It’s hard enough to agree with your parents on the majority of things, but career always seems to be the biggest point of contention.

How would you handle your parents making an already agonizing career switch harder? One guy recently sought wisdom from the Reddit community on exactly this. Here are the details.

AITA for not understanding why my dad won’t support my career change?

I’m an 18 year old who graduated high school this past May.

I had been doing an apprenticeship through my school’s career center for general maintenance.

I’ve worked in a plastics injection molding factory for now over a year (nine months part time and now seven months full time) and after that time have decided that maintenance isn’t for me.

That feels like a fair amount of time to decide that.

It feels like there too much information to remember about too many things that cost too much to mess up (as in a slight mistake can cost thousands of dollars in materials and lost parts and hours of time).

As such, I talked to my mentor.

We agreed that this wasn’t what I had a passion for and discussed me switching to a different job within the factory.

Seems like a practical solution.

We settled on an operator on third shift.

I would be one of the people who takes finished parts off of the production lines and packages them, and third shift works from midnight to eight in the morning.

When I came home to tell my dad I was met with what amounted to disappointment, lack of faith in my career, and that apparently that I can’t have a life because of night shift.

Valid concerns, but maybe Dad didn’t vocalize them well.

I tried to explain that I didn’t enjoy maintenance and that this was just until I found another trade I enjoyed or even if I decided I wanted to stick with this.

I also made it very clear that my pay wouldn’t change and there wouldn’t be any down time during the position switch so I wouldn’t be missing out on paying my bills or car payment.

There’s actually more room for me to move through the hierarchy and get better pay, if i did decide to apply at another factory it would likely be easier to find a job, and that I would honestly prefer those hours to day shift because I’m a night owl and I would just be flipping my work and sleep schedule.

Sounds like he’s already got the logistics figured out.

I explained all of this multiple times.

Every time was the same response.

“Menial labor jobs aren’t sustainable, you have bills to pay, night shift workers don’t have a life” and that “You seem like you’re sacrificing work for enjoyment”.

Said to no one ever on night shift.

I understand that he’s just trying to look out for me and make sure I’m not making a rash decision just because I don’t like my job, and I understand that swapping from a skilled labor job to a “menial job” definitely isn’t *usually* a good idea.

But again, it would be for the same pay, more preferable hours, and I would be doing a job I at least don’t mind.

After talking with him I also realized that since I had an official apprenticeship, it’s not like I couldn’t get another job in general maintenance some time in the future somewhere that I would enjoy more.

An important detail to mention is that none of this is official yet.

The extent of this was talking to my mentor and him seeing what positions are open.

He’s approaching this very maturely for an 18-year-old.

No papers have been signed.

Can you all please tell me if I’m the unreasonable one here or if I’m making a dumb decision?

Seems like the classic “That’s your dream Dad, not mine” trope. Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

Many commenters agreed with the father.

Though some provided nuance.

One person gave some solid advice.

Another encouraged the original poster to try again.

And some people tried to see the bigger picture.

Not even adults know what they want to be when they grow up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.