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RetroGamer87
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12 Feb 2022, 12:50 am

A few days ago I did work experience for a part time job in a bakery. I just have to do two days, last Wednesday and this coming Wednesday. I basically have the job.

The job is to take hundreds of frozen rolls out of their boxes and put them into racks so that someone else can push the racks into the ovens. Simple job but I was happy with it.

I was on the but home when I got a phone call from my uncle. He said he had arranged for a job for me. For a firm that makes epoxy floors at industrial sights.

Now, either one of these jobs would make me happy enough but two job offers on the same day? It nearly floored me? Which one should I choose? What if I choose the wrong one? It gave me such anxiety.

Is Epoxy flooring hard? I've never done anything like this. I think it pays more than baking so many should I take it. But it also feels like such an unknown. I know I can do this baking job but should I risk it for what could be a higher paying job?

I think the flooring job will be full time. Full time work could make my life more difficult and I would lose my pension. But the advantage is, if I'm working full time it will be much easier for me to get a homeloan so I can buy a second home.


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Stalk
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14 Feb 2022, 1:35 pm

Artisan skills acquired could be beneficial when you want to work for yourself one day.



mohsart
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14 Feb 2022, 1:45 pm

I've only done one epoxy floor and it was for myself and very small scale compared to what you'd be facing.
But I don't think it would be too hard.
There are basically two things you cannot get wrong when dealing with epoxy. You need the mix to be correct and you need the temperature to be high enough. There are other things too, like prepping the surface, but it's not that complicated.
The one thing I'd look out for is adequate PPE and safety routines. Epoxy in liquid or dust form is poison.

/Mats


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goldfish21
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26 Feb 2022, 2:13 pm

I've seen it done a couple times and helped on a crew doing it once. It's not exceptionally difficult. Floor gets ground or acid cleaned & prepped for epoxy, then 5 gallon buckets of epoxy get mixed (2 parts) and poured out on the floor and you have to work fairly quickly to spread it out evenly using paint rollers. We wore metal crampons on our boots so we were only touching the floor with little spikey points in the liquid epoxy so that it could fill in and make a smooth floor vs. have foot prints anywhere we stepped while wet. Sometime you sprinkle coloured flakes or silicon beads for grip. Sometimes you do another clear coat overtop. It's not like automotive paint where it has to be flawless - some variation is allowed.. and it's sort of self levelling. Just have to be quick enough to work the next poured batch into the still wet material so it's seamless across the whole floor - can't let it dry out too much or it won't look right. In hot dry climates this means working with small batches and moving fairly quickly to get the job done.

It's not a very complex process & can be learned in a day or two. You'd obviously get better with practice, too.

Also, for industrial floors it's all about protection vs. perfection. Business owners are more forgiving of small imperfections than home owners showing off their garage. And if it's a huge warehouse, it gets done in stages where certain sections are completed and then the next and the next and they accept visible seams/transition areas as the nature of doing a massive floor area if it's hundreds of thousands of square feet. A smaller unit that's only a few thousand square feet or even 10,000sf could easily be done by a small crew in a day.

Personally, I would choose the epoxy job. More money, some physical exercise, and it's a fairly high value skill to have vs. stacking bun trays. You'd have the skill and experience to go and do small side jobs of your own coating garage floors for extra cash -> and people pay a pretty penny for someone to come and do this work. Just have to be comfortable wearing a respirator so you don't breathe in the chemical gases from it - I'm pretty sure for most products a respirator is worn while applying it.


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kraftiekortie
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14 Mar 2022, 7:32 pm

I thought you were into computers….