I Pity future of Industry

[Brightspark2]

They need guidance, so get him told.

One of the first few days my apprentice started to get his phone out all the time, so I told him straight. Now he only gets it out on his dinner.

Tell him to get his hands out his pocket and to ask you what you want him to do next. Tell him he should be watching you and knowing what tools you want next. I remember having to be told things when I first started.

IMO this all part of the training for them in the first few days/weeks. My apprentice is now very good to the point that other tradesmen on site will notice and compliment him, he's only been with me 9 months.

You need to be teaching him, I take it as part of my job to teach him and develop him to be a good electrician. There not just cheap labour as some companies like to think.

 

[7029 dave]

Get rid then!!!

 

[Knobhead]

From what I’ve read so far I wouldn’t let an apprentice near any of you.
Once you take on the role of instructor you take on responsibilities as does the apprentice. I was a company approved instructor before I came out of my time, as an apprentice I would have a younger apprentice with me. You learn a damn site quicker with someone asking questions.

The company was one of the biggest multinationals and had a good outlook on training and apprenticeships. If you put the effort in they would bend over backwards to help.
It was drummed in to tradesmen that the apprentice is there to learn, its part of their job to teach.
Years later with another company I went for formal qualifications to teach tradesmen to teach apprentices.

The apprentice isn’t the gofor, teaboy, etc

One tested my patience with using his phone, I banned him from using it. He thought he’d got me sussed, vanish to the bogs. A fire hose over the door sorted that out! He should have turned the keypad tones off.

 

[Des 56]

Leaving aside for the moment the attitude of the apprentice on the job,lets look at the attractions of the trade

It was (past tense)a respected trade
It was well paid
It was a trade (unlike most others) that required the practitioner to have a few polished marbles in his upstairs
It was taught and mentored by others who came before that beneited from all those positives

Wind on to the present and the attractions of this trade

It is diluted
It is practised by a percentage who may not have enough polished marbles up top,because
It does not require the same skill level to practice as it once required
It is a add on only(domestic) to other manual trades
It is but one of the skills of the multi trade industrial tech operative
It can be a physical and dirty job
It still requires more paper based admin than all others

It is competing against many other occupations that require the polished marbles in this IT age
The IT jobs are better paid
The IT jobs don't mean getting dirty fingernails and taking your work everywhere you go after your daytime hours are done

These are some of the reasons many would not even consider this occupation
It follows that where there is take up amongst whats left of the apprentice electrican candidates,the pot is skimming the lower reaches

Some may be failed wanna be IT operatives and this trade ends up as a reluctant "have to take some sort of job"


Interest or lack of it,its understandable if not excusable

 

[Dcf]

I've watched over the years the decline of apprentice standards all of which have been well documented in previous posts.
as des said it was respected trade with wide and interesting scope of work.
not so much now due to things like off site manufacturing , putting bits of the trade into the "specialist" categories and the like.

my old gaffer always had at least 1 x first year, second year, third year and fourth year apprentice at any time.
he was quite clever in the way he played you by putting you up against the older apprentices on a job and getting you to out perform the older lads.
built up your confidence and ability without you even knowing it and was getting you ready to deal with life as a time served man.
i found if you kept a laddie interested it was half the battle and to make him part of your team
so instilling a work ethic and a mutual respect in them.

when all these muppets leave school these days they get told they can be anything they want to be
couple that with todays i want it all and want it now with no effort on my part attitude and its no wonder old men like me are grumpy

 

[GLENNSPARK]

I feel your pain, We had an 18 Year old who's only interests were Texting his mates, smoking cigarettes and phoning in sick !

Complete waste of time and effort on our part as he never went to college when supposed to.

I remember being that age of course I do (17 years ago now) but was never this rude and disrespectful.

Social Media has a lot to answer for, !

Good luck

we`v got one rite now who for the life of him just will not put his bloody phone down..

i wouldn`t mind but he is 23 and a father...

I was changing a dis board this one time...he kept dragging me away from what i was doing to show him how to connect a fitting....6 chuffin times it took and then after all that he drilled the cable...

it was just the other day i was showing him how to locate hidden scants with a bit of wire to `measure` where they were in the false wall (this was after the third time of him cutting out plasterboard boxes where noggins were)...was explainin & showing him how to go on...turned round and he`s only got his earphones on...tappin away on his phone....

so i dont bother now...

if theres anything to fetch its `here you...go get it`

anything to sweep up its `here...go do that`

anything to sink into brick/breeze its` go sink them in`

as far as i`m concerned the boy is a labourer...as he wont make an electrician as long as theres a hole in his arse...

i`m sorry but he just wont...i`v seen enough to know that...

 

[Geordie Spark]

From what I’ve read so far I wouldn’t let an apprentice near any of you.
Once you take on the role of instructor you take on responsibilities as does the apprentice. I was a company approved instructor before I came out of my time, as an apprentice I would have a younger apprentice with me. You learn a damn site quicker with someone asking questions.

The company was one of the biggest multinationals and had a good outlook on training and apprenticeships. If you put the effort in they would bend over backwards to help.
It was drummed in to tradesmen that the apprentice is there to learn, its part of their job to teach.
Years later with another company I went for formal qualifications to teach tradesmen to teach apprentices.

The apprentice isn’t the gofor, teaboy, etc

One tested my patience with using his phone, I banned him from using it. He thought he’d got me sussed, vanish to the bogs. A fire hose over the door sorted that out! He should have turned the keypad tones off.

Same as me.

I had an apprentice to look after when I was 17 and two when I was 19.

Ten years later I was an EITB Registered instructor at a multinational company with 84 of them to look after, and like you Tony, I had my ways of dealing with the unruly ones.

 

[Knobhead]

Geordie the worse I had were lads on their placement from university. I couldn’t take my eye off them for a moment. Academically brilliant, knew it all in theory, no sense of practicalities or safety.

I used to dread the summer, I’d be waiting for the phone call so the boss could introduce me to my latest burden, I would have them for a month at a time on shifts.

OK it was my own fault I got lumbered with them. I’d gone off on one of my rants about “bloody draftsmen not having a clue about the real world.” I shot myself in the foot because the boss agreed with me.

I did get something out of it, they would sit me down and go through PLC programming with me in between jobs. They got me sold on how plants should be controlled.
Can’t take that away from them.

What goes around, comes around.
I changed companies a couple of times and one of the now graduates showed up on the job. A major refurbishment of the plant. We were stuck with the existing PLC’s Modicon 984’s, he’s never seen one before.
I was supposed to be assisting him as I knew the plant layout and sequence, he didn’t know the PLC. We had a great working relationship, he did what I told him. He left and I got transferred to the vandals department (R&D).

 

[Geordie Spark]

Geordie the worse I had were lads on their placement from university. I couldn’t take my eye off them for a moment. Academically brilliant, knew it all in theory, no sense of practicalities or safety.

I used to dread the summer, I’d be waiting for the phone call so the boss could introduce me to my latest burden, I would have them for a month at a time on shifts.

OK it was my own fault I got lumbered with them. I’d gone off on one of my rants about “bloody draftsmen not having a clue about the real world.” I shot myself in the foot because the boss agreed with me.

I did get something out of it, they would sit me down and go through PLC programming with me in between jobs. They got me sold on how plants should be controlled.
Can’t take that away from them.

What goes around, comes around.
I changed companies a couple of times and one of the now graduates showed up on the job. A major refurbishment of the plant. We were stuck with the existing PLC’s Modicon 984’s, he’s never seen one before.
I was supposed to be assisting him as I knew the plant layout and sequence, he didn’t know the PLC. We had a great working relationship, he did what I told him. He left and I got transferred to the vandals department (R&D).

I had two of thos academic types too - all brain and no common sense. Ask them to park a push bike and it would fall over.

The worst of the two became the Assistant Manager ......

R&D is fun too. I had carte' blanche there - whatever I wanted I got - including one time three chainsaw motors (petrol) which I strapped to a pallet outside the general office window and ran all three together at full chaff - about 8,00 RPM I think - until they destroyed themselves. The office girls were not happy ......

We made a mechanical mole for the then Gas Council Engineering Research which was a bit of a monster in 3 telescopic sections hydraulically driven with an expanding body - again hydraulically driven. The sequence was controlled by cams on a rotating shaft operating valves which controlled the flow of the hydraulic fluid.

It worked perfectly on test but then we realised this thing was going to be crawling about underground like a worm and there were masses of moving parts just asking to get stuffed full of clarts.

So a covering device was designed, ordered, made and delivered. It was like a 6 foot long 18 inches wide condom and the next problem was fitting the damned thing. Six burly blokes from the sister company which was a concrete drilling and cutting operation were enlisted and with help of copious amounts of grease, an equal amount of bad language and a couple of tyre levers and the thing was on.

It worked perfectly on the open ground of the factory yard, but when it was taken to the moors at Otterburn and sent on it's merry way under the ground the damned thing veered off course and lost itself.

 

[Deleted member 72666]

I had two of thos academic types too - all brain and no common sense. Ask them to park a push bike and it would fall over.

The worst of the two became the Assistant Manager ......

R&D is fun too. I had carte' blanche there - whatever I wanted I got - including one time three chainsaw motors (petrol) which I strapped to a pallet outside the general office window and ran all three together at full chaff - about 8,00 RPM I think - until they destroyed themselves. The office girls were not happy ......

We made a mechanical mole for the then Gas Council Engineering Research which was a bit of a monster in 3 telescopic sections hydraulically driven with an expanding body - again hydraulically driven. The sequence was controlled by cams on a rotating shaft operating valves which controlled the flow of the hydraulic fluid.

It worked perfectly on test but then we realised this thing was going to be crawling about underground like a worm and there were masses of moving parts just asking to get stuffed full of clarts.

So a covering device was designed, ordered, made and delivered. It was like a 6 foot long 18 inches wide condom and the next problem was fitting the damned thing. Six burly blokes from the sister company which was a concrete drilling and cutting operation were enlisted and with help of copious amounts of grease, an equal amount of bad language and a couple of tyre levers and the thing was on.

It worked perfectly on the open ground of the factory yard, but when it was taken to the moors at Otterburn and sent on it's merry way under the ground the damned thing veered off course and lost itself.

So that's why all these sink holes are appearing!

 

[Robotstar5]

Last place I was at took on 3 engineering apprentices (pretty good for a small company) 2 wanted to work and the third thought it was a meal ticket, failed to go to college, came into work late "forgotten" clock card so paid from shift start.

Where I am now does a first year intensive college course with no practical skills at all, at least when I did mine we had basic workshop skills, how to use hand/power tools etc. The lad we have with us is very keen to learn, I told him one Friday that on the Monday I wanted him to demonstrate safe isolation proceedure and gave him some pdf's to read, give him his due, on the Monday he demonstrated the process perfectly.

 

[tidyboiler]

I had two of thos academic types too - all brain and no common sense. Ask them to park a push bike and it would fall over.

The worst of the two became the Assistant Manager ......

R&D is fun too. I had carte' blanche there - whatever I wanted I got - including one time three chainsaw motors (petrol) which I strapped to a pallet outside the general office window and ran all three together at full chaff - about 8,00 RPM I think - until they destroyed themselves. The office girls were not happy ......

We made a mechanical mole for the then Gas Council Engineering Research which was a bit of a monster in 3 telescopic sections hydraulically driven with an expanding body - again hydraulically driven. The sequence was controlled by cams on a rotating shaft operating valves which controlled the flow of the hydraulic fluid.

It worked perfectly on test but then we realised this thing was going to be crawling about underground like a worm and there were masses of moving parts just asking to get stuffed full of clarts.

So a covering device was designed, ordered, made and delivered. It was like a 6 foot long 18 inches wide condom and the next problem was fitting the damned thing. Six burly blokes from the sister company which was a concrete drilling and cutting operation were enlisted and with help of copious amounts of grease, an equal amount of bad language and a couple of tyre levers and the thing was on.

It worked perfectly on the open ground of the factory yard, but when it was taken to the moors at Otterburn and sent on it's merry way under the ground the damned thing veered off course and lost itself.

So why haven't you introduced me to the owner of this!!!!!! :dita: :wub:

 

[Geordie Spark]

So why haven't you introduced me to the owner of this!!!!!! :dita: :wub:

I can't ..... it's lost somewhere under Otterburn Moor where it was last seen in 1977.

 

[UNG]

There is not a lot more that can be said of the apprentices of the last 10 years or so that hasn't already been said. The rot set in when the mobile phone operators introduced that distraction call textual intercourse that was the start of wanting to be somewhere else while at work with the move to smart phones and the social media sites this has just continued the slide. You only have to look around all workplaces nowadays most people under a certain age cannot do more than a few minutes work without consulting their personal communication device and they can't have and concentrate on a one to one conversation without replying to their latest messages
This technology while it is a pain on site during the working day also provides access to a great resource called the internet that saves hours of ploughing through books at the library to research an answer but most don't see it that way and being deprived of it during working hours is seen as some sort of infringement of of their rights

The problem the industry has is that these days that the more academic students at 16 are pushed towards A levels and the university system and those that leave school at 16 are the people who don't aspire to go down the academic route this leaves a poor choice pool for the apprenticeship schemes and the people who have no interest in the work other than the pay packet at the end of the week is what is left to pick from, it's a little harsh I know but for every good apprentice now I would suggest he or she is outnumbered by a good margin by the disinterested lot

 

[Geordie Spark]

[/COLOR]

So that's why all these sink holes are appearing!

Exactly!

I think I must have a lot to answer for.

But all the thing was meant to do was tunnel under a road from one side to the other leaving a nice hole to shove a gas pipe through behind it.

It worked great in the factory yard tunnelling through a heap of sand, but that heap of sand didn't have stones in it to deflect the damned thing off course ............


Well, how was I to know??

 

[shanky887614]

There is not a lot more that can be said of the apprentices of the last 10 years or so that hasn't already been said. The rot set in when the mobile phone operators introduced that distraction call textual intercourse that was the start of wanting to be somewhere else while at work with the move to smart phones and the social media sites this has just continued the slide. You only have to look around all workplaces nowadays most people under a certain age cannot do more than a few minutes work without consulting their personal communication device and they can't have and concentrate on a one to one conversation without replying to their latest messages
This technology while it is a pain on site during the working day also provides access to a great resource called the internet that saves hours of ploughing through books at the library to research an answer but most don't see it that way and being deprived of it during working hours is seen as some sort of infringement of of their rights

The problem the industry has is that these days that the more academic students at 16 are pushed towards A levels and the university system and those that leave school at 16 are the people who don't aspire to down the academic route this leaves a poor choice pool for the apprenticeship schemes and the people who have no interest in the work other than the pay packet at the end of the week is what is left to pick from, it's a little harsh I know but for every good apprentice now I would suggest he or she is outnumbered by a good margin by the disinterested lot

Thats true, I was one of about 6 that went to do a levels realised this isnt what I want to do.

We all ended up at the same college 20miles away and didnt mention that we were not going onto second year or anything.

Ironic that most of the older apprentices are either in a carear change or similar situation

 

[Sarz11]

Can i just say given the chance to be a sparks mate (offers welcome) when i can i am completely new but am really determined would work hard and make awesome tea. So i am writing this on my behalf. Yes i love banter but i joined to learn and have already so im sure i def would so much on the job. Id MAKE SURE i was on time, i dont eat a lot or smoke so lunch breaks and breaks dnt bother me and il do whatever i can/allowed. I feel sad that lazy unintrrested ppl let the side down because wer not all same. I had to be interviewed twice for college to make sure i was genuinely interested (think they were shocked). Its probably really frustrating as when i have students like that it infuriates me but dont mean wer all same. Im not that young eurgh

 

[Poult12]

Thats poor when Im currently looking for an company to take me on as my current one is not helping me pass my course. Nearly done 2 years and heading into the 3rd with only the logbook to do and my company does nothing to help; let alone do any major install to help me gain experience

 

[pepparz]

most youngens are like wheel barrows, they'll only go as far as you push em.

 

[Sarz11]

most youngens are like wheel barrows, they'll only go as far as you push em.

Phhhhhh rude dnt u mean wer like wheelbarrows to carry u old buggers in!!

 

[pepparz]

Phhhhhh rude dnt u mean wer like wheelbarrows to carry u old buggers in!!

im not refering to, you u seem eager (to learn).

 

[pepparz]

any way i'm not old (only if you count dog years lol).

 

[pepparz]

plus any youths not interested in learning wouldnt be on this forum!

 

[Sarz11]

plus any youths not interested in learning wouldnt be on this forum!

I literally stumbled across this forum looking up something else electrical literally so happy i did. Its so nice to learn from and talk to ppl who are knowledgeable and funny and a bit like me (not in looks) do u no how long iv waited. I like how ur referring to us as youths but im not eurgh vomit alert

 

[pepparz]

I literally stumbled across this forum looking up something else electrical literally so happy i did. Its so nice to learn from and talk to ppl who are knowledgeable and funny and a bit like me (not in looks) do u no how long iv waited. I like how ur referring to us as youths but im not eurgh vomit alert

if ur not a youth then i'm not referring to you.

 

[Sarz11]

if ur not a youth then i'm not referring to you.

Oh no please say im a youth :,(

 

[Guest111]

When I retired I was still doing odd bits here and there as you do,anyway a mate's son wanted to be a spark but couldn't get on anywhere,he went to college and came doing bits and bobs with me,I had to tell him a couple of times about texting but then he sorted himself out.He'd fetch and carry,run to the shops,do all the heavy lifting and take on most of the work if I was having an off day.He was absolutely brilliant,he was more like a son than a trainee,Eventually he saw a placement advertised and I gave him a reference,it was only for the final year and he got it.He's fully qualified now and still talks about the time we had together.His instructor at college said he must have been learning off an old git because he'd been taught the proper way to do things,didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult.lol

 

[Sarz11]

When I retired I was still doing odd bits here and there as you do,anyway a mate's son wanted to be a spark but couldn't get on anywhere,he went to college and came doing bits and bobs with me,I had to tell him a couple of times about texting but then he sorted himself out.He'd fetch and carry,run to the shops,do all the heavy lifting and take on most of the work if I was having an off day.He was absolutely brilliant,he was more like a son than a trainee,Eventually he saw a placement advertised and I gave him a reference,it was only for the final year and he got it.He's fully qualified now and still talks about the time we had together.His instructor at college said he must have been learning off an old git because he'd been taught the proper way to do things,didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult.lol

R u near me? If not what a shame!!!!

 

[Guest111]

R u near me? If not what a shame!!!!

no sorry north west

 

[Sarz11]

Aw ok

 

[app95]

Dont class all apprentices as the same. I am a second year, yes I might go on my phone once in a while and go to sleep on dinner, this doesnt make me a bad apprentice! Lads like having me with them as they know I know what I am doing! Should us apprentices make a thread saying how rubbish our sparks are as they have been asleep on dinner or on thir phones whilst they should be at work? Go and talk to your apprentice and tell him the problems you have with him otherwise he will not know what he is doing wrong!

 

[shanky887614]

I did some sleeping today, finished in morning and was waiting on commissioning engineer to cross reference our list with bms to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

After the snooze it was time to go home

 

[guest119]

Sleeping at lunchtime is bad body language.

Boydy

 

[app95]

How is a power nap bad body language? They have been proven to make you more productive in the afternoon so......

 

[SPARTYKUS]

Sleeping at lunchtime is bad body language.

Boydy

Boydy :devil2:

Thats the whole of Spain out then :29:

 

[RobFlaherty]

I would bite your hands off for an opportunity!

I am 30 years old, career changer, already have my own hand tools, CSCS, transport and a mature, responsible attitude to learning the trade.

If any of you have any full-time work to offer in the North West, please let me know. I will be an asset to your business!

Cheers,

Rob