My name is Donna Fedje, I'm a Major Appliance Technician. I've been in the job force for about 4 years now. I graduated from the SIAST program at Winnipeg North. I'm still affiliated with SIAST in that I'm the tutor and the daytime/leave instructor, one of them.

I decided to get into this field because what I use to do was if there was a problem at home, I'd try and fix it myself and I was really tired of walking down to a store and saying "Okay, I need one of these." and they'd say "Well, are you sure?" and I'd had to answer "Well, no, but I'm pretty sure." And also, I'm a female and I felt really threatened sometimes when I had small children in having a man come into my home to fix something. It's not to say that the man was going to do anything other than fix my machine it's just my own fear. So I thought "Well, I wonder how many other women felt that way?"

To become a Major Appliance Technician, you require to pass an entrance exam where they test your reading comprehension skills and some math skills. Also, you must be 17 years of age. To work in this field, you have to have a fairly good mechanical set mind, mind set, and also good hand-eye co-ordination and the will to learn. That's a big one, you really have to want this because if you don't, you're not gonna make it. Cause you have to have good interpersonal skills, to be able to speak to somebody if they tell you you're machine is squeaking, you don't laugh at them because there's a reason it's squeaking and it probably is squeaking.

Without a positive attitude, you can't pass, you can't fix something because you always go to a job site with the impression that whatever's wrong, you can fix, so positive one has to be. If you go to the job site thinking "Well I hope I can fix this." Normally you can't, so you have to keep yourself updated by going to courses, asking other techs and most of the main manufacturer's will give workshops on the new advances in their machines. So in your fridge's, in your stoves, your dryer's your washing machines, now you have motherboard's that have to be looked at. It's no longer all mechanical. You have to rely on your past knowledge and know that whatever is wrong with this machine, your decision is that this is what it is, fix it. So, once again, you draw back on your positive, you go there and your decision is, yes that it requires a new motor a new bell and you simply do it. One other decision you have to make to be a tech is how to answer questions. A lot of people will ask you, "Well, okay, my washing machine is completely gone, I need a new one, what do you suggest?". So that decision has to be your own on how you're gonna answer it. You can tell them, what I do is I just give them the positives and the negatives of the machines from a Tech's point of view and then after that they can make their own decisions.

Everyday in my job is different because I am a Tech and I run my business out of my home so I get phone calls to leave. A normal day starts at about 9:00 am and I will go to, throughout the day, a maximum of 7 calls. I can do things like hit say a house within my community and then probably travel out into the country to go to a farm. Thereby going to them as opposed to them having to load the machine up and bring it into town to fix or to my home. So a normal day for me is a lot of travelling. An in-town Tech, they will go up to probably 9 - 10 calls a day just from house to house and they have to schedule their calls accordingly. So everyday is different. For me it entails a lot of after 5:00 pm work because I accommodate people who are working and can't get home for a Technician so it's not uncommon for me to be trailing home at 9:00 pm because I've gone out at 7:00 pm to help somebody out.

Keeping current is a big challenge in this job because the changes are coming faster now than they ever have before and rightfully so. Another challenge is, just, I love it when you go to a machine that's broken, you fix it and it works, that to me is a wonderful challenge and I like doing that. Monetary wise it's really good too. I have a lot freedom's now that I didn't have before. I can set my own time because I am my own Owner /Operator and I set my own wages so if I want to go someplace I can and the money is fine too.

My advice to somebody who would like to enter this field is number one, phone the school and ask to have a spend of day where you can come and work with one of the senior students and see exactly what is involved. Don't come in here as I did when I first came in here thinking that this is going to be a Mickey Mouse program where you just take things apart. I did not know I would have to learn whatever wire in that whole dryer, washing machine, etc.. was about and what happens if it broke. It never, I never thought of that so if you're going to get into this, that's one thing you should do, is come and spend a day and find out exactly what is entailed in this profession. Nobody in the profession wants somebody who really doesn't want to be here. Number two, if you are going to be a Tech in a community, find out how many more there are. You don't want to be number five on the scale in a small community. But if you're willing to move, I know that this particular program will take you just about anywhere you want to go.