My family was very supportive. My peers definitely were not. They looked down on the trade, they felt like because I didn't go to college I wasn't
gonna amount to anything.
People expect us to come in like a bull in a china closet and just kind of wreck everything. The plumbing image has changed quite a bit since I first
started.
We try our hardest to take care of people's houses.
My name is Richard Armendariz, I'm 30 years old. I'm a journeyman plumber. I live in San Antonio, Texas and I expect to make $105,000 to $125,000 this
year.
I grew up in New Braunfels, Texas, it was me my mom and my brother and my sister. We're a pretty tight-knit family. We used to play board games all
the time. And my grandparents are the ones who really kind of instilled the hard work in me. When I was in high school, this was at Churchill High
School, it was very frowned on to do trades. So they were really downplaying the trades and pushing college on everybody. It was teachers
that was, you know, in our assemblies, everything was geared towards going to school. And if you didn't, well, good luck.
I was very disappointed because I really, really wanted to get my associates degree. And I think I was maybe three credits away from it. The
textbook that got in my way was a psychology book.
It was about $500, I couldn't muster up the money to get it. So that's the reason why I dropped out of college.
I was making, I think it was, $8.50 an hour, then I got a raise to $10 after about a year. Second year was $17.50. And from there, after the pay
cut went down, I think that dropped me to $12.
The owner got in trouble for some tax evasion and had to had to cut our pay significantly enough where I was at risk of losing my apartment. My
girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, just found out she was pregnant. So I really needed to push to get something done. I didn't want to, to not
have a stable future.
I was 20 years old when I started plumbing. I reached out to my mom for some help. And she directed me towards my father who I hadn't seen in a
long time. He's the one who I guess ushered me through the door and got me started in an apprenticeship program.
We get a raise, depending on, you know, how much we're selling. So it's not necessarily commission based, but it's more, I guess, performance based.
The pay rate is endless. So whatever you start at, you can end on an infinite number. There's no cap off. I can tell you the highest that I've
ever been. I think it's like $86 or $87.
And 1, 2, 3. We just loaded up the water heater. We gotta go install this bad boy today in somebody's garage. So for right now, we get to get our
parts together so we can have what we need.
Plumbing is fun because you know when you start but you don't know when you get off. Our days a week standard is Monday through Friday. We do run on
call. When we do on call here we're doing one day a week. When you're on call you can pretty much expect to not have any plans don't make any plans
because they will go probably get wrecked.
Don't expect to come home in time for dinner, because Saturdays are always booked up. Sundays are a little bit slower. We're so booked right now with
calls we need plumbers, we need people to come in and help.
My normal day, we dispatch from our house. They usually have the first customer ready for us by about 7:30. We'll leave our house without 7:30. We
get to our first job between 8 and 9 in the morning.
Old water heater had absolutely no code upgrades, just two stainless steel flex lines is all it had, ball valve on there soldered in place so we'll
have to unsweat that, but the valve itself is very corroded and old.
There's no normal. We're always, you know, going, going, going. You fit food in when you can. Some days we don't get lunch, some days we eat on the
drive from one job to the other and I don't think customers really know that, I don't think they I don't think that ever comes up.
Sometimes if you get stuck on a job or let's say you're on a job where a customer has no water, you can't really leave them without water so we try
our hardest to get them some kind of service before we can take a break. So we're gonna turn the water on to the water heater now. You don't always get
to get home you know and have time to sit down with your family, have a sit down dinner. That can be a little bit difficult. There's been several days
where I'm not getting home 'til 9 or 10 at night, and I haven't eaten all day.
When it started to freeze, everybody lost water. We were getting between 250 to 500 calls a day on people calling in saying, "Hey, my water lines
are frozen. I have a broken pipe, my house is flooding." So we were trying to help people cut their water off. We were out of water for about six to
seven consecutive days.
I was running service calls to help other people get water and I had none and I felt bad because I you know, I had no water so I couldn't, couldn't
take a shower. Once we started working, we pretty much didn't stop for about two weeks. We worked that week, the weekend, we hit the following
week, and I think we knocked out that second weekend as well.
But a lot of our focus was just trying to get people water. A big part of our job is you know, just consoling the customer. I would say that's that's
probably a good 60-70% of our work. It's very important that we have some kind of empathy for them because for us, as plumbers, we see it every day.
I leave one house and it's flooded, I go to another house, it's flooded. So, my work environment doesn't change, but for them this is the end of
their world as they know it.
Just wanna let you know we're all done. Everything's good to go. You should have about an hour, 45-minute wait before the water gets completely hot.
And you're all set.
Worst job I've ever worked on, this was a sewage backup for an apartment complex. They did not have a backwater valve. When I walked in it was
sewage everywhere there was sewage you know in the sinks in the tubs, it was filled to about six inches of the property throughout everything. We
didn't know we're walking into that much. You know, we knew the sewer backed up, but not to that caliber.
The money's actually done a lot of good for me and my family. So my wife actually she has to have a very, very expensive surgery coming up really
soon. And I've been able to put away almost for the entire surgery without insurance helping anything.
I'm more family oriented. I love spending time with my kids and my wife because that time I'll never get back. So at least right now, focusing more
on my family. They love, absolutely love doing anything and everything outdoors. We're real big into like obstacle course races, the Spartan Race,
Savage Race, we're real heavy into that kind of stuff.
As long as they're happy, that's kind of the only thing I want for them because money comes and goes but a lifetime of happiness, you know, you
can't beat that. I'm very glad I stuck with this career because it it paid off. I feel like I've been very successful. I really feel like if I had
stayed in college and not joined the trade right away. I would have been struggling like a lot of people right now. Plumbing, yes, there's money in
it, but it feels good to help somebody and that just happens to make money doing it. I would be proud of where I'm at.