3 Things I Don’t Like About Being an Electrician

hey what is going on you guys my name is steven and today we're going to talk about three things that i do not like about being an electrician all right well hey you guys uh if you're new to my channel thank you so much for checking this out basically the entire purpose of all these videos that i'm putting out is to be a resource for you if you are interested in becoming an electrician and one thing i want to make sure that you know about is i do have a playlist that is basically about how to become an electrician in that playlist i go over every single stage of the application process from applying to taking your aptitude test to interviewing you know all that so i'm going to throw that up in the description if you guys haven't seen that yet but anyways today we're going to talk about the three things that i would want to make sure that you are aware of before you decide to pursue a career as an electrician now i just want to say right off the bat that i really do love being an electrician and i would consider this to be one of the best decisions that i've ever made so as i'm going through these three things i don't want this to sound like i'm complaining about my job or that i don't like it but i just want you to be informed if this is something that you're considering because these three things i'm going to talk about i would consider to be pretty important and i think that they are worthy of really considering before you choose to pursue this career so anyways here are the three things so the first thing that i don't like about being an electrician is that this is dangerous so being a tradesman in general is just going to be inherently dangerous uh you know you're working with power tools working up on ladders working around heavy machinery you know you got to hope that the other tradesmen around you know what they're doing and aren't going to make a mistake that results in you getting hurt okay working on a job site is just dangerous and there's really a million different ways that you can end up getting hurt even if it's not really your fault that you did get hurt but being an electrician really adds another layer of danger and of course that's going to be because you are working with electricity i think one of the scariest things about electricity is that it can look so quiet and so peaceful yet if you were to come into contact with it especially the wrong way you could end up getting seriously hurt or even killed when i first got into the trade especially when i was going through my boot camp with the ibew man uh they do a really good job of scaring you and really instilling in you a respect for electricity um you know i've heard tons of horror stories about things that can and unfortunately do happen to some people as a result of working with electricity and one of the really unfortunate things about being an electrician is a lot of the times when you get hurt it actually might not be your fault but it could be a result of a mistake that somebody else made you know one thing that's not super common but it can and does happen sometimes to people is encountering an arc flash which is basically where there is an explosion of vaporized copper you know right in front of you that can burn your face burn your body the light from the explosion can blind you the sound can deafen you the blast can send you flying back another thing is you could get hung up when you're working on a circuit that maybe you think is dead but it's actually live and you know one hand comes into contact with that wire and maybe if your other hand is accidentally holding on to something conductive well then you become a part of that circuit and if you're hung up that means that you are unable to let go unless somebody can shut off the circuit or pull out the ladder from under you or whatever they got to do so i'm not going to get too into those things in this video but just understand that there are some very real dangers of working with electricity now thankfully i've never experienced either those situations but i have been in plenty of situations where i really could have gotten seriously hurt and thinking back to those situations a lot of them were a result of somebody telling me that something was safe to work on when in reality it wasn't safe to work on so basically what i've learned is when it comes to my safety i don't want to trust anybody okay i want to double check everything myself i want to follow all the rules and procedures you know even if it just seems so convenient to get something done quick you know i think about my family i want to go home and see them they want me to come home so you know just don't get complacent take your safety very seriously and if you do then you can really mitigate most of these risks that are inherent to working with electricity now the second thing that i don't like about being an electrician is the fact that it can be pretty physically demanding one of the things that surprised me as soon as i got into this trade was just how repetitive some of the tasks that we do can be and even if the task that you're doing in and of itself is not very physically demanding the fact that you're doing that same thing over and over and over again can actually cause you some harm i remember when i first got into this trade i was working in our company's prefab shop and i was doing so many repetitive tasks you know all throughout the day that i actually got to a point where i couldn't even use a pizza cutter to cut pizza because my grip was just so weak now over time i really did start to get used to that and i can actually cut a pizza now but what you'll see in a lot of especially older guys that have been doing this for a long time is they can get carpal tunnel or arthritis or you know whatever else because a lot of the things that we do can be pretty repetitive one thing that you might not think about that electricians actually do a lot is working overhead like this with their hands above their head and you know whether you're swapping out a light or working on fire alarm or whatever it is that you're doing when you're working like this all day you you definitely feel it you know whether it's in your neck or in your back and you know me i was working like this overhead quite a bit last month and you know i was getting really sore and actually got to the point where i woke up in the morning and my neck was just completely stiff and i couldn't straighten it out actually for a couple of days obviously it got better i can move my neck now um you know and you do stretches in the morning to try to make sure that things like that don't happen but regardless you know uh you are gonna be working overhead a lot you are gonna get sore but it's just kind of part of being an electrician and you know you kind of get used to it now i get it those things may not seem like too big of a deal but there are some things that we do that are in and of themselves very physically demanding you know sometimes you may be digging a trench or lifting heavy pipe carrying heavy material or doing a big wire pull which man that can be exhausting and you know if you're coming from a job where you are working in an office or you're working in retail or you're just not used to standing all day then this can be kind of a surprise and can take some getting used to you know you may not you may not be used to getting cuts and scrapes and you know bruises from doing physically demanding work but these are things that you will get used to but um it's just something to be aware of all right so the third thing that i don't really like about being an electrician are the conditions that we often have to work in so as an electrician a lot of times you're going to be the first ones to show up to a job site and also the last ones to go home after the job is pretty much done so what that means is there is a very good possibility that you are going to end up working outside at some point in your career which means that you could be working in very very hot conditions or very very cold conditions when i first became an apprentice electrician after i finally got out of my company's prefab shop the job site that i got sent to we were working outside pretty much in the middle of the winter and man it was freezing it was not something that i was used to and i just remember i was you know literally shivering pretty much every day at work for you know a few months and it wasn't something that i was used to but it is just something that you kind of have to deal with and it's part of being an electrician now aside from weather conditions you may also find yourself working in some pretty nasty environments um you know i'm working in a hospital right now and you know if the duct guys are removing ducts you don't know what weird diseases or viruses could potentially be in those old ducks that are taken down there's times when you're going to be working in very dusty environments where you're working around silica you know if they're working with concrete or you know demoing stuff there's times where you may be you know fishing walls and you're gonna be working around fiberglass insulation a lot um you know and even times you might run into potential asbestos exposure so these are things that you know you do everything that you can to avoid but you know working a full career as an electrician you are going to be exposed to at least some of these things throughout your career and you know it's just something to be aware of so that's the three things that i personally don't like about being an electrician but in my opinion they're not big enough reasons at least for me to decide not to do this as a career but maybe they are for you and so that's why i'm making this video so you can actually really consider these things all right you guys well i think that is it i really appreciate you watching this video and i hope that you found it to be informative um if you guys enjoyed this just please consider giving me a thumbs up it really helps promote my channel um so more people can also see this content and then if you haven't already would you just please consider subscribing to my channel you know i'm committed to being a resource for you and i hope that you will utilize me and ask me questions in the comments because really that's what i'm here for and then also i just want to say i do have an instagram account um my name is at mad electrician official so consider following me there too because i will also upload additional content on my instagram page so thank you so much you guys have a good one

Channel: Mad Electrician

Views: 61,414

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Keywords: Things I don’t like about being an electrician, Things I hate about being an electrician, Should I be an electrician, Electrician, Ibew, Apprentice electrician, Electrician apprentice, How to become an electrician, Becoming an electrician, Things to consider, Mad electrician, Njatc, Neca, Local 48, 3 things I don’t like about being an electrician, Trade school, Career, Trades, Construction, Apprentice, Commercial electrician

Id: kmFJvvmsXcs

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020