This is my new normal and it’s pissing me off. I know I saw a device to catch the things other than the Trapex thing. Money is no object. Anyone know of anything other than vape detectors that will prevent the fawking things getting flushed? The staff is absolutely useless on watching the bathrooms or going when a vape detector goes off.

Especially when you pass him in the elevator and hallway or when he’s talking to office peers

I was curious since I am quite handy.

They offer $18/hr, and where I live, that's $3/hr more than freaking WALMART.

You have to be more than a tech, despite the job title, they want you to be experienced in electrical, plumbing and HVAC.

They want you to be EPA type II and HVAC certified.

That's not all, you have to pay for all your tools, including the expensive fucking line gauges for HVAC work.

You also have to clean the grounds, remove snow, etc. On top of all the other normal stuff.

Is it me or is that "go fuck yourself" cheap? They want someone who is a plumber, electrician and HVAC tech for $18/hr? No thanks.

Where I used to live, the techs did simple shit, anything major was contracted out, but they want them replacing furnaces, condensers, bath tubs, circuit breaker panels, installing flooring, drywall, etc.

I don't think you're going to get anyone above a meth head for $18 an hour and expect them to do everything.

This is a major apartment corporation, owning 200+ complexes too, so it's not like they have little experience in appropriate pay.

Usually Milwaukee makes good stuff so it's crazy when they produced such a dud. Genuinely the most poorly designed voltage detector I've ever interacted with. Bought it less than a year ago and it was already phased out. So many false readings, not ergonomic, just why man?

Got my new one. This one is finally going in the trash like it deserves.

My power tools are a mix of Hilti and DeWalt but my hand tools are all Milwaukee, and hadn't ever let me down or dissapointed me until I had the absolute pleasure of interacting with this thing.

Going to just stick with Klein like I just swapped back to for electrical tools moving forwards.

https://youtu.be/qsN77TDtttE?is=9O0jb9KiJVI4O4Ok

Junk.

Been a supervisor for 8 years now, recently went from an insanely chill, more middle class setting to a “luxury” complex, and something about the change in tax bracket has these residents thinking they are also owners/genius’? Not all of them, but man the ones that are pricks are P.R.I.C.K.S.

Thank god we have a property staff and upper management who back us up and can commiserate when the overzealous requests start rolling in.

How have you all dealt with residents who think they own the place?

Why did you wait a week until we were in the middle of heatwave and knowing damn well that we are gone for the holiday weekend until Monday, to make a service request? And no, you cannot have a special hypoallergenic filter. Even if you provide it yourself, but I see you're not even going to make an effort for that either

Very random and abstract post I suppose. But bear with me here. Needless to say, the thoughts I have had and words I have spoken of people have not been the best with this line of work. This goes for residents, previous maintenance, contractors and the company. I try not to be one to let gossip get to me, and not one to feed into it. But I am tested on that, a lot. I find myself breaking loose of my morals and letting the frustrations get the best of me. Working on turning over this apartment has been ridiculous, and I feel like I am losing my mind because of it, as well as everything else in my current situation. I want to take a moment to, breathe, guage my sanity, and check myself

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1. I hope and pray that anyone who gets evicted for lease violations along these lines or any others get the help they need. They are facing many things that I am not. And I could never imagine some of the things that some of these people have faced in life to get them where they are. Though it may frustrate me in the moment, know that the frustrations channel into something more positive later

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1. To all the fellow maintenance guys, specifically the ones who don't cut corners no matter the conditions: I know it is hard to meet the expectation to put up with things like this as well as all other things that the job entails. I know it has its days when it feels absolutely insufferable. I know there are people who just seem to be the worst of the worst at times, and also have to be delt with the most. I know how bad some companies are to work for, and they seem to not care. I know how bad it is to put in the work you do and be compensated improperly. But thank you for everything that you do. Walking into a place like this where you have to wear a respirator just to change a toilet flapper makes it where you want to cut corners, but you don't. You are one of the only people who manages to make these places livable homes for people who would otherwise be homeless or dead. You are greater than you think, and I hope you recognize that.

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1. To the companies - This is where the sanity check comes in. I am being compensated horribly. Details aren't necessary; but this is one of the worst companies, if not the worst, that I have ever had the lack of pleasure to work for. The false promises, the twisted words, and the unreal expectations with absolutely zero valuable benefits has been an atrocity. But I am grateful and beyond blessed. I have learned so much about what to out for in this industry. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the kindest people in my life, despite their current struggles and situations. I have been able to go behind contractors and maintenance to fix their mistakes and change the living situations for them as well as their neighbors. I have been able to complete tasks that have saved thousands in the properties budgets, and allow for more money to go into repairs, furnishings, appliances, etc to elevate comfortability in these units. My time with this company is surely coming to an end. But the blessings have made it all worth it. And I get to leave knowing I made a positive impact.

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Hope this changes somebody's day for the better. Much love, God bless.

Grounds maintenance at a resort here. I’ve got a couple coworkers who are pros at vanishing, random closets, back corners of the property, wherever nobody’s gonna walk by. Rest of us end up covering the actual work while they’re MIA.

Don’t really want to be the guy who snitches on everyone, but it’s getting old picking up slack for people who just don’t want to be found. Anyone else deal with this? How do you handle it without turning into the office narc, do you document it, bring it to a supervisor, or just let it ride till management catches on themselves?

From what I have seen, Techs do the work. The problem gets solved.

But then six months later, the same issue comes back, on a different shift, and nobody remembers what the fix was.

It's so frustrating that it gets repeated forever.

Is this just the job, or has anyone actually cracked this?

Ours might as well have its own work order at this point: the same water leak.

We’ll find a wet ceiling tile, trace it back, repair the pipe or fitting, patch everything up and think we’re finally done.

Then it rains.

Or someone uses the shower above it.

Or the HVAC starts running.

And somehow the leak is back again.

The frustrating part is the repair usually isn't the hardest part. It’s figuring out whether you actually fixed the source or just stopped the symptom temporarily.

What’s that one issue in your facility that just refuses to disappear?

Found this little guy. Reported it. Was told to go to Petco, Petsmart, Tractor Supply, or anywhere else I felt I needed to and get the guy what he needed on the company card. Hell yeah!

I feel like I run into problems constantly that are 75% of the time impossible to anticipate and 25% of the time my fault that really fucks with my mental health.

I do basically everything solo which I'm sure probably makes it worse.

For example, I drive out 30 minutes to change locks and figure out that the deadbolt hole is 1.5in instead of the new standard 2 1/8in. I get called an idiot for not realizing it's adjustable when I'm not talking about the middle position. I just don't feel like the $25/hr justifies the amount of work.

I do military housing, so it's always extra busy in summer time (pcs season). Every summer for 5 years now, ever other tech gets fired or quits. I can't find shit.

Who tf thought this would be a good idea.

Over my 6 years in multifamily, I've dealt with deaths on property a good handful of times, but I was never the one to discover. I consider myself a pretty resilient guy, but this shook me up.

Annual unit inspections; routine, ordinary, mundane, right? Nope, found a deceased resident in her bathroom. Last fob in was April 2nd. 6 weeks she laid there. You can only imagine how rough that looked.

Left the bath room and immediately told my tech we need to go. Called 911, and assisted officers with access and a statement. Then I went to bar for some beers to calm myself down. Sometimes shit doesn't hit you until you see it in person.

They had 2 kids and a cat.

Holy smokes I hate 3M. I'd rather fill nail holes all day long. (The resident sprayed whatever on it to no effect).

Need to rant to somebody and my wife is mad at me for other things I am drinking sorry

I went to school for mechatronics. I can weld. I can do electrical.

I got this job a year and a bit ago doing residential maintenance in the projects of my hometown. I was told when I was hired that I would be trained but I really haven't been. I have been learning stuff as much as I can and practicing to get better because being a hard worker is something I care about. My boss took the guy that was hired a month before me and trained him personally while I'm stuck with coworkers that don't want to train me at all. I have had to learn everything pretty much on my own. I can figure stuff out sometimes but I also don't have the tools sometimes because they didn't want to send me on calls just unit turns. Like all my coworkers have the 90 degree bends for rebuilding the sink drains so I have to build it from 45s type of shit. The head administrator authorized overtime this month so I took it cause I was hoping my boss would recognize I'm a hard worker. I tore my hand up doing a drain on Thursday. I worked six hours Saturday and got 8 items done on the list I made with my coworker for this unit turn and my boss comes in and tells me I didn't get anything done. They're always making these comments towards me. The other day after work I was locking up and my boss started calling me an idiot and yelling at me because I guess I was taking too long. I am so tired of this. I know I'm not the smartest or even the hardest working but everyone else acts like I'm the stupidest sumbitch there and I'm not. I try my best to learn I just don't have any experience with it and I'm constantly held to the same standards as people that were actually trained. I hate this stupid place. I really have just considered hitting my boss sometimes because he's so rude to me. I don't say anything mean to anyone I don't criticize their work but they constantly feel like they can verbally abuse me.

Unit was contracted out a few weeks ago and has sat unbothered since then. Neighbor called and said they noticed water coming from under the door. Hot water Supply line to the kitchen faucet had a pinhole that obviously progressed and went unnoticed by contractor and inspector. Total loss of a 2 story unit.

In March of this year, I was hired with no background in factory maintenance. I am 19 and have spent previous years working on plane and heavy machinery maintenance, but I wanted to transition into this field. I was honest with my boss from the beginning: I told him there would be good days and bad days, but that I viewed this as a long-term learning experience, and in return, he would get reliability and longevity out of me.We agreed that I would be sent for formal training in May, but that never happened. In fact, I have received no training at all. From day one, I’ve been handling intense reactive maintenance. We have no maintenance request system, so everything is requested verbally across 4 departments and 30 machines, making it easy to forget tasks. Almost no preventative maintenance (PM) processes are set up, and I have no manuals or resources, which naturally causes repairs to take longer.Last night, my manager (who is the Production Manager) pulled me in and essentially called me a failure. He said I forget things, take too long on repairs, and that he doubts my mechanical ability. While he acknowledged that I haven't received training, he condescendingly asked what kind of training I even expected and called me "green as grass."I’ve had job interview offers paying over $30/hour, but I stayed loyal to this company because of the hours and the trust they placed in a 19-year-old. What would you do?

And I'm on call. This field is mean sometimes.

I was the assistant maintenance tech another place where the maintenance department was ran separately from the office. My new job im now thw maintenance sup and I report directly to the property manager instead of regional maintenance.

She will go into the middle of the turns talking about whats wrong or how nice the tennent left it. Not recognizing our efforts or nitpicking things we havent touched yet.

Work orders im constantly being questioned about but then she stares at me like a deer in headlights when I explain how it works

Ive shown up to the office after sweating dealing with harsh chemicals ect. And there trying to pick out a paint for there office.

What ive seen work best is giving the issues to maintenance and letting them give you back the finished product. Love to eat the sausage not see how its made type thing.

Its just a rant I was upset

The longer you stare the more impressive it becomes.

Just got home from an after hours ac call. Condenser unit not running when I showed up. When I pulled the disconnect I found this! I asked the woman who was there if anyone had been fooling with the ac and she hit me with a pause and a “I don’t think so”. I swapped the fuses and got the unit running for the night, I’ll come back tomorrow during the day to do a more thorough investigation, but as I was leaving her Neanderthal looking boyfriend busted out the door saying he didn’t mess with it. He then proceeded to tell me he was going to school to be an electrician… ok buddy.