At the company I work for, my bosses don’t really believe in pay rises but they do believe in rewards. It’s a rite of passage at my workplace to be given a company van or ute upon completion of the third year of your apprenticeship. It means that you can work for your whole fourth year and really feel like an established tradesperson. I’m due to get a company ute in just a couple of months before the end of the year. I’m pretty stoked about it. I’m going to feel like a proper sparky and it pretty much tells the less experienced blokes that I’m more in charge than they are.
I’m really looking forward to getting some of those under tray tool boxes for utes. I’ve had to put all my tools in the back seat of my car for the last three years, so it’ll be cool to just be able to lock my tools up in the ute and keep them there. I’ve always been secretly envious of the blokes who could just pull out their trays and have all their tools lined up ready to go. I would have to go through my entire bag sometimes to get to the tools at the bottom. It’s just the little things like this that will make working that much easier.
It’ll also be so good having a company ute because I won’t have to pay for petrol, rego or insurance. I’m going to save so much money and still have money left over for knock off beers with the boys every Friday. I haven’t told any of my mates outside work that I’m getting a company ute, and I can’t wait until I rock up to drinks and they see that I’ve had a ute toolbox custom made. Melbourne tradies all tend to stick together, and so all my mates are tradies too. They’re going to go nuts when they see how good my new ute looks. I bet you they’ll be asking my boss if he can employ them too.