Swapping pints for plumbing
From pulling pints to unblocking pipes, Halley Edgar has polished off her return to education as the sole female to graduate from her plumbing course.
Graduating from Wintec at the Te Ko¯pu¯ Ma¯nia Marae on Friday with a Certificate in Pre-Trades, Edgar’s foray into plumbing came after a three year stint as a bartender in Hamilton.
‘‘I’d been working for the last few years so going back into school was different.
‘‘I had gotten pretty complacent and bored at work, and with my job, I didn’t have any avenues to excel or be promoted into anything,’’ she said.
‘‘When there’s no promotions going and you want to advance, you get stuck in a rut.’’
After canvassing her friends for ideas of a possible career change, Edgar found those who were the happiest in their jobs were all tradies.
‘‘They had advised me that plumbing would be the next booming trade to be in.’’
It wasn’t long before Edgar, 32, came to love the work, and found the somewhat male-dominated environment better suited her personality.
‘‘I was over the cattiness of hospo life and retail life,’’ she said.
‘‘It just got too dramatic for me and it clashed with my person- ality. But I didn’t want to be left alone because that would have driven me mad, so that only left me with working with males.
‘‘You’ve got to be quite thickskinned because it is so maledominated, but that is not a bad thing.
‘‘For me, it was change of career, a change of scenery. I had to drop the princess attitude and stop thinking I couldn’t do things for myself.’’
For Edgar, plumbing was common knowledge but for others it seemed to be rocket science, she said.
As part of the course, she worked at FB Hall & Co in Frankton for two weeks and said the observation and one-on-one time gained there was invaluable.
She has no desire to return to bartending, and is currently look- ing for a plumbing apprenticeship in Hamilton.
In the future she wants to set up her own trades business where all the trades staff - plumbers, electricians and builders - are female.
‘‘To be able to provide the benefits of being in a trade, and being a mother and having a kid in tow at work, hopefully I can change peoples mindset about it.’’