VENTING!!! Rip-off Labor rates!

[OR VietVet]

When I had a shop I was in business to make money so I could afford to live indoors and feed my family. There were a lot of things I couldn't afford, still are. I wasn't a ministry or looking to do volunteer work with my business. Yes it sounds cold and cruel, but no one was going to come feed me and let me live in their house when I got old and couldn't do the work any longer.
There's an issue I didn't even address in my first post about the realities of owning a shop. Human bodies are easily worn out by doing repetitive physical labor. I remember as a teen working in a local shop how the owner who was older was constantly in pain, especially his wrists and hands. I can sit here now at a computer in pain just from moving a mouse and tell you exactly why. My back is shot, my knees are bad, my shoulders ache and my wrists and hands hurt.

Agree with what you said about how a shop wears the body down. At 70, it takes me a while in the morning to loosen up when walking, from being so stiff. My back suffers if I stand on a hard surface for a long enough period of time. I have to stay moving. I miss having a lift, A BUNCH. Even with the foam 4'x8' pads I lay down, getting down and then back up can be an effort. Thankfully my hands still are flexible but sometimes there is a shaking effect going on when doing small tedious parts work. I use a thick foam knee pad to get down there with and then transfer to the other pads. There will be a day when getting down and up will become too much and then I will just work, "topside" only. When I know I am going to be doing some vehicle work I do an Ibuprofen and an Acetaminophen tablet and that helps. After morning coffee, the shower helps loosen the kinks and actually do pretty good till the job is done and then when I stop moving, the stiffness comes back. BUT, I do enjoy it a bunch and plan to continue. I know when the day comes to knock off the repairs, I will sell my collection and keep just enough to do simple tasks.