Hi guys,
I’m seriously considering quitting my boring ass engineering day job and working at a barn.
Does anyone have any recommendations? My only criteria is that it has to be a friendly environment. I don’t care about the type of work or pay or location. It could be anywhere in the world.
Thanks
You don’t care about pay? Or is this hypothetical?
not really…as long as it’s min wage
Why is your engineering job boring? There is no reason you can’t find an amazing engineering job that lets you solve problems that you love and enjoy. Especially if you’re open to going anywhere in the world. Heck, you can probably find an amazing engineering job somewhere near where you can ride fabulous horses.
What is your field?
Working at a barn can be pretty boring too, and probably you’ll have fewer opportunities to ride or control how you interact with horses if you are dependent upon them to pay your rent.
If I had a dollar for every time I thought this…but I stick it out in my boring day job because it pays for the horses and keeps it as something I love instead of my new boring day job.
Is this for real? 
It’s boring because all I do every single day is look at numbers on a screen and write reports and deal with rough contractors and mean supervisors who can’t wait to blame things on you to stroke their over inflated egos. Im a civil engineer in Canada…worked in a couple of firms in Canada and they both sucked big time…i feel deeply unfulfilled…like I’m just a resource hired to generate profit for greedy stakeholders who dont give a shit about me or my growth.
Im just not enjoying my job….i hate being treated like shit. I worked in Australia before too…it was a lot better but I hated it there too cause I felt like an outsider and couldn’t fit in.
I just want to wake up everyday feeling like i’m doing something i love!
So I’m not a civil engineer though I am an engineer. I think you just work for terrible people. I would strongly suggest you start casting your resume about within your field or maybe tangential to your field. Shake your network. Tell all your alumni friends you’re looking for something different. Maybe your school has some career development resources available to you - often there are services to alumni.
What did you imagine doing when you started this career? What kinds of things do you want to build and where do you want to live? Maybe you can join a smaller firm that does stuff like houses and barns, maybe somewhere rural.
I hear your pain and frustration, but one thing I will warn you about one engineer to another is that quitting and working minimum wage at a barn is a one-way path … that is, it’s going to be hard to get hired back as an engineer after that. And the minimum wage job is not one that lets you have your own horses or treat horses the way you want them treated, nor will it be there for you if you are hurt or if you find that people still treat you like shit and don’t care about your personal growth.
Find yourself a mentor/friend who you can work with to help you find something that better fit you and some of the specifics you shouldn’t share with us strangers. 
Consider even maybe a short term job internationally with a nonprofit to get you out of your rut and into something where you can feel you contribute.
If you don’t need money or health care or retirement then yes sure why not? The lovely thing about being independently wealthy is the myriad opportunities it allows for you to do whatever you like.
if you aren’t independently wealthy it’s not the best plan. Ask me how I know :lol::lol::lol:
Ummm…no. Don’t do it! It’s a lot less fun when you are broke and have no health insurance, and don’t get to ride or show. It’s slave labor, unless you have a real lead to being an assistant- but most have a working student type pipeline.
As a career person myself, I get it, but there are MANY options between “current job” and “work shoving out stalls”.
If you REALLY want to try it out, work on the weekends at a local barn doing chores. I promise you will reconsider in the first Canadian freeze/rain storm when you have to bring in 20 naughty and dirty horses.
There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, especially if you hate your day job and you don’t need the money.
I took a year between my undergrad and postgrad to work for an A circuit barn in Ontario, and travelled to Ocala with them for the winter. I worked 7-4 5 days/wk, plus night check most nights at home. In Florida I basically worked all the time since I had nothing else to do, I had Mondays off so I’d run some errands and hang out with the clients.
Accommodations were provided at both places, a car was provided in Florida. My only expenses were food and my cell phone. I saved a fair amount of money since I wasn’t paying rent, but it’s not a job where you can have a mortgage, a horse, and a car, and take a vacation or two every year.
Saying that, I loved it. I treated the horses like they were my own, I had control over feeding, turnout, and my employers were a ton of fun, we’re still friends. I woke up every day wanting to go to work, I wasn’t counting down the days till my time off. But I knew it wasn’t going to pay for the lifestyle that I knew I wanted in the end.
If you’ve got the skills to work in a high end barn in more of a management roll with perks you’ll probably enjoy it more then mucking stalls in some crummy lesson barn for minimum wage.
And it looks like you’re a fellow Canuck so ignore everyone crying about no health care. Ontario Equestrian can give you extra insurance, and if you head across the border look into something extra for the few months you’re outside the province.
Most barn labour isn’t even making minimum wage :lol::lol::lol:
Barn work is hard physical work for minimum wage, and it is often split shift work (mornings and evenings) and often not full time. In general unskilled barn work means mucking stalls, feeding horses, and taking horse for turnout. It does not involve training or riding horses, and it does not lead to that either.
You will not have time or energy to ride, and you will risk being injured either repetitive stress injury, or a bale of hay falling on you, or by a horse. Even the nicest barn is not particularly friendly, at least to the chores person. You will be at the bottom of the hierarchy, you will be keeping your head down to get everyone fed and cleaned, and the full board clientele (some of whom will no doubt be engineers) will swan in three or four days a week to take lessons on their expensive horses. I say this because only in relatively expensive barns can you expect to be paid for the work. In more marginal barns, a lot of the work is done by teens working off board and lessons in barter.
There will be no career advancement and you will not advance to being a trainer or a coach. You will just be the cleaning lady forever.
Indeed, I think being a cleaning lady is probably less work and better pay than working in a barn (judging from what the independent cleaning ladies I’ve hired get paid).
Living on minimum wage is just about impossible, and there will be no benefits or pension.
If you have an independent income such that you don’t need to work, then just don’t work. If you need an income, cleaning barns is unlikely to keep you going.
I would suggest that if you are unhappy with the jobs in your field that you have, that you try to find a subspecialty that interests you even if it means taking a pay cut. Would you feel better about a job in environmental engineering? Working for an NGO building infrastructure in a developing country? Working for a nonprofit building affordable housing? What is it about your job that you feel “you don’t fit in?” What would it take to find people that you could be more comfortable with?
If you do want a full time job mucking and grooming, one place to go is the local racetrack. They are always looking for people and they tend to pay better than riding barns, though not that great. I don’t know if they are friendly places or not, much will depend on the individual trainer. The horses are hot and can be a handful, and you will learn alot about legs and wrapping and coldhosing and hotwalking, but might see some practices that you don’t feel entirely comfortable with, from a horse welfare perspective. But that is almost a guarantee when you go into the pro side of any horse business.
Typically people start work at 6:30 am and end around 3:30 pm at the track, but the day will be longer if you are required to stay around for afternoon or evening races.
John and Beezie Madden posted this week they’re looking for grooms.
It feels dry. I don’t feel like I’m helping people in a direct way. It just doesn’t excite me. I expand highways and subway systems…those are necessary things for a society to function I guess but working with those projects in a detailed and focused way is pretty dry and I don’t really feel like I am doing anything important until the project is done and I take a step back and think about what I did. Some of the projects also have a detrimental effect on the environment so in some ways my job is ethically vague to me…does Toronto really need a tolled highway cutting through acres and acres of farmland and natural ecosystems?
Would you feel comfortable sleeping in a stall? That’s all you’ll be able to afford doing barn work. And you’d better hope it’s the class of barn that has a shower along with indoor plumbing.
Sorry not a good idea. but dream on!
Civil engineering is a very diverse field with lots of opportunities. For example, I used to know a civil engineer who, when he was younger, spent his summers surveying mountain peaks in Alaska. When I knew him, he worked in the environmental field on water quality issues.
Since you say you don’t care about money, how about a job with one of the non-profits that provide essential engineering skills to poor communities? What about Bridges to Prosperity (https://www.bridgestoprosperity.org/) or Bridging the Gap Africa (http://www.bridgingthegapafrica.org/) or Engineers Without Borders ( https://www.ewb-usa.org/)?
There are lots of things you could do as an engineer that would let you “wake up everyday feeling like i’m doing something i love,” and would not require you to burn your bridges (no pun intended) to employment as an engineer in the future.
And as an engineer, you actually have a shot at making enough money to own a horse, take lessons, and go to competitions.
And now the requisite cautionary tale from an old person:
I went to high school and college in the Lexington, KY area. I majored in animal science with an emphasis on horses. I worked as a nightwatchman during foaling season on a Thoroughbred farm. I worked the Keeneland yearling sales. I taught riding lessons for the county parks & rec department. I could very easily have chosen a life working with horses. I chose not to for multiple reasons, but one of those was looking around at the women I worked with who had been in the industry for a while. Most of them were broke and broken. They drove old trucks, lived in old farm cottages with roommates, mostly didn’t own their own horses, and had a variety of physical ailments due to horse- or farm equipment-related injuries. They had no or very minimal benefits (e.g. paid vacation, retirement plans). To me, it seemed like a fairly bleak future.
The poster is Canadian, she need not worry about health insurance
Why not take a year or two off and go groom for someone? Travel to all the big shows…then see how you feel. Life is too short to be miserable.
moving into an area with more of a focus on the environment sounds appealing to me. I just don’t know how to make it happen because I don’t know very many people in the environmental sector. I need to interact with more people in that field to see if it’s something I really want to do.
If you mean a run of the mill boarding barn doing normal barn chores then no…
Working for a show barn that travels etc etc then yes. There is more money in that vrs a normal boarding barn and more opportunities in a show barn IMO.
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