I am in my late 20s, I have no children or family, and have been “in between” girlfriends for about six months.
This means that I get stuck with a lot of the extra work that comes up with the local contractor.
The other techs all have families, so they don’t want to take an emergency furnace repair at 4 in the morning, nor do they want to work on holidays. Late shifts, on-call work, and holiday pay are all very lucrative, which is why I try to take as much of it as possible. The HVAC contractor has something called a “shift differential” which adds on a certain percentage to your pay depending on when you work. Working at midnight pays better than working at noon. Taking a furnace repair emergency on Halloween pays better than a normal Thursday night. Does the system make sense? Basically my approach is to take all the shifts that none of the other HVAC techs want to work, and make more money because of it. If I had a family or a social life it would suck, but for a loner like me it’s the best way to make the most money from heating and cooling repair. I must admit that Halloween is a great night to do emergency HVAC repairs, because usually the clients are already drunk when I get there. I went to a Halloween party to get their natural gas furnace working again, and I had so much fun I stayed there to hang out after the job was done. And I still made double pay for the shift differential.