Im a refinishing tech. Its a daily toss up, i enjoy the process of making things shinny but i dont directly enjoy cars.
But in general, its sucks. Paint is crazy expensive, customers are so obsessed with color match when their cars are 4-5 colors from the factory already. The shop owners in my area are super anal about paint usage. They want the least paint used possible but the paint manufacturers are pushing us to make our own libraries ( which is good and best practice ) even though that screws us with the yearly new single year colors. Plus if customers call upset about stuff, paint or parts is often the first to be blamed. My father told me that when he was a painter, 3 stage white was the only special effect color. But now thats normal and we have RMs, SECS, 3 stage blues, whites, reds, and even yellows, 4 stage grays because why not, and recently radar transparency toners. Wtf did they make a 3 stage black for???
Not to mention, we spray liquid cancer everyday with majority of shops refusing breathing equipment thats standard. They will pay for the 20$ masks. Then once you buy your own 2-3k$ fresh air supply, they lose their mind over it when you change jobs. Same for spray-outs cards.
At the end of the day, while we are losing techs each year, its a good job and the money you can earn will continue to rise as people leave.
My advice, ask a few shops for prices.
If you buy the parts, the warranty is on you. If you give them the wrong parts or dont see the 1 mount is bent, it can become drama and take extra time to get the car back. At least in my experience.
We stopped accepting customers supplied parts because of that stuff.