Transit Operator - Job Change - Advice needed
 

Hey Revscene, I know I know... wrong section, but since my last post about car sales is already in this sub-forum lolol.

once again, long read////


Anyhow, different from last time, I already took the offer at Translink, but I guess technically havn't started training at Translink yet.

Gonna become a bus driver... not community shuttle, those big ones haha~

Some background info:
Currently:
- been working as a Hyundai sales @ Richmond Hyundai for full 3 years (started Aug 2022)
- Pretty much 5 days of obligation with a high chance of going in on my day offs
- full benefits (extended health + dental for the whole fam)
- making about 70K-80K a year
- paid 2 weeks vacation a year
- very unstable, will either be making bank or starving.
- Pay plan continuously getting worse year over year. It went from selling 8-10 cars netting you close or over $10K (before deductions) to selling 16 cars and still don't make $10K


Obligations:
- mortgage
- NO LONGER sole income earner in the fam, wife is part time but will become full time in 2 years
- daughter starting high school + son starting grade 5
- as you can see, still broke ass and cant afford shit


Reasons for the leap/ what I think translink will be like?
- I don't dream about M cars or P cars or dare I say F cars anymore, I am getting old and FAAAATTTT
- Now I dream about stability, pension, even better benefits
- Too much stress worrying about performance, making below minimum wage, the constant $3,700 of fixed cost per month to keep the family going.
- Spoke to a few sales managers, the pay isn't really there and honestly the industry is... not going in the correct direction.
- transit operator don't make good money, make enough money (for an used miata eventually? XD)
- have to tough it out for 2 years of shitty schedules
- lower but guarantee income
- one of the best benefit packages eventually
- good pension
- govt job, CMBC said they have fired people for misconduct, but have never laid anyone off when I asked during interview
- not too much growth opportunity, as transit supervisor/other desk job loses lots of potential for overtime

Actually same scenario as before, recommendation of a few friends

I am in approaching 40 soon, This will probably gonna be the last change, I gotta stick to it to see the pension come to fruition.

So here we are, thoughts/suggestions/insights/reason for/against?

Sorry for the long post, thanks guys.

Yaaaassss I totally copied my old post and just re-type the details~~~

Dang man it's been 3 years since you changed jobs already? Felt like it was just last year. wtf

Anyways, I don't have any advice, but good luck !!

Nice stable job, wont get automated due to shitty drivers in vancouver.
It’s probably a seniority system so you will get the graveyard shifts driving down east Hastings until you build senority.
Dont confront druggies/gen z punks for your safety.

Is 70-80k the avg yearly income without commission??
And working for pension at 40 means you're planning to work until your 75 or something?!?
Isn't someone here working for Translink??? And if I recall they are a driver too.

Any worries about a car crash at work effecting your personal car insurance?

if you're joining at 40, you won't get to retire early with a pension like someone working there since their 20's, it is what it is but like you said, pension.

you pay union dues, so that gets deducted. check the fine print, if your pension has matching (eg $xx goes towards your pension, but you match it with your salary by % amount. This would mean whatever salary you think you're getting after deductions, take that away as well - it's still yours but goes towards pension).

you clock in and clock out and don't get pressure/stress with you (vs currently with your sales targets). you are also at the mercy of the union if you go on strike or whatever the masses decide.

overall i think it can be a good/safe move, and if you don't like what you're doing, i'm sure the org is large enough you can move around. if you want to & can move up, great - but with any org, you may need to build internal relationships more than say vs seniority (if it is non-union).

check how the probation works. some gov has a 6 month probation period meaning your benefits don't kick in, which may be an issue if your wife isn't full time and you have say dental or whatever for the kids. i had a friend working at a gov job with masking tape around his glasses waiting for his probation to end to get a new pair :lol

also with gov there can be lots of procedures and red tape. some folks find it frustrating and say f-it and go back to private sectors. if you can understand it is what it is and work within it, then you'll be fine. gov isn't a place for cowboys.

when you have mortgage/kids a steady paycheck really helps you sleep at night.

I know someone who drives for transit, he said that training is quite rigorous (good for passengers, I suppose). Not to discourage you but he said out of 10 recruits, maybe 4 pass .. yikes! So if you pass training and make it, it's a pretty good accomplishment.

Then the real life transit driver is quite stressful. You sign up for shifts and because you're the newest bunch, you'll be driving the Hastings route or some other routes that no one wants (it is what it is). The pressure to meet the schedulte, time table is high. It is hard work but much needed.

Good luck with it.

I wonder how the pay plans are at other dealerships

^ Overall commissions have been declining. Many of the dealerships restructured their commissions structures during the boom in the last few years. Now that we are in a lull it's hurt significantly. The funny thing about Dark's dealership is they are doing the restructuring during the lull and based on what he says, he's impossible to get even close to what he was making before.

The sales that I bought from at BMW left due to commission changes as well.

What happened to selling cars and buying rolexes

There's no future in serving a disappearing middle class, so moving above it into luxury, or below it into public services, is probably a good idea. Hyundai, BMW, etc, will eventually get bought up by one of the few electric car companies that will survive.

I looked into this a few years ago, I think it was around $38h? After about a year. you're gonna get shitty split shifts from the beginning so like 4h on wait 4h then 4h later from what my bus driver acquaintance told me. For the first few years. I really can't comment if it's good or not but I didn't really want to sit on my ass all day, and deal with bus people, especially on the lines no one wants. It also seems pretty stressful/ tiring to drive all day

.

There’s also some skytrain jobs that pays quite well either at the stations or the control room in edmonds. I remember hearing station attendants making $45/hr.

Or you can join the high rails and join CN/CPRail lol

He tried to apply for the conductor position a few times. Almost instant rejection. I think it’s his age…. It didn’t pass the AI resume filter bot. If you finished school past a certain age they don’t want you anymore. Too risky and not worthwhile training an old dog.

That being said I’m happy for my boy dark. I think it’s good for his mental and financial health to have this sort of stability. Being unionized is great. I miss it a lot.

You just do your job. Zone the fuck out, then come home with no baggage or regrets. You make your money and the rest of the time is yours.

Hahaha, thanks guys.

a few quick answers

70k to 80k is for my current car sales.... transit operators sales pass 80k pretty easily, I got 2 friends driving for translink (yes, both are on Revscene), we talked extensively, and was shown their take home income.... their paycheques is actually quite good... good to a point where its out paying our #2 and #3 at our dealer. (I am leaving and our #2 is actually leaving as well, but he is going into our Openroad F/I business office training, so he is gonna try to become a finance manager). Our top sale at the dealer is having a hard time cracking $10k a month(before deductions), and that is someone moving 15 to 20 cars a month...

Also training is actually closer to 90-95% pass rate speaking to the 2 RS members and my interviewer. Hoping I am not the bottom 10% hahaha. Apparently you just do your homework and take exams... its actually not terrible.

Benefits like extended health/dental/medication/vision kicking in October, only extended life insurance is December (so just September is what I need to worry about)

Yes, as mentioned the first 2 years is gonna be tough...
Yes its on a senority system
-graveyards
-early morning
-huge spilts (basically wasting a whole day)
-the only cool thing when you are a newbie is that you might consistently get Sunday off, which is pretty cool (Sunday pays 1.5X) hence all the senority people wants it.

Honestly no job is perfect lolol, but as Hobz said, you clock in, you clock out... you get paid.. pretty well at that...

Oh, I aint retiring early regardless of which job I am doing, I just dont have the luxury of that... but if I am working till 65 and possibly beyond... then having pension is better than having no pension hahaha... because my RRSP aint gonna save me lmao...

Annnndddddd lastly.... thank god I was a dumbass and bought a Rolex the moment I saw some good income ROFL, or else I probably wont ever get to purchase one hahaha, being financially irresponsible was key to that owership.

That covid auto sales gravy train was bound to run out. Margins are never going to be that high again so i would say this is for sure the best time to run for the hills. I mean if you got lincolns sitting on the lot from 2023 brand new, you know there's something wrong.

Nobody's buying new cars (they all suck too) so youre bound to see inventory pile up. Theres like a fleet of shitty brand new 992.2 and remaining 992.1 beetles ready to go (not GT beetles, but even the GT4, there was something like 30-40 unsold units across the country according to my porsche girl)

I noticed the C Train in Calgary is still piloted by an actual person, not computer controlled like Canada Line and Skytrain! That must be such a fucking boring mindless job.

man id love to drive a mindless train... maybe i can get a job driving the MTR or dingding or mini bus (manual!!! and lots of swearing) in hong kong.

I don't think you can buy an auto Coaster anymore. MTR is starting to automate their trains. The Disney line is the first one for testing purposes.

FUCK YOU EVOFIRE.

https://media.tenor.com/Ny7eUp2X6XYAAAAM/kid-cute.gif

FUCK YOU EVOFIRE.

Apparently mtr is pretty much automated. But the person supervises. Watches the camera for shit to happen. And they manually open and close doors. And visually check before heading off again.

The tram in tuen moon is still manually driven as it's on the street

yeah but who the fuck wants to go there? thats hoboville.

The wife says if i have to leave the island ill get murdered for calling everyone a lun yeung.

:lol that's amazing

I'd expect the Translink pension to give you 2% (of your avg annual salary over 5 years) per year of service. So let's say you are 40 right now. If you do 25 years at Translink (or pretty much any other job in provincial public service) and retire at 65 when you are making $100k/yr (just to make the calculation easy), your retirement pension is very roughly going to be:

[25 yrs of service] x [2% per year] = 50%

pension = $100k x 50% = $50k per year

In reality, there are lots of subtleties in how you structure your pension to skew the payouts a bit. But we won't go into that unless you are really interested. And even then, every person's pay out plan is going to be very different and highly customized.

The accumulated pension amounts are pretty much transferrable to all other public sector jobs though. So that means if you decide to take up another higher paying public sector job, your years of service still counts, and you benefit from the calculation using the average of your 5 most high paying years to determine your pension payment.