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Anonymous10/03/25, 17:09No.2948545
I'd love to work in a trade and learn how to do something real and not sit in some office all day like a faggot, but I have OCD and I'm worried about how toxic or dirty the work is. Am I just overreacting? Welders have to deal with fumes for example. That can't be healthy to breathe. Electricians have to go into dirty attics. Plumbers have to literally deal with peoples shit all day. Construction sites in general seem really hellish and not healthy.
Sorry if this isn't on-topic enough for this board janny, but i'm assuming a lot of people in trades lurk here.
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Anon10/03/25, 17:33No.2948554
you forgot carpenters
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Anon10/03/25, 17:46No.2948558
has anyone ever made an argument that because welders have such serious PPE like these expensive PAPR separate air systems and big fans/vents blowing fumes away, they're actually breathing cleaner air than the average office worker in a city? They literally have $3k portable HEPA filters.
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Anon10/03/25, 18:45No.2948570
Lots of plumbers only do commercial construction and mechanical contract work for things like the photo you posted. You can go to a trade school which here are run by the union.
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Anon10/03/25, 21:41No.2948611
On the flip side, if you're good at cleaning up after yourself you'll be well liked on a job site.
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Anon10/04/25, 02:38No.2948654
the thing is jobs like that are 1/20 or so. just the nature of field work unless you're self employed and really picky. I work for a plumbing company and my time is split between shitty remodels in old houses, shitty patch jobs on old businesses, interesting additions by rich people, necessary repipes, clog busting.
realistically the cost of that work (assuming limited to what is visible and including the rebuild of whatever pump/filter that is would be >10k$
they're fun jobs and bring light through the pile of bullshit that is necessary to fix, but it's rare anyone is willing to pay for it. so you take a picture and bask when the opportunity exists.
lmao right out of the picture that all tie into 30 year old cpvc that had to be hand sawed so it didn't crack
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Anon10/04/25, 06:10No.2948680
3 levels of tradies
>the braindead grunts
just do things but know nothing why and how to to it, think mexicans or poles
>the service tech
read all the books, knows how it should work, rarely can make it work when faced with the above.
>the trained fitter/low level engineer
design it, install it and service it later.
you can make easy money joining the first, some more doing the second, you make bank doing the last.
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Anon10/04/25, 06:36No.2948682
read
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Anon10/04/25, 15:46No.2948741
>I want money but I I don't want to get dirty
>t. Mike Rowe
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Anon10/04/25, 18:46No.2948785
TIG welding or machining could be worth considering. Both are detail-oriented trades that are usually done with fresh, clean materials in a relatively clean shop. If you do TIG for a decent employer they'll have fume extraction systems.
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Anon10/05/25, 17:04No.2948927
Weird, I'd swear I already wrote and posted this exact reply but I don't see it, and can't see why it would've been deleted.Anyway, how about low voltage electrical? If you're cool with travel you could basically just go around wiring up new data centers so it'd pretty much all be clean work with brand new materials. Those OCD tendencies could be good for the job if they translate into cleaning up after you work, good labeling and documentation, and well-organized wiring and conduit runs too.
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Anon10/05/25, 17:38No.2948931
OCD in a trade is a good thing. However… office people will rule over youYou have to sit in meeting rooms and listen to square this circle, connect, circle back, prioritiesAnd be the blame for everything going wrong
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Anon10/05/25, 17:43No.2948932
I used to be kind like this particularly with having shit on my hands (because I used to smoke weed and didn't want chemicals to get on my weed). You get over it. I deal with silica dust and grease all of the time now and I don't really care. You really don't want to "sit in an office all day like a faggot". For starters, if you aren't somebody important those excel email do nothing jobs are going away, secondly even if they aren't going away office culture is so unbelievably gay and stiffling. I show up to work and says "what's up fucker" to my batchguy and then the loader operator who is a 59 year old salvadoran man shows up and the two of them play fake grab ass and we figure out what the day is gonna shake out like before cranking it out. In an office you're smothered by women and forced to develop some fake gay personality and participate in endless performative bullshit.
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Anon10/05/25, 21:07No.2948986
Get into gas fitting.
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Anon10/08/25, 06:02No.2949555
I hate my job, I hate my life, I hate the heat and the dirt and the sweat and the silica, and every day I pray an illegal Mexican immigrant makes a catastrophic mistake and sends me home to the Lord.
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Anon10/08/25, 06:16No.2949557
at the end of the day you probably wont get hired anywhere. ive been in aviation for 18 years and its getting stale and thought i could just get another job easy but no. employers think you are overqualified and will want more money than they want to pay
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Anon10/08/25, 20:49No.2949676
the woodniggers are getting uppity..........
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Anon10/08/25, 21:09No.2949679
I do maintenance on CNC machines, but not for companies that work with metal because they're always dirty with oil/coolant/chips and only for some companies that work with wood because they're mostly broke
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Anon10/17/25, 01:03No.2951234
I have some OCDs aswell, "gems" and obsessional (hand) washing mostly
I work as an electronic in maintenance in a pretty dirty environment and it doesnt affect me at all
Somehow i differentiate between dirt at work and in private life
Pic rel. is one of the cleaner parts of our facility i have been crawling around today, if i had to touch shit like that in private i would spent 5-10min washing my hands afterwards, at work i dont have such urgings
Not saying that it would be the same for you but like you probably know OCDs are not necessary logical
