Challenges and rewards

- I'm Shawn Story. I found myself in this trade coming from ten years of making prescription eyeglasses. With this, 'cause it's different, I started as a finisher tile setter. Now I'm doing a finisher bricklayer. Two months, I'm literally two months in, but I get it. I didn't understand a single bit of anything at all at first, but once, you know, the first week or two I was like, "ooooh," and now I'm already like, "okay, I got it, just give me the tools!" But, you know, it's a process. Honestly when I first started to think about it, it was not because I wanted to lay brick, not at all. My fiance's from here, she's from Vancouver and, I don't know. I was at first I was just doing it to make her happy. And then when I stopped and I thought about it and they were trying to tell me about the retirement, the pension plan. And I was like, "pension plan?" For me it was just like something you see in the movies, so it was kind of interesting and then once I looked at it and what they were really saying, it's when it changed. It was like oh no, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Another reason why I switched was because I have four kids and my older children are getting older. I have a son who will be 15 in like three weeks. And he's going to want to go to college and I just didn't see myself being in a position where I could be able to provide or help with them going to college, or a car, or you know, take care of anything that he may actually need to get done. Well I'm a finisher, so, what you may see me doing, I will be building scaffold and breaking scaffold down. And then laying out the blocks so that the journeymen will have it for when they go to lay the block. But after that though, I'll be measuring it out just to see how long cuts have to be, because when the blocks come in they're all 15 by 5/8ths. It's a long block. (laughs) Every wall won't be exactly that length. It's not going to work that way. It's going to have to go underneath this loud saw that you're not going to like, that's why they give you ear buds. (laughs) It's going to be different, 'cause you go from having a wall that come out ten foot eight, and a wall that may end up being eight foot eight. So you got to know how to see it, be able to stop, cut the difference, 'cause not only are the blocks going up but there's going to be rebar sticking out of the ground, so they may have to cut the bottom off a block, they may have the cut the center out a block. It changes, it changes enough to where you go, man! If you cut it wrong, you know what I mean, thinking to yourself, "where can I use this block?" You learn it, you use it. You learn it, you use it and it's on a daily. And the more you do anything, the easier it becomes. Especially if you're trying to do it right from the beginning. If you establish bad habits as you go, then yeah it's going to suck, but no, I think it's going to be a breeze. I'm actually excited about it. I may end up working nine hours, maybe ten hours in a day. It's a little bit more tough on the body, but I like it 'cause I figure it's going to keep me fit. You know, when I'm 50, I won't have a gut. Be looking at retiring at a decent age because they don't ask that many years from you before you can receive your pension, it's five years. Five years? I did double that my last job, (laughs) there's no pension, man! There's no pension. This is a good change for anybody who's trying to do something positive with themselves and if you have strive, you want to do it, and you look at yourself, you're like, "oh man I really want one of these trucks, or I really want this car." This is the right field to be doing it in. Because when you see what you get once you journey out, once you become a journeyman. Yeah, making a truck payment is not complicated. It's not complicated, truck payment, house payment, you'll be able to make them both and still have money to save for your 401k if you want to start one. You know, it's all about you. It's all about what you want. If you don't want, if you're content, you're cool, you're calm. Continue to be content, no one's going to force you off your little stool of happiness.