To train: verb; teach (a person or animal) a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time.
A quick look at the above definitions might seem to indicate that the two words are synonyms. They are not. There is a subtle difference between teaching and training that bears exploring.
The first thing you might notice is that to train someone, you need to teach them. The key here is teaching, and that is the major difference between the two words. In order to be trained, you have to be taught.
One of the trends that has become popular, in addition to calling journeymen and/or mechanics “techs,” is to train relatively unskilled people to do small pieces of a specific trade job. As an example:
A trainee for a rooter (actually it is called ‘rodding’ but I digress) or drain cleaning company is taught how to run rodding (drain cleaning) equipment, water rams and the like. He is trained on how to use the equipment to clear stoppages in drainage piping. He is not taught the full scope of the drainage, waste and vent system, “just put the ¼-inch cable in the bathtub drain overflow and let ‘er rip,” or “use the 3/8-inch cable on washing machine drains.”
Before I go further, I want to assure you readers that I completely understand that “time is money,” and that to spend the time teaching actual “plumbing” to someone whose only job is to rod drains might seem to be a waste of both. Let me tell you why I do not believe that.
First, without a complete understanding of drainage, waste and vent piping systems—how they are installed, why they are installed and sized that way, and how they are supposed to work—your “tech” will eventually run into problems that he (or she?) will not be able to solve, simply for lack of information. Your customer will be footing the bill for that “tech’s” ignorance and, more importantly, your company’s reputation will take a hit.
Now you might say, “That’s fine, because I am still getting paid for his time.” Maybe, or maybe not. If you are in business as a one-and-done shop, meaning you don’t care about building repeat business, then you may as well stop reading right now. What if you advertise, as I have seen, a flat price for say, clearing a stoppage in a kitchen sink? Under normal circumstances you’d schedule an hour for such a call and price accordingly. What if the home in question is an older home with an 1-1/2” trap arm, a long 2” drain run to the main on the other side of the house, and no cleanout? What if the stoppage is too dense or too far down the drainage line to be cleared with either a ¼” or 3/8” cable?
I can give you a pretty good idea of what will happen next: your ‘tech’ will try all of the equipment that he has been trained on. Not being able to clear the stoppage, he will probably call the shop for advice. If no one can give him the information he seeks, he will tell your customer that he cannot fix the problem.
At this point your “tech” is on the horns of a dilemma. Does he ask the homeowner to pay him for his failed attempt? Bad idea on many levels. Or, does he simply pack up his gear, apologize to your customer, clean up after himself and leave. In either case, you have lost not only money on the service call, but probably the customer as well.
That customer can’t live without an operable kitchen sink drain. He is going to call either another rooter company or a plumbing contractor. Mr. Plumber knows the systems and how they are laid out, possibly even having worked on those old homes before. He shows up, drags his equipment up onto the roof and rods the drain through the kitchen sink vent with a 5/8” or maybe even a ¾” cable, all the way to the house main. Problem solved. He never even had to ask Mrs. Customer to empty out under her kitchen sink.
Notice the difference? You should. A plumber who has been taught the whole trade has knowledge sufficient to diagnose, understand and solve the problem at hand. The minimally trained “tech” does not have the full picture. No matter how well trained the person is, without that complete understanding of the plumbing systems he works on, he is at a distinct disadvantage.
The preceding scenario is a real-world example. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen it many times, not only with “techs” but with apprentices who have not been fully or properly taught. In today’s world of instant gratification, Google, YouTube and Siri, it seems anachronistic to suggest taking time to teach “everything” about a subject. Yet, for years we have been living through the shortage of finding, hiring and retaining qualified help. The emergence of the “tech” phenomenon is a result of that problem. People still want to be in business and will do whatever they need to.
In my opinion, we need to get back to teaching the whole trade before we lose it to compartmentalized, and in some cases, disjointed pieces. If we do not, there will soon cease to exist a plumbing trade in the traditional sense, to be replaced by “techs” that do “a little bit of this and a little bit of that” but that do not know, or care to know, why. Alarmist? You bet! Get those new hires learning from the ground up! Share all of your trade knowledge and make sure that your help knows that they must learn it all. Teach the trade!
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born author is a third-generation master plumber. He founded Sunflower Plumbing & Heating in Shirley, N.Y., in 1975 and A Professional Commercial Plumbing Inc. in Phoenix in 1980. He holds residential, commercial, industrial and solar plumbing licenses and is certified in welding, clean rooms, polypropylene gas fusion and medical gas piping. He can be reached at [email protected].