops writing double estimates to screw the workers.
Any of the above run screaming as they could care less about you!

I quit an excellent job many years ago in another business because after a year, and I realized I was not too fond of the corporate game and told my wife if I ever, on a Sunday, say, tomorrow is monday, I hate it; make me quit that day.
I look forward to Mondays and love what I do!
 
Toxic environment was putting it extremely lightly.....

I took a 50% pay cut to chase a dream. It wasn't completely shattered, but it was definitely a lesson in life.

On top of that I had to use shopline clear on 40K paintjobs, lol.. That part was almost worse than the drug addicted co-worker!!
 
Barry said:
Reading the above posts, some mention a toxic environment. Another thing I hear is shops writing double estimates to screw the workers.
Any of the above run screaming as they could care less about you!

I quit an excellent job many years ago in another business because after a year, and I realized I was not too fond of the corporate game and told my wife if I ever, on a Sunday, say, tomorrow is monday, I hate it; make me quit that day.
I look forward to Mondays and love what I do!
Click to expand...
I used to hate mondays...we recently went to 4 10s and they asked me what day I wanted off. Everyone jumped on Friday. I told them I wanted to think about it for a week. Then I thought...how many Sundays do I wish I didn't have to work tomorrow ( everyone of them)...so ...off Mondays it is. I love it. The reason we went to 4 10s is because people complained they can't afford to pay for gas to come to work!!
 
When it comes to other careers I think the grass is always greener. Yet I’ve read so many instances of situations where people changed and it was definitely not what they were hoping. I’ve been doing the scientist gig for almost 20 years now and the pay makes it really hard to quit and go to anything else, even if I am a lot more passionate about that. Second to that is the fact that the company I work for is extremely generous with their benefits and treat their employees very well, which also makes it difficult to leave such a good gig. And that is by design; they are trying to retain colleagues.

But my dream job actually, believe it or not, would be in law-enforcement. Except that pays so poorly and has terrible hours lol. I have been doing a citizens police Academy with my local sheriffs office to satisfy that appetite, and I am giving a lot of consideration to becoming a reserve deputy so I can at least play, but I think I probably am stuck with the science gig.

Though I would actually have to say that my other dream gig would be something like the Ford product manager for National Parts Depot, that would be amazing.
 
For me I cant say it was a "grass was greener" moment more so than I just had enough of my current position doing robotics and an opportunity opened up. The shops long time painter had quit and I was at nervous breakdown mode at my job. I obviously knew going in I was going to be making about 50% less and way lousier benefits but I told my wife I needed to do it for at least 2 years. Painting at that time was a passion for me and I was still doing it every night at home. I just needed a break from the traveling and long hours of programming.

I quit 2 years to the day! I wanted to quit after 2 months, but I forced myself to stay. All in all it was an eye opening experience. I cant say that I learned anything more about painting though other than opioids can make someone a real asshole!
 
My actual dream was to open a shop with the top metal guy there, but he had his own demons and I just didn't get a warm fuzzy after we talked about starting a shop together for about 6 months.. It's a shame really, he was probably one of the most talented metal guys I had ever come across.
 
My wife’s cousin MIGHT have the best job. She’s a travel agent and travels all over the world to different resorts that are trying their damndest to woo her and sell vacations there. She’s literally a professional vacationer.
 
Lizer said:
My wife’s cousin MIGHT have the best job. She’s a travel agent and travels all over the world to different resorts that are trying their damndest to woo her and sell vacations there. She’s literally a professional vacationer.
Click to expand...
Ok, I change my mind. That's what I want to do!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top