My Lessons from Apprentice Chores

Chores. We didn’t want to do them as teenagers, so why would we want to do them as adults freshly minted into a new career?

The short answer: we wouldn’t.

This was true for me as a first-year apprentice. Fortunately, I knew the chore schedule of the workplace I had signed up for. Every morning it was the first-year apprentices’ responsibility to complete the workshop chores. These chores included emptying over twenty bins, hosing down two wash bays, completing machine pre-start checks, and refilling paper towel rolls. The list goes on and on, but you get the picture.

On a good day, when there were two or three of us, the chores might take a couple of hours. On a bad day, alone it might take four or five.

There were so many times that I wished to just scribble a signature and pretend I had done some of the less important chores, leaving them for another day. They were often tedious because they were boring. Yet, I never did. I wasn’t able to justify skipping a few ‘unimportant’ chores because the expectation was set clearly. All chores needed to be done. Every. Single. Day.

Chores for apprentices are a rite of passage in many workplaces. As the least-experienced people on the workshop floor, our time is less effective in carrying out repairs. It makes sense to have apprentices spend more time on the broom in their first year than any other year of their career, but that doesn’t make it suck less.

In hindsight, I realised there were many unintended rewards for my discipline and grit. I also recognise there was a missed opportunity for my supervisors to offer me meaningful feedback and keep me motivated and engaged in the task.

The Missed Opportunity –

My supervisors never commented on my persistence with the workshop chores, even when my peers’ commitment waned. It often left me questioning myself, wondering if my efforts were noticed or appreciated.

I didn’t see the purpose of wiping down the parts counter every day if it already looked clean, but I would do it anyways because that was the expectation communicated to me. Yet, the gap between the expectation and my understanding of its significance left me conflicted and frustrated. Especially when my commitment levels were higher than my peers, and I was left feeling unfairly treated because they got away with doing less.

At this point, maybe I should have taken the hint and followed suit with my peers, scrapping the unnecessary chores and hoping the supervisors didn’t notice. But, I was stubborn and didn’t want to risk getting in trouble. So, I didn’t.

In this situation, specific feedback recognising my effort and commitment would have transformed my relationship with the chores. It would have shown me even the most mundane task was significant and that my efforts were benefiting the team. Feedback would have given me purpose and pride, instead, it was a missed opportunity.

The Rewards –

Despite never receiving feedback from my supervisors, the one reassurance I got was enough to fuel me through my twelve months of chores.

One day, wiping down the parts bench… again… I was approached by a senior mechanic. He offered me the feedback I was lacking, praising my perseverance with the chores, having seen I was the only one who wiped the parts bench daily. But, more than that, he pointed out that while my supervisors might never say a word about it, they did notice.

I wasn’t convinced at the time, but gradually I saw the small ways in which my efforts were rewarded. It came out in my performance review where my attitude and work ethic were endlessly praised. It showed in the way my workmates and supervisors treated me, giving me more independence on the job and giving me less time servicing trucks than my peers. As a first year, I was offered my first independent engine rebuild only eight months into the job.

While I would still have benefited from specific, meaningful feedback, the quiet ways in which my efforts were rewarded taught me a lot.

My attention to detail on the ‘less important’ tasks, like chores, meant I could be trusted with the more important details – like rebuilding an engine correctly. My perseverance with a tedious (a.k.a. boring) task meant that I was given challenging repairs, but they were also more satisfying to complete.

In conclusion –

Despite completing twelve months of chores as a first-year apprentice, in different workplaces there are different chore systems. In my current workplace, the load is shared regardless of years of experience. All my efforts as an apprentice don’t excuse me from chores for the rest of my career. Cleaning up after a repair or task is a part of the job, and every profession has some form of ‘chores’.

The key takeaway is that our attention to detail on the ‘less important’ tasks shows a lot about our attention to detail on the ‘really important’ tasks. But, more importantly, feedback is a necessary ingredient in everyone’s career, whether you’re an apprentice or a seasoned professional. We can all afford to put more effort into providing specific, meaningful feedback to our peers and leaders as a way to foster engagement and satisfaction at work regardless of the nature of the task. We don’t have to be ‘in charge’ to foster a culture of feedback.

I encourage you to find one way to provide specific, meaningful feedback to someone in your life this week.