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Meet an Electrician · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barby.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Equal parts informative and titled.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: For all of our new listeners, we highly recommend that you go to our intros, learn a little bit about Don and myself, Elsa.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And without further ado, let's go ahead and jump right in.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what was your first paying job?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, believe it or not, I was in sixth grade.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And my dad would umpire softball games.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I love to go with him just to hang out with my dad.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the scorekeeper didn't show up one day one night.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so my dad goes, Well, my son can keep score.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Okay, so they handed me the score, the scores book, and I got the lineups, and I I made it out and I did three games and I and I got paid five dollars a game.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that was back in like 1969, I was in sixth grade.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they asked me if I wanted to do it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I said, sure.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually had to get a work permit from school to allow it.
• 2:15
  unknown: Wow.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did that for a season, which was about 10 games, and that was my very first time getting paid.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So it was kind of young, but then after that, it was a paper route, which was I think most of the kids back in gosh, in the 70s, we all had paper routes in our neighborhoods.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so that we did that through junior high.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that gave us it made about$30 a month, about a dollar a day.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, gave me some spending money, which for a little kid is usually like candy bars and sodas.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, tell us a little bit about what you do now and then walk us through how you went from being a paper boy to your career.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you know, well, in in high school, I had some summer jobs and I worked with my brother-in-law for a little bit.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: He had a carpet company, and so you know, working summer uh a summer here and there.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I got out of high school, didn't really know what I was gonna do.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually got a job at a car stereo store and selling car stereos, and it actually would install them at from time to time too.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I got really interested in electronics and wiring things, which was always kind of fun to play with.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And when you get to have kind of unlimited access to all these things, it's like a kid in a candy store.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: You get to play a lot with the stereo equipment and stuff like that.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I decided to go back to school to study electrical engineering.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then my sister, who worked at Pac Bell at the time, she knew several people who had got their electrical engineering degree, but they went to work for the phone company, and the phone company actually paid them to go to school.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, that's a much better route than doing it by myself.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: I get paid to go to go to school.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I like that idea.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the only way to get into the phone company is either an installer, a splicer, or a lineman.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I put in my application.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: I got hired as a lineman, which was a lot of fun and terrifying because, you know, just climbing the poles and everything else.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: But we got to work out in some remote areas of which is now kind of San Juan Capostrano, but we were out in the middle of nowhere.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And anyway, worked out there for about a year.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: And what you would do is you would transfer after about a year's worth of work to get into what they called ESS or electronic switching.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And before I could do that, they put a freeze on all transfers.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't really care for being a lineman, so I decided that uh I was gonna quit.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this is about six months before I'm getting married, I'm engaged.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So basically quit.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my future wife, their neighbor, was an electrocontractor, and they were in in need of help.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I go, well, hey, I've got some background, I'll do that.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to work for them in July of 1979.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it was, I joked that I go, it's my summer job that I did for 45 years.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: That uh the the guy that uh was this the our kind of our our journeyman, he was one of his people very influential in my life because he was retired Navy and he was an electrician in the Navy and he was a master chief.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: This guy was a walking encyclopedia.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I got on-the-job training.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: I worked for them for two years, and I got so much information from him, and he taught me so much in the field while we were working.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then, like in the industry, what happens when you get spoiled, you go to maybe try and find work with somebody else.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so you kind of bounce around and you work uh with different uh contractors, and then I finally got with another contractor, worked with him for about 10 years, and before I went out on my own.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and over the years, you just kind of you know keep learning and learning.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of those things, especially in electrical, you have such diversity.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can have residential, commercial, light industrial, heavy industrial.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: So you kind of get an opportunity to kind of bounce around and see a lot of different things, and you kind of learn as you go.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: But once you get the basics down, you can kind of pick up on things you don't know yet.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of how it went.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a summer job 45 years later.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: You you had your own business then.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: How many years did you have your own business?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I had it for 30 years and then finally retired in uh 2020.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, January 1st, 2025.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was funny.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: My licenses all ran out at the end of 24, December 31st, 2024.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Woke up in January 1st, 2025, and it's like, I'm not a contractor anymore.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: All my license, all my insurance, everything that I've worked for for the last 30 years is gone.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I'm okay with that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm ready to retire.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a lot of people that were trying to talk me into staying.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was very fortunate, I got hooked up with a lot of contractors or a few contractors and a lot of people that I worked with for 20, 25 years.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: And even today I'm still in contact with them and we still become friends over the years.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And as a matter of fact, one of the really kind of disheartening things was is I did a lot of work in Sierra Madre, Altadina, and Pacific Palisades.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And probably about well, at least a dozen homes I worked on are now gone.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: They were burned to the ground.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had some people calling me, hey, would you come out of retirement?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, I said, I uh no, I can't.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: But like I told them, I said, hey, the next uh generation, they're doing good, they'll they'll be fine.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I have confidence that you know that the next generation will carry on and do just as good as we did.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So but yeah, that was that was the hard part sometimes about retirement.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And people call you and you're like, God, I loved working with them.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was fun, but yeah, it's just time to retire.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did you end up developing a specialty, like a certain kind of property or job that was your favorite?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, it was the custom stuff.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: That was the thing that, like I said, we I got to work on a lot of interesting houses, a lot of old homes.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've worked on uh several homes in Pasadena that are over 100 years old.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and got to work on a lot of God, how did I say this?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: I knew a lot of gate codes to get into houses for people that I can't tell you who it was.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: So cool.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it was well, it wasn't so much that they were famous, they just liked the low profile.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: And we got to do some really cool custom stuff to where things like it doesn't sound like it's a big deal, but like in this one bathroom, they had a full-length mirror from it was probably 15 feet long, 10 feet high.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: And there's three light fixtures had to be hung on it on the on the wall next to the mirrors.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they asked me, so is this something that you think you can do?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, Well, yeah, we can do it, but it's gonna take a while because we have to kind of engineer the bracket and make sure it sets on the mirror, doesn't crack the mirror because it'll break.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you it took a day and a half to hang three fixtures and chandeliers, we had several chandeliers that took about two days to hang and put together and fix everything that were hanging, say 25-30 feet from a skylight.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that uh yeah, so yeah, and it and it the chandelier came out of a very famous old musician's house that the interior decorator got.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: That yeah, it was about eight feet in diameter and probably about 10 feet tall.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so stuff like that I gotta work on, and several of the houses I got to work on too, like the one in Newport Coast, it was 15,000 square feet, and that took four years to build.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that was fun.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Got to when you get to work on things like that, it was more uh just instead of production work, it was custom.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And also, too, the the people were fantastic.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: They were they were fun to work with.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what was interesting about the job because I did commercial work, you know, when I first started out to where you're doing an office building and you have to install and hook up a hundred lights, and that's all you're doing for three days.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: All the same light, too.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Over and over and for.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's where you have to concentrate.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's the hard part, is just keeping your mind into it and just okay, got to get through them.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and that's the part of the job sometimes becomes kind of boring, but also too, you just have to just kind of work through it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, but it but you know, it's everything kind of it you get to learn a little bit from everything, even from when you had to trench, which I hated.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, granted, we had people doing a lot of trenching and stuff, but uh, we had to jump in there and do a lot of commercial feeds and stuff like that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: But that kind of thing, it's you have to start somewhere, and at least you know what it takes to do it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the thing is that I I I tell people, I said, when I took metal shop is freshman year, they made us make a chisel.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: We had to pound it out on the forward, we had to sharpen it, and then we had to take the chisel and basically cut a piece of metal with it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I asked the metal shop teacher, this seems really boring.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we doing this?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, Because this is the first step of learning how to do metal work.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't know this, then you don't know what it takes to make it.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you kind of learn that with you know, anything that you do.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you if you start off a square one and you pay attention, and like I was told, you have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth, use them accordingly.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Look, look, listen, and learn.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, and it's true, you know, that you do.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: You you just kind of take it all in and you kind of just file that away.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, over the years, there was things where problem arose, and it's something that I had dealt with 15 years earlier, and nobody knew.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, what's going on?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: I go, hang on.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and you're able to fix it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, How did you know that?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because I went through this a long time ago and I just and didn't think I'd ever come across it again, and it and it worked.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: And they all just laughed and they just kind of and this is wasn't, I don't know, three or four years before I retired, and they go, somebody made a comment.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we keep the old guys around.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you do, you just you have wisdom that the uh and hopefully you you pass that along to the next generation too.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the thing is trying to teach people to where I've seen people, especially in construction, that you know, they don't really want to maybe help somebody along.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: They want to try and keep them down so it's like, hey, don't want this person smarter than me.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, and I never had that attitude.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's like try and relay as much knowledge as you have to the next generation, the people that you're working with.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that way it makes everything easier for everybody.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, because we always tried to work as a team, especially in electrical, when you're not on the same page, I got shocked a few times because somebody basically wasn't listening and turned something back on when they shouldn't when we were still working on it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, so it's I don't want to say a matter of life and death, but it hurts.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what does it feel like to get an electric shock?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, fortunately in 45 years, I only got shocked probably less than five times.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's most of it was 120.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: You just feel like somebody's shaking your hand really fast, you know.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And there was one time I got shocked to 480.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: That hurt.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: That but yeah, that that hurt because somebody turned something on they weren't supposed to, and it was live and it was supposed to be off.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't lock it off.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, but anyway, it's it's funny how a lot of times, especially when you're working on something, you get shocked, and other people see you.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: As you get shocked, you jump back and then you turn around, you grab back to the wall, you grab the wires back because you you don't want to short out on something else.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they kind of laugh at you like, that didn't scare you.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did, but I was more worried about damaging the circuit, you know, so you kind of grab it and just get going.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, Yeah, I don't like that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's like, well, you just kind of have to deal with it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you said that when you started out, you were pursuing an electrical engineering degree, and then you ended up becoming an electrician.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And these days there's, you know, there's this tension point between all of these kids being told they need a college degree when really a lot of the jobs are in the trades, and there's a huge shortage of professionals working in the trades and interested in the trades.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we've lost the knowledge of how to work with our hands.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm curious, did you ever regret, you know, not becoming an electrical engineer and going that route that you had set out on?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, I never did.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: And for one, I can't sit at a desk that long.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: I liked being outside.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I liked being moving around and doing things.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, and even when I had to do office work when I had my own business, I just didn't, I never really enjoyed that part of it that much, you know, because and then I feel too, I learned so much going the other direction where I got to the point where I was helping design a lot of the houses that we did, and even some of the tenant improvements that we did.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: I got to design all the single line diagrams and everything and do all the load calculations, which I I had learned through the years that we submit to the city for the uh the power.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got to do a lot of that a little bit here and there, but still get to work in the field.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what surprised you most about this line of work that you were in?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: The diversity.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, when I first started out, I was doing like like business centers, you know, small business centers and some retail.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is, you know, same thing.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was you have 30 units and they're all basically the same.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, okay, you kind of get a feeling for how that goes.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then from that, we got to do some residential and then got to do light industrial and working with some big machine shops and stuff and the bigger power units and stuff like that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that was in this classification I had, I could work up to 600 volts, anything past that, your license, you know, you you start getting into more high power stuff.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a whole nother field I never got into because when we never dealt with it a whole lot.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: But it's the diversity of gosh, let me see.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: We did work for I say I can't want to really for some companies that dealt in the lottery system, to where we got to see the data centers built way back in the day and working with that and doing data, some of the data work and security systems and things to where if you try and figure everything out that uh is possible in electrical, it would take more than 45 years.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: It would take a long time.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the best part about your job?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, and it's funny that it it's the people that I got to work with.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it and I I tell everybody that I worked with all you have to do is show up on time, do a good job, be nice, and be clean.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the old joke that you see a lot of times.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh my gosh, an electrician with a broom or cleaning up is like finding Bigfoot.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, that's that wasn't us.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: We were, we were, well, when we started doing work for the banks back in the 80s when we were doing a lot of the the new ATMs when they were getting installed, we found out very quickly that if you dress nicer and you talk nicer in the banks, they treated you better.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you came in and you looked ratty, they treated you that way.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, we wear polo shirts and you know and keep and hate to say it, but there's some guys that use some colorful language.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, don't talk like that around the bank.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you learn very quickly that, and then all of a sudden it's like they they do, they start to treat you different.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: We did everything from dentist's office, doctor's offices, and when you look professional, they'll treat you like a professional.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it I'm reminded for some reason of that old expression, the cobbler's kids have no shoes.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find that your home electric pro uh projects don't get completed sometimes?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Should we ask your wife?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Should we ask your wife then?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: The one joke is the house we did out in the Palisades when they when we finished the house, they had a big dinner for everybody that had worked in the house.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: And before we got there, I told her, I go, Yeah, there's nothing in this house we can do in our house.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: They were, I tell you what, two of the absolutely sweetest people on the planet.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: You they were just so fun to work with.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: And everything in that house when it burned down, it was probably 20, almost 25 years old.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it still looked absolutely immaculate.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't any particular style other than just a beach house.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I told her this day, I go, it was just matter of fact, there was a light fixture that I made for that house.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that she had an upstairs workout room.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And she asked me, she goes, Could we I want to put a uh hanging fixture in this room?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is when we're roughing it in.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, where do you want it?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, fine, over here.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's in front of this bayfront window.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: And they were on the cliffs overlooking Rogers State Beach.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so she goes, This way I can, you know, I can work out and look at the beach.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, she had bought this one fixture, it's a 1940s style acorn fixture with like, oh, this just beautiful glass, but looked like an upside-down acorn.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so, anyway, but all but didn't have a chain for it or anything.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I had the chain from that big fixture that I told you, that big chandelier we hung from a skylight, and the base for it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it was very ornate.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, I made the fixture and I I I rewired it and put and hung it up there.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And she went up there, she looked at it, and she goes, No, that's no, that can't go there.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, You don't like it?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: And she goes, No, I love it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: That has to go in the entryway.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh there's no power in the entryway for it, and she goes, I know, I don't care.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I want it in the entryway.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: The entry entryway was painted and done.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: The painters in this house, there there was the entryway, it looked like wallpaper, but it was the same color in three different finishes.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it looked like it was like striped wallpaper, and the ceiling was was done up.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I told the painters, I go, you again, we have to open up the wall, we have to run power.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And she, and they're like, What?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, they just spent two weeks finishing just to get this all done.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we had to open it up, we had to hang it.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then when it finished, she said that uh after it was done, she goes, Everybody comes in and comments on that fixture.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I told her where the bass came from.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, it was a very famous old musician, and and and she goes, Oh my gosh, it is absolutely beautiful.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the one thing when that house burned.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, I really hope that fixture made it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those things you go, oh no, I don't think it did.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That one thing.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, but that's the thing I got to do is people would things like that, like even uh one of the houses I worked on was over 100 years old in Pasadena.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he wanted to keep as much of the original house as possible.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the fixtures would get kind of worn out.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I would take them down, take them apart, and rework them and then put them back together and rewire them so he could have the original fixtures from the house.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because when we did the remodel for the kitchen, just to show you how old the house was.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: My nephew was working with me at the time.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And when we tore out the wall, it was in plaster.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there was a key in the wall for the gas.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh and he goes, What's this for?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, gas lamp.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, A what?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Gas lamp.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was over the dinette.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I said they had gas light fixtures inside the house back when this house was built.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Look at the garage.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Yeah, what about it?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, not a garage, it's a horse, it's a carriage house.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's where the horses and the carriages went.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, because they didn't have cars.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, He looked at me like I had a foot grown out my forehead.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: He was like, What do you mean?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm going, Yeah, they didn't have that back then.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, Oh my God.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the kind of don't give me an idea of the fun stuff we got to work on back then.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: What about what what was the hardest part of your job?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, digging I didn't like, but there it's funny, I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend and that when I brought this up, he laughed.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you ever had a drill through you know not through metal but wood or anything like that, and you had to use a wood auger, there is a drill made by Milwaukee called the whole hog.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a big half-inch drill.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen more injuries from that drill because if you're drilling through something and the auger catches, the drill doesn't stop moving.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have to you have to brace yourself.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing probably weighs 10 pounds.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And when you start out, you you you learn very quickly to have a healthy respect for it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: And some of the augers we use were, you know, 18, 24 inches long, you know, inch in diameter.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if you catch a nail, yeah, you better hang on because you're gonna go for a ride.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the funniest stories about the whole hog, and this friend of mine reminded me of it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: We used to trade off, like when we were doing an apartment complex.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: And in the morning, one guy would drill and the other guy would run wire.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the afternoon, you trade.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, after a while, you get tired.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of times you have to drill the top plates, so you get tired of holding it over your head and drilling and stuff.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, anyway, he got tired.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: So after he got through drilling, he just took the drill and he rested it on his head.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: He had kind of frizzy hair.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: It sucked the hair into the drill.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: And he and he thought, okay, well, I'll just put it in reverse and back it out.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: The motor doesn't work like that.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Pulled a chunk of his hair out.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So every yeah, but I can't tell you how many times I've been bruised up.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think and then one time I did see a guy, he he broke an arm.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: It it caught and it spun around and pinned his arm and it and he actually fractured his arm with it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the worst part of the job.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you ever had to break that drill out, you're going, oh man, this is gonna be this is gonna be a long day.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Jeez.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the work or the industry, what would you change?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in the last couple of years, I would have to say, and this is I don't know how any other way to say this, but the layers, layers of BS that we have to deal with nowadays.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: It just seems that the the codes have gotten more restrictive to where we were joking around that if you had a kitchen island back when I first started, you could just put an island in and there's no big deal.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then I don't can't remember what year it was, probably early 80s, you have to have electrical on the island, you have to have plugs.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you run plugs and you put that in.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we put them on either side or you know, you're underneath, or whatever.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's like, oh no, that's not good enough.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, now they have to be, they can't be on the sides anymore because if you have something plugged in, a child can go by and hook on the cord or whatever.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: So now you have to have pop-ups in the top of the island.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that just is a whole nother layer of complication.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: You're going, yeah, you know, it's I don't it it it didn't need to be changed.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those things that I don't think I've ever heard of one person getting hooked on a cord that was, you know, most people don't leave stuff plugged in all the time anyway.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And probably the way that now that we have these breakers now that are called arc fault breakers, everything's got to be an arc fault breaker.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well it's more wiring, more congestion, more money, and it's just it's unnecessary.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember, God, I think it was oh gosh, I'm trying to think of who it was, but they said, and you get to the the point where we're writing laws to protect ourselves from ourselves, we're kind of getting out of hand.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's a myth that people believe about your job that just drives you nuts?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: That they know enough about electrical to do their own stuff at home.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: So true.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: We've we've fixed a lot of stuff to where you kind of you know see things and you go, oh my god, how did this not burn down?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you try and be nice about it to where you don't want to scare people.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I've seen some stuff where they go, Did they do it?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Did my husband do it right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it wasn't the way I would have done it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: And inside you're like, oh my God, I'm surprised your house didn't burn down.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that would be the biggest thing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's funny how a couple of times I've been to Home Depot and I've heard somebody at Home Depot giving it giving advice to where you're going, no, you can't do that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, but I would say that's probably the biggest, uh, the biggest myth.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it may sound easy and yeah, yes, it may work, but it probably in the long run isn't going to work out too well.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've actually seen several houses that have burnt or had fires because of something that a homeowner did.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any kind of pecking order on the job site?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are there do they, you know, are the framers prima donnas and you know, how does it work?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Painters and the carpenters.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody everybody thinks everybody else is a pre- Madonna.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're younger, if you were the little guy on the totem pole, you were just always looked down upon.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're just starting out, it's like as a rookie or a newbie, you know, that it's like, oh yeah, you don't know anything or whatever.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: But by and large, like I said, we all kind of work together.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we didn't think that we were above the the plumbers or the framers or the drywallers or anybody else.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Although there's some of the jobs that there's no way I could do it just because it's like any drywall or a guy, any guy that you know, the the tape and texturing and any letters, oh my god, that is the filthiest job ever.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: They get it everywhere.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you have to work around them, it's all over everything.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: It just and not only that, when they're when they're taping, the humidity goes up.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're kind of stuck inside someplace, you know, it's like 90% humidity, and it's just it sucks.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is the we wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've ever witnessed at work?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is in the early 90s, and we were working for a bank, and we were up in Englewood, and we would work at night because in the old bank setups, they had what was called the platform, which was opposite from the teller line.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where the bank manager sat and like the loan officer and stuff like that.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And when they was set out on the floor like that, they had this floor duct that was actually embedded in the concrete that had your data lines, your electrical, phone lines, stuff like that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: When they would remodel and they'd move things around, we'd have to go in and saw cut the floor, we'll pull the carpet up, saw cut the floor, reroute all of that uh conduit and everything to where the new location was going to go.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we were in Englewood one night, had the saw cutter in there.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so anyway, we told them, okay, the concrete's four inches thick, go down about three and three quarters, and we'll just bust out the last quarter that way.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times that ductwork is right underneath the concrete, and there's no leeway.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you cut through that, there's alarm lines, data lines, all this other stuff in there.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we all got our earplugs in, fog going, it's loud, it's noisy, and I needed something out of our van.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: So here it is, midnight in Englewood.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: I walk out the door of the bank, lock the van door behind me, and I walk around the corner, and there's like eight LAPD with guns drawn and on me, and I'm like, uh-oh.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they just said it basically freeze, okay, what's going on?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, alarm went off.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, oh, okay.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, No, the vault alarm went off.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, oh crap.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, When they go, What are you doing?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, we're remodeling doing it.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Okay, so needless to say, turn and walk back in.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: When I walk back in, there's all these uh police officers walking back in with me, and the guys are looking up.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Instantly looked at the saw cutter, like, guess what you just did?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so, anyway, we told them what was going on.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: They came in, saw what was going on, okay, that's fine.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the worst part is we have to call the bank manager.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: He has to come down and open the vault because we have to get in the vault, because that's where the alarm panel is.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we have to pull out all the wires and pull in all new wires and fix it.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we do that.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Needless to say, the uh manager wasn't real happy.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, even with all that, by eight o'clock the next morning, we had the carpet back down, everything was done, and the desks were back on, and it was everything was up and running.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Two nights later, we're in another bank, not too far from that one.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing happened again.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: We're in the bank.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're in the bank, and I'm inside and they take their mag light and he shines a light through the door and it hits me in the face.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: I went, Oh no.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Turn around and walk back over.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, all he said he goes, You guys did it again.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Multiple arm again.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Same guys, same same fock hunter, same everything.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: They walk in and they're just like, you know, okay, and so needless to say, uh, you had to call the bank manager, you had to come down, do it over again.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: At least he didn't end up like on the news that night or something.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, and even during the Northridge earthquake, there was a lot of damage to the banks, and we had to go in and do a lot of night work in all all around LA.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: And there were some bank locations and ATMs in parts of LA that were like in this indoor mall.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we had to go in there and basically disconnect everything and you know, so they could get everything torn apart.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it was almost like a disaster movie.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: There's emergency lights are on, water's dripping from pipes, and there's no, you know, and there's like no power and stuff.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it really did.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: It just felt like, okay, there's this is like a zombie apocalypse is getting ready to happen here.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it was kind of weird just to see the whole thing.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, and then one night we were working in in Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard, and we were out working on the side of the bank where the new ATM was gonna go.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it was funny, bus is going down the street, and this guy is in the street running behind the bus, barking at it like a dog.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you feel as far as being an electrician?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do you see the projectory of being an electrician now, even with AI?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Even like with the data centers and stuff.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um my niece's daughter's fiance, um, he just started out in electrical and they're doing a data center now.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: And he said it's a three-year project.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: And he's just starting out in electrical.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: So the good thing is he's gonna be able to see if everything from doing the underground feeds to get power to there to actually doing the infrastructure inside the data centers.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, the one thing nice about electrical is like it's you have framers, you're gonna frame a house and then you're done.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of even with plumbers maybe, but electricians, you've always got maintenance.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're always gonna be back there constantly upgrading things.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And in even when I first started out, I would say that the generational changes from equipment to the processes are about 10 years.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then now, gosh, it's far retired.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like like all of the materials and equipment and stuff, it's like down to three to five years that this generation after generation to where you even see some of the lighting panels and the control systems that they have.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's like, yeah, this is really neat, but how long is it gonna actually be relative?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because if something happens five years, oh, we don't make that anymore.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now you have to buy the new system.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why it there's always gonna be that demand for maintenance.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, once you once you build something, most of the trades, they're done.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're never they're never gonna come back.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the electricians, they're always gonna be coming back to fix things, upgrade things, and do things.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that was even on a lot of the houses we built, that going back and they want to add something and update this or update that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, and they would they would call us and you know, and just it was almost like nonstop work, which was nice.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the one thing with with even with AI, there's nobody that's gonna be able to put the hands on the the job and get it done except for people.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: And even though they may help you design it and build it, but you're always gonna have to have somebody there to actually do the physical work.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think that the the trades are a great way to go right now, especially with the expense of colleges now.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: And even like with me, at first when I went to school, I'm like, yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'll I'll take this.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds kind of interesting.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I've known several people that went through school, they got out and they never used their diploma in the field they wound up working in.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: So with this, it's like you can go out and you can either join a union or you know, go independent, but you can instantly start to earn money.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And surprisingly enough, I mean, uh, there's a lot of people around here.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: They start out at$80,$90,000 a year that, you know, with the cities and a lot of the counties and stuff.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: And there's nothing wrong with that, especially when you're just coming out and you really don't have the skills yet, but they're willing to train you and earn that much money.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's something to be said for that.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's your opinion on all the data centers that are being installed?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna have to figure out the power grid, because I honestly think that I mean, renewable energies, you know, that uh some people say that a wind and solar, that's the wave of the future, but it it's a great supplement.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I still think, and some people won't like this, nuclear is the way to go because it provides clean energy.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you some of the new systems that they have coming out now that other countries are working on that make a ton of sense.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: That, you know, I've I've heard some stuff about molten thorium reactors that are fail-proof that they can the size of a basketball court, can feed a city of 100,000 people for the next 30 years.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we have enough thorium in the United States for 500 years.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what, think about when you first started the industry working on a home versus working on a home now.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the big differences?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, what's funny that one of the first houses that my wife and I lived in was built in 1920, and it had a little electrical panel in there that had screw in fuses.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: And the joke was that if when you put Christmas lights at the end, you were gonna, you know, basically blow the fuse.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: So what do you do?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: You stick a copper penny in there and you screw it in so that way it won't short out, which is not real good because that'll cause a fire.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, first starting on houses, you know, a normal house would have a little uh hundred-amp panel in there, and that was plenty of power.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And even in the kitchens, there was maybe four circuits.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in a regular house, let's say a 1,500 square foot house, like you know, made in the 60s, you would have, I mean, just a couple of appliances, one TV, and there were basically maybe two to three plugs per bedroom, and in the in the bathroom, you know, one plug.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then one of the last houses we did, we had 10 circuits just in the kitchen.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Just because where's your coffee maker going?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, where's your microwave going?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where's it?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I have this and I have that, I have this.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the bedrooms now that uh it's like we didn't have just one one plug on one wall, because when this is custom, this wasn't, this is more actually more stringent than code, because code will say every 10 to 12 feet or whatever usable wall space.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: But we would have like, okay, where's your bed gonna go?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you want plugs on the other side of the bed.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, now you want, oh, this is my desk, and this is that.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden you're like, okay, 120, 25 amp panels, not big.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: We need a 200 amp panel.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then they go, Oh, by the way, we have two Teslas.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, well, car chargers.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's and, you know, and the power requirements have just skyrocketed in homes from when we started to what we have now, to where, you know, now it's like every room has a TV, every room has at least a, well, I wouldn't say data lines because actually one of the last houses I did where he wanted basically data lines to all the bedrooms.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: We figured it up after we finished, pretty good sized house.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was about 4,000 square square feet.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think we had almost two miles of data lines run in the house, going from point to point, central point, from the doorbell, everything else.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when I told him, I go, Wi-Fi's gonna just delete all this.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Oh no, no, I want to make sure I have hard wires.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, he never used it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh because it because it had changed, and he goes, Oh, everything's Wi-Fi now.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Yeah, I know, I told you that.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: So the and with the smart homes now, especially with the lighting controls, and I mean, especially with solar now, the last house we did, it actually had a panel that had all of the transfer switches and everything built into the panel.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was made by a company that is a derivative from Tesla and motherboard in there, everything else.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so when your solar panel kicks in, you can actually kick off certain circuits in the house that are unnecessary to not put too much of a load on the solar and the battery hook up to it.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was all built into it.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, it it it's a world of difference from where we started out to where a basic house, you could probably, you know, you could get it done in a matter of a day or two.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's probably about a week of just with all the everything that goes into it and all the smart wiring that goes into it.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and it just seems like it's going to get better and faster and change in the next five years, it's probably going to be completely different.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: What else, L?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about your retirement for a second here.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, we've we have yet to have anybody on our pod that is actually full on retired.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: What is a day in the life?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's your get ready with me look like?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you know what's funny is that getting up early is just ingrained in my DNA now.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm up every day, usually between four and 4:30, and come down, make coffee.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then by 6 to 6:30, my wife and I, we get the dog and we walk every day two to three miles and get that exercise in.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's funny, we kind of went through a period of time to where we were doing a lot of work at the house, just things you've always wanted to do.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the really the great thing about retirement as compared to working is that when you're working and you have Saturday, Sunday, and you have a project you want to get done, and you're trying to get it done fast and it's not quite working out, you get frustrated and you're going, I've got to get this done by Sunday because I got to go back to work on Monday.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: When you're retired, a lot of times you get halfway through the day and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna stop.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: I can pick it up again tomorrow because I've got more time to do it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually nicer because you can go slower and take your time.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I find that, you know, the the old story is that you know, slow down, you'll go faster.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: You don't get in a hurry.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you really do get to apply that in retirement.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can actually slow down.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: This has always been an argument in my house.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do we leave our appliances plugged in or do we unplug them?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Great question, Elsa.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well done.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, most of the modern appliances, they're they're really not a whole lot of drain on them.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but things like when we go on vacation, I unplug the toaster and our coffee maker.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: But most of the other that's about it, that most of them you can really plugged in.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: And not only that, like I said, there's so many protection devices on it now that do we have to do that.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for being a guest on our show today.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Don and I have learned so much about being an electrician, or rather, not being an electrician.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: All the reasons we're not qualified.
• 41:51
  unknown: Right.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: From the days of keeping score in Little League to a nice retirement and taking it easy.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: We want to thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: I hope this helped.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for this week's confession.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a workplace confession of your own we're all ears, hit us up at our email address.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge click, your coffee strong, and your stories wild.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.