The typical teenager either works at a fast food restaurant, a convenience store, or as a babysitter, but some students at St. Pius X have a unique job compared to most people their age. These students spend their time outside of school working as a mechanic.

Junior Lyle Pinson and his brother, sophomore Luke Pinson, work as a mechanic for their dad’s company. They have a full-service garage in their basement that is easily accessible for them to do their job. 

“The job mostly entails taking pieces off, inspecting them, maybe machining a new part, taking the piece off, restoring it through a couple of different methods, and then putting it back in,” said Lyle. “You don’t really understand how complicated it is until you take it apart.”

Senior Jude McIntyre also spends his time working as a mechanic at Transmissions by Ron. For him, an average workday usually starts right after school at 3:30 and ends around 7:30. 

“It’s four hours of cleaning rusty and dirty transmissions,” said McIntyre. 

Lyle and McIntyre have different motives for why they decided to take on the role of a mechanic outside of their typical teenage lives. Whereas Lyle wanted to help his dad and pursue his interest in learning how cars work, McIntyre wanted a main source of income.  

Working for his father wasn’t the only reason Lyle Pinson decided to take on this occupation. He does it because he thinks it is important to know how your car works if something goes wrong. 

“It’s not that it’s a small field, but it’s the fact that many people nowadays have no idea what to do,” said Lyle.

For McIntyre, he thought of being a mechanic as a distinctive source of income.

“I wanted to have a way to earn money,” said McIntyre. 

While most days consist of cleaning transmissions, there was one day, in particular, McIntyre had a memorable experience when the police knocked on his shop door.

“I forgot the code for the alarm when I was closing the shop. So the cops came, and I explained to them that I just forgot the code,” said McIntyre. 

Since then, McIntyre has learned his lesson of always checking the alarm before he leaves the shop each night. 

These student mechanics agree that not only is this job a good activity to do outside of school, but it also gives them a way to make money while doing something they enjoy.