If you don't work IT, retail, or food service what do you do for work?
Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
I'm a Substation Designer. I work closely with electrical and mechanical engineers to design the layouts for electricity sites that transfer high-voltage electricity to low-voltage, and low-voltage to high-voltage. You drive by a few of these sites every day most likely, as they're a massive part of our electrical grid.
I stumbled into this job by accident, and I'm really glad I did, because I love it. :)
I don't really have a title, but I work in a factory.
Go to college kids. Fuck the expense, you still get many more opportunities that a factory scumbag like myself does not. If you don't know what you want or what you're capable of, who cares. Go anyway for anything and you'll meet people who you can network with and you'll be exposed to classes and topics you might not ever have considered. I'm the only scumbag failure in my friend group who didn't go to college and I'm the only loser working in a literal sweat shop while they all work from home with very nice salaries and wives/husbands they met at college. I'm still single.
Not to argue too heavily with your valid life experience, but I was one of the few in my friend group who did not go to college, yet I am doing somewhat what I want to do (tech related) while my friends do nothing related to their degree and make less :/
It's not a surefire way to get a better job unfortunately.
Go to college for something that you can get a good job in. I have an associates and my friend has a masters. I make more than she does, and always have in our respective carriers.
Just saying "fuck the expense" is the reason she got her batchelors in art sculpting, and had to get a masters in something more practical.
I'm of th opinion people like you should make more money and upper management should make less. No point in hiring management if no one works your factory. Manufacturing is some of the most important work there is
Solar installer, I put solar panels on things and get them working. Recently my company got a reputation for competence with floating solar arrays so we've been traveling to build and fix them all over the country. Electricity and water is a fun combo.