10
| Rural Water Association of Arizona
W
hen I started in the water
and wastewater field in 1975
it was because my soon to be
boss gave someone a nasty job they didn’t
like so he quit. Then I got hired to do
the nasty job. Then they told me I had to
work weekends and be on-call 24/7/365.
But they also told me you could study
and take the state exams and get certified,
which sounded good to me because I had worked a lot of jobs, in
various fields, but I had no credentials. I had no piece of paper
that said “This guy knows what he’s doing. So in effect I had no
career. I was tired of having “JOBS” I wanted a “Career”.
Since my work on the weekends was easy
and left me lots of free time, I studied.
In the first year I took and passed 4
exams. Every year I would take more
exams. I took every opportunity to get
more education, classes and certificates.
I did back flow & became certified so I
could start a backflow program in the
small town I worked in, I took haz-mat, I took chlorine safety
classes, electrical safety classes, trenching & shoring classes,
confined space classes. I changed jobs & worked in a laboratory
for 7 years. I spent 2 years setting up an Industrial Pre-treatment
program. I had a boss who was offsite a lot and I learned to do his
paperwork for him and read and understand permits and how to
do all the related sampling and reporting.
I have changed jobs several times since then, but I have never
failed to learn some new and different things. If someone off the
street shows up at my job site to do a job I follow them around,
and the whole time I am thinking, hey I can do this. Then if I
can I get the tools needed and I teach myself how to do it. I have
walked on jobs where they have saved more than double my salary
just because they did not have to hire contractors to do all the
things that I can do myself.
This sounds a lot like I am bragging, but the point is this: because
I worked hard to make this my career, and NOT just another job,
I became marketable to many employers in the business. Jobs at
the entry level of the water and wastewater industry are pretty low
paying (a lot more than when I started)
and you get a lot of low pay and nasty
jobs, and you are on-call and you work
weekends, and you are pretty miserable.
However if you work past all of that
and you make a career of it, and you
get as much expertise as you possibly
can, then you work your way up above
all that, and you can pick and choose
the jobs you want, and make a good salary too. So if you are
new to the business, you need to decide is this my career, or is
it just another job. Because the water and wastewater industry
has a lot of crappy jobs, but they also have some fantastic career
opportunities waiting for you.
Job or Career: Which is This?
By Neal Whittle, RWAA Circuit Rider II
“...
because I worked hard to
make this my career, and
NOT just another job, I
became marketable to many
employers in the business.”
link
link
link
link