An Unexpected Career

Surfing the "I don't know what I want to do" wave all the way to plumbing's shore

I like to tell people that when I was a kid, I didn’t know the difference between a Crescent wrench and a crescent roll. This is, of course, only partially true: I was well aware that I could eat the latter and not the former, but I didn’t then realize that I would one day rely on the former to eat the latter or at all!

I, like many of my fellow Millennials, had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. From kindergarten until about 5th grade, I might have said “bat scientist” (shoutout to all the chiropterologists out there). One year early on I spiced it up and thought maybe I would be an astronaut. I recall wanting to be an inventor and dreamt up an Inspector Gadget-style glove that was basically just his hat but on my hand. In middle school I paid no mind to my future although I felt a pull in a pastoral direction; ditto that for my 9th and 10th grade years. As a junior in high school, I began to feel a little pressure to, you know, think concretely about my future, and I realized: I’m 15 and I still have no idea what I want to do after graduation. Teachers, friends, and a sweet old lady named Pearl at Tom Thumb are asking me “what’s next?” and I don’t have an answer.

So I took a look at my options.

I…I, uh…I study Chinese? Maybe I can do something with that? Sure. But what? Maybe work for, like, the government? The CIA? That sounded like a death sentence. I did a Google search. No. No. No. Ah-ha! The Army. My parents begged me away from this option after the recruiter left our house. International Business? I…s-sure. Okay. Yeah. International Business.

That became my answer. “What are you going to do after high school, Nathaniel?”

“I’m going to go to community college for general ed credits and then transfer to the best Chinese Studies program in the country, Cal State Long Beach, and double major in Chinese Studies and International Business.” (Spoiler: no I wasn’t.)

I moved back to my home state of California from Texas, enrolled in Goldenwest Community College in Huntington Beach, dropped out halfway through the first semester so I could read the books that I wanted to read, and got a job at Disneyland. Pearl would be so disappointed if she ever found out.

My wife and I, on the clock as a Disneyland Guest Relations Ambassador, c. 2011

Fast forward four happy years at Walt Disney’s Original Magic Kingdom — two spent in Resort Transportation & Parking and another two in Guest Relations — and, because of my low pay and growing need for more money, I’m leaving to begin a new role in Resident Relations for a property management company. The schedule was far more stable. I only lived 15 minutes from work. I was making a whopping $4 more per hour! And so, thus encouraged, I proceeded into the unhappiest eighteen months of my life. I was responsible for giving tours of the luxury high-rise property to prospective residents, getting model units ready for this purpose, and slapping the hands of naughty residents that didn’t pay their rent or bills on time. When Debra from 1902 wanted to bellyache about the way the gym smelled to someone, it was me. When Tom found a cat turd in the 21st floor hallway again, it came to me. When spiders infested the patios of higher floors, I ordered the Knock ‘n’ Smoosh (maintenance would take big sticks to knock the spiders down and smoosh them). When the bocce ball court was missing a ball, I heard about it.

It all felt very meaningless and it was draining the life right out of me. I missed working for the Mouse, but didn’t make enough cheddar to survive. I needed more money, but had no college education and therefore, I thought, no real prospects. I pondered a good, long ponder about what I was feeling and what those feelings told me about what I wanted, and I realized: I want a job that

1. Leaves me mentally exhausted.

2. Leaves me physically exhausted.

3. Actually helps people in some tangible, practical way.

But what?

Echoing from the recesses of my memory I heard the syrupy baritone of none other than trades advocate and Dirty Jobs host, Mike Rowe. In a moment that felt like the Sandlot scene when the ghost of Babe Ruth comes to Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez in a dream, I heard Mike say, “You need to try another toolbox.” In my case, it was no mere metaphor as it was for him. My dad? A tradesman. My uncles? At least two are tradesmen. My grandpa? A tradesman. My great-grandpa? You guessed it: a tradesman.

The blue collar gene was in my blood and I’d never considered it. I preferred Pokémon to pipe wrenches, Star Wars to soldering, Dragon Ball Z to a Dremel. My poor father, God bless him, had tried countless times to get me in the garage to teach me his many lessons. He spent years as a garage door installation and service technician, even owning his own company at one point, and specialized in electrical, but is equally as comfortable with framing, drywalling, painting, welding, and a host of other skilled activities. I had snubbed him every chance I got, but suddenly, now…

My eyes still adjusting from the radiance of the revelation, I immediately reached out to a friend who I knew was a heavy machinery operator for residential and commercial new construction projects. “Can you get me a job? …Well, no. …Nope, no experience. …Yes, I’ll do whatever. …What’s a ‘hall’? …Okay. Then where do I go?” The next day I went to the local union hall to get all my paperwork signed and collected so I could show up the following morning at 6am to meet the foreman and start my career as a new construction carpenter.

I pulled onto the jobsite in my ‘88 Chevy S10. Converse-shod feet crunched their way across the graveled path, carrying me up three stairs, across the platform, and delivering me before a weathered bungalow door. I knocked. A tall, decently muscled, bearded man that had clearly never heard of sunscreen answered the door. “You Nathaniel?” The smell of cigarette smoke in the trampled, dirty carpet and burnt coffee wafted my direction. It was the foreman.

“Y-yessir. Good morning.”

“Yeah, g’mornin’. Listen, thanks for showin’ up but it turns out we don’t need ya. Sorry, bud.”

The bungalow door swung closed. Acrid cigarette smoke lingered in my nostrils. I stood there a moment as the door and I stared at one another, tears welling in my eyes. The portal to my future had quite literally been shut in my face.

I crumpled into my truck and wept hot tears as I drove back to the office, a place I’d hoped to never step foot in again.

I told my buddy that plans had fallen through. He was sympathetic and apologized. On Sunday I was at church talking to one of my friends (who also happened to be a pastor), relaying to him the events of the previous week.

“Wait. You’re trying to get into the trades?” he asked.

“Failing, but yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

That was an annoying question. “How was I supposed to know that I was supposed to??”

He proceeded to tell me that one of my fellow congregants was a plumber, the owner of his own company that served the local area, and they were always looking for new apprentices. Now it was my turn,

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME SOONER??!”

Mike and I were introduced and a couple days later I was in his office being asked questions about what I was hoping for in a plumbing career, how much I wanted to make, and if I had any relevant experience. After about a 20 minute back and forth I left.

What I haven’t told you yet is that the sense of being called in a pastoral direction during junior high? Events related to that were happening concurrently. I’ll write out that story another time, but they intersect in this next moment.

Five or six days after my interview, and because of God’s famed sense of humor, I received on the same day, within an hour of each other, a phone call from both the plumber AND the pastor. One door had been closed and two had simultaneously opened in its place. To my own chagrin, instead of a single door opening and removing the necessity for responsibly, carefully exercised agency, I now had a choice to make.

With the possibility of a job that didn’t require an advanced degree — or any schooling at all — and could immediately provide security for my growing family, I chose to pursue plumbing with this prayer on my lips: God, make me the kind of person who can one day be a pastor in your church. I write more about the spiritual implications of this decision and the lessons that have followed here.

When I told my wife and family that I was going to be a plumber, I was met mainly with confusion, snorts, and more confusion. My wife said, “Uuuh, do you know you?” I was known as many things. “Handy” was not among them. But I was determined to pursue this trade. During my research leading up to my decision to choose plumbing, I found an American Standard poster that, cheesy as it may be, really resonated with me: The plumber protects the health of the nation. A man in bib overalls and a flat cap, a pipe wrench perfectly balanced in his hand, stood guard over a sea of people. The angel with flaming sword that would keep anything unholy from entering his Eden. I believed it.

The poster that captured my imagination.

Here was my opportunity to have a job that recruited my mind, my body, and satisfy a deeply felt sense that I needed to do something practical. Being a babysitter for otherwise capable and successful adults as they mismanaged their lives was no longer my concern. Maintaining and servicing the systems that ensure the health of my wife and future children, my parents, my neighbors, my community, my city and county, my state and country? Now THAT was a job I could fully give myself to. And so I did.

I am a plumber. Approaching ten years in the trade, I am now a full-time plumbing instructor for my company’s in-house training academy. The academy is the kind of opportunity I wish I could have had back when I was the greenest of greenhorns, still didn’t know the difference between a Crescent wrench and a crescent roll, and was full of question and lacking any experience. We take good men and women who don’t know a lick about the trade and make them into plumbers.

Standing with my 48” pipe wrench in front of a sewer demo wall my fellow instructor and I designed and built, at a local STEM academy, March 2023. I do not use the wrench for plumbing. I use it to start conversations.

I frequently get the opportunity to visit elementary, middle, and high schools for their career days and talk about my trade. When given the opportunity to ask questions, the kids, regardless of age or grade, will nearly always want to start their grilling with this question:

How much money do you make??

And when the inevitable happens, I respond with my pat answer, “I’ll tell you that in a minute, but I promise you: it’s the least interesting part of this job. Let me ask you a couple questions and tell you a couple other things first.”

So if you’re dying to know how much I make, just hold on to yer britches, kid. Next week I’ll have another newsletter ready to tell you the kinds of things that I tell these children and why you (or the children in your life that are thinking about their futures) should consider a blue collar career, a life in the skilled trades.