It would be way to long to tell the whole story here but incompetent management and a bad trainee basically made my life hell for 6 months. This guy was not interested in learning the job and was way more interested in messaging Instagram thirst traps on the clock. Management didn’t want to fire him because it’s hard to find people in this industry to even apply for the job. Every time they would bring him into the office to talk to him he would tell them how he would put his phone away and start really applying himself.

As the primary person training him I was instructed to give him any of the hands on work that came in so he could practice and I would walk him through how to do it or if he already knew how I would just supervise him doing it and check the work after. Normally we only do this for about a month before they are sent to another location because my location can be run by just me alone. The manager of the location he was supposed to be going to didn’t want him working there so they kept him with me in the trainee position for some reason. About 5 months into this I ask him to put his phone away and actually do the stuff he’s supposed to do and he goes on a huge rant about how he’s not lazy and how dare I call him lazy when he’s in shape and I’m overweight and he does all the work that comes in and I just sit around.

I told management I would be quitting at the end of the month if he was still working on my store. I can put up with a lot of bullshit but personal attacks on my weight cross the line and I don’t need his help in my store and if he’s not going to this other one why am I still training him? They brought him into a meeting and told him he needs to apologize for the comments and he did but he wasn’t fired yet. After the end of the month he wasn’t fired either and I went into the managers office resignation letter in hand and she said to give them a week to process the paperwork and let him go and I should have just quit right then and there but for some reason I didn’t.

Anyway he got fired at the end of that week and about a year after that the manager responsible for this whole mess got forced out of her management position because all the department managers threatened to quit if she stayed on. Later we found out the trainee was claiming he worked for us for 5 years to make his resume seem impressive.

Landlords and marketing people.

Exactly that’s what I keep telling him but my boss doesn’t want to spend the money for whatever reason. I’ve thrown all the numbers at him showing him every customer we’ve turned away that we could have done if we had a smart pro but he still refuses to actually buy it. It’s just completely baffling to me tbh.

Yeah we have a sidewinder cutter and a silca RW4 cloner so we can do on board programming and clone a decent amount of the transponder keys but I want my boss to get a programmer so we can actually do remotes and prox keys because we get people asking about them a lot.

I so desperately want to expand our capabilities on doing car keys but my boss is allergic to spending money. It really seems like a no brainer when the dealerships change an arm and a leg we could easily beat their prices.

I sell locks at my work. We get our stuff through a distributor at a set price discounted from MSRP. We are not large enough to buy direct from manufacturer for these locks. Amazon and home depot are selling the same locks cheaper than we buy them from the distributor because they can buy direct and buy more volume than even our distributor. You would need to buy in volume higher than Amazon which would be difficult because it would require a ton of up front capital which you would not really have a way to make back because you are making no profit. This isn’t the case for everything but it’s particularly bad with residential smart locks.

Anyway to answer the question no it would not drive Amazon’s prices down because at cost we would still be selling them for more than Amazon.

I prefer metric for stuff I can use it for but in my industry everything small is measured in thousandths of an inch and everything big is measured in inches + fractions of inches so I usually use that in my day to day.

My dog Dakota showing no remorse for her crimes.

I am a locksmith and I would say my job is somewhat important and I’m somewhat proud to do it. The world would continue to run without me specifically at my job but having people who can manage large key systems and mechanical security is important. It also gives me enough satisfaction to feel good about what I do. When I am able to repair things and prevent things from ending up being thrown out is when I feel most proud of what I do. When I feel least proud is when we do work for companies that are involved in making weapons for the US military but that’s rare and I am not in a position at my company to decide who we do and don’t do business with.

As long as you are already mechanically inclined it’s not that hard to learn and it’s not as hard on your body as a lot of other trades.

Locksmithing/access control is an industry that is sorely lacking new people going into it and the only interaction I have with AI is from one coworker in marketing for the company who uses chatgpt to write her emails. I definitely don’t make as much as my friends who are programmers though.

At least in my industry the only people who have LinkedIn are marketing people and sales reps. Why the fuck would I ever want to join a social network full of those people when they waste enough of my time coming in to talk to me in person? Idk if someone I was interviewing showed me their LinkedIn I would be confused more than anything else so I think it depends on the industry.

Drive a Toyota Corolla currently and with gas prices going up I wish I was driving a Prius

Finally got around to trying this and it worked. Thank you! I was just shutting it down before not turning it off at the power supply.

My bazzite PC in my living room stopped recognizing the Bluetooth built into my motherboard which is annoying but easily worked around with a USB Bluetooth dongle.

r/locksmith has no equivalent here and I’m not sure it ever will because it’s such a niche trade. Niche porn subreddit equivalents would also be nice but the ones I’m thinking about get barely any activity on Reddit so they would be completely dead here.

Locksmith here, my most used and most important tool is a pen because if you can’t write up the invoice you don’t make any money.

I’m a locksmith so any time since the invention of the pin tumbler lock 150ish years ago I will be fine. I don’t prefer it but I can hand file keys without any electric key cutting machines. Before that the bit and barrel locks that were used I know enough to get by though admittedly I don’t know enough history to say roughly how long ago those were invented.

I have all my important documents in a fire rated safe mostly because whenever I need to get one of them I remember “oh yeah I put that in my safe”. I don’t own anything valuable that could fit in the safe. As someone who works on safes though I would recommend anyone who wants one for burglary protection to bolt it down if possible and don’t show anyone you have it. I’ve seen the aftermath people’s 200+ pound safes dragged through the house and out the door. Also if you own guns and have kids I would absolutely recommend a safe to put them in. Check your local laws as well because here in California starting in 2026 gun owners can be charged if they don’t have their guns locked securely and someone in their household who should not have access to guns gets access to their guns.