@Kloi I don't think I would be up for working in an office. I really don't like the heavy rain and the hot sun but I think I would feel caged by office culture.

The closest I came was when a local college approached me to teach occasional short courses in my trade. All my dealings with women in the HR department were just soul destroying. I wasn't sure what the HR department contributed to the college but it just gave me ton of silly things to do before I could get paid. Like doing endless online health and safety modules at the end of which I was invited to print my certificate like I was a 7 year old. I had no idea an office was such a dangerous place! I had to do gender awareness modules (like a woman or tranny ever wanted to go on one of my courses). At no point did anyone actually check up on my teaching but they made me log in and change my password all the time before I could submit a pay claim.

They once made me go to a health and safety lecture where it turned out I was sat next to a lecturer whose husband worked in the same trade as me. The education union man stood up to tell us all how to be safe on campus and the first slide he showed was of a man in my trade standing on his truck to reach something and he proudly told us how he sent that idiot packing. The woman and I looked at each other and shook our heads. "I thought that was the safe way to do it" I said and she nodded laughing. Apparently the tradesman should have hired a mechanical lift to elevate him 7 feet. You just know that he would never have got the contract if he had added that onto the price. I realised there is a parallel universe of people who work in offices who don't live in the real world and who just invent endless shit to justify their jobs.

Happily Covid came along and they cancelled all the courses. When covid ended they just stopped offering crap like trade courses when they could offer useful stuff like sociology and I was free of them. I just wouldn't fit in an office these days.

@woodsmoke

Fortunately for me, your experiences has not been mine in the trades.

Painting we worked and made enough money in two weeks to basically fuck off if we wanted to. Only time we were really pushing more than 8 hours was if for some reason we were behind.

Hell the guy that taught me the trade and how to sell/bid paint jobs owns property in Brazil and basically spends the shitty months down there. So he's only back here painting six months out of the year and he's only really working 3 months of that six.

Currently I'm learning metal fabrication from a grouchy old guy. My hours are technically 9 to 5 but I can show up as early as 6/6:30am. I can leave, or request time off whenever I want. As long as I hit my 30/hr a week I get to keep my fully paid for health insurance.

I lucked into this one. Luck being where preparation meets opportunity. He was trying to get me to come paint parts for him part time for two years.

I wouldn't have been ready back then. After two months working there part time, I quit my other job and started working closer to 40hrs a week out of enjoyment.