What ‘low status’ job actually made you wealthy?

The Path Less Followed

My cousin mocked my career choice for years until he lost his job. That’s when he decided to destroy the startup I had built through theft, harassment, and identity fraud. So, I let him dig his own grave while recording everything.

My dad told me: “Learn plumbing. People will always need water and toilets fixed, and nobody wants to do it anymore”.

When I was 19, I just finished my freshman year at State College. I was majoring in computer science like literally everyone else in my family. Got decent grades, had an internship lined up at a startup. The whole path was laid out.

But dad pulled me aside at our Fourth of July barbecue. Dad wasn’t a plumber himself; he was an accountant. He’d been doing the books for his plumber friend Tony for 20 years.

I followed him into his home office, away from all my cousins bragging about their internships. He pulled out Tony’s tax returns and pointed at the numbers. Tony cleared $180,000 last year. He had no college debt, and was home by 5 every day.

Then he showed me another folder. This is my friend with an MBA from Wharton. He made $65,000 a year, was still paying loans, and his company just announced another round of restructuring.

That conversation aid at me for weeks. I kept thinking about it during my unpaid internship, fetching coffee and pretending to learn about synergy. Meanwhile, my sink was leaking and the landlord said it would be 3 weeks before a plumber could come look at it.

Three weeks for a leak. Finally, I made the call that horrified everyone. I dropped out and asked Tony for an apprenticeship.

My mom cried. My aunts whispered about how I was wasting my potential. My cousins had a field day.

Within a month, I’d bought a hitup van for $3,000 and was waking up at 5:00 a.m. to follow Tony around. My tool collection was a mismatched set from garage sales and Tony’s old extras.

I smelled like PVC glue and had purple primer stains on everything I owned. Thanksgiving that year was brutal. My cousins were showing off their LinkedIn profiles and talking about their networking events and leadership development programs.

They’d ask me about my career path and laugh when I said I was learning to sweat copper pipes. One cousin literally said:

“At least you’ll never need a gym membership carrying those wrenches around”.

Another kept joking that I was preparing for the apocalypse. When society collapses, we’ll need someone who can fix the toilets. They’d post Instagram stories from their windowed offices and tag me, “Views from the top”.

Meanwhile, I was posting nothing because nobody wants to see the inside of a crawl space at 6:00 a.m. I’ll admit, crawling under houses in January while my cousins posted about their company ski retreats made me question everything.

But then, I’d remember Tony pulling up to the shop in his new truck. He was talking about his vacation home, working exactly zero weekends.