Canada

I was nearly done my 5 years of on-site hours and was on year 2 of my apprenticeship classes before I decided to leave. Financially I was okay because I was renting a room and taking public transit so my monthly bills were extremely low.

I left because the trades were full of some of the worst people to exist who were being lead by some people who managed to be even worse. It's such a commonly toxic environment no matter the business or country I've been in. When covid arrived, everyone became exponentially worse and completely unbearable. The amount of ageism, sexism, racism, ignorance, pettiness and whatever else I'm forgetting to mention was just too much and not worth the unnecessary stress.

Going back to the financial aspect, it's disgusting that apprentices get paid barely anything to support themselves or other dependants. It's a huge hit just to go to school and anyone that had monthly expenses just couldn't afford to stop working. Forever being an apprentice at apprentice wages.

One last issue I have is the schooling. I can't learn in a classroom but I was forced to cram what felt like a years worth of knowledge into 8 to 10 weeks. It's an awful experience and everyone just cheats because it's too costly to fail and repeat. And to top it all off, I worked with a lot of older guys who flat out refused to teach me anything on-site like I am required to learn. There was no way for me to get ahead.

I often felt like the apprenticeship program was just a huge exploitation program designed to break people. Or maybe I just had bad luck.