Your being taken advantage of plain and simple. Even without any skills or work history that pay rate can be made ANYWHERE these days. True you could look at it as a learning experience, doing your time etc but no point getting screwed while doing it to boot. Good luck with the A/C some have some do not. I am in South Louisiana and today its 95 with a heat index of 105 and 90% humidity. I have done my time working years after getting my Engineering Degree and I have a decent little office thats nice and cool, when I can be in it lol. A/C is a crap shoot and I don't even work for a small shop. When I left school production machining was going overseas so I jumped at a jump with a pharmaceutical company at a plant. The corp made around 8 billion last year I think, ask me if I work in the A/C lol little shops scrapping by are not to worried about the climate in most cases.
One of the guys I know that does machine shop sales said he has a few guys from up your way working down here because there was no work and what was around no one wanted to pay. So there must be a few jobs still around but overall I am afraid the field is slimming out due to out sourcing. Which leads me to your comment about Computer Science.. Think long and hard and look at the industry for them right now before you get into that to far. That field is going the same way as tool die makers, its being outsourced. Or move to India and learn Hindu. Going to school these days I would suggest something in the medical field or business and my rational is this. Medical- You can't ship the patients overseas and with all the aging boomers there will be no shortage of work (all in the AC and with lots of sexy nurses to look at too!!! vs a bunch of sweaty, hairy men lol ) after all that can't outsource the patients and local facilities. Business- I say this because it has been my experience that a easy to get business degree holds value especially if you don't mind kissin a lil ass as that seems to work very well for those that do. Where I am we have Engineers of several disciplines and yet our suggestions are overshadowed and ruled by the people with accounting, finance and marketing degrees. These folks end up deciding all the inner workings of the facilities and whats best for the plant in most places, so if you really want to do those things go into business. Why they bothered to hire so many engineers and ask for input only to go do their own hair brained ideas is beyond me, but hey so long as my check cashes right. Plus the bene's are great with a drug maker
Ask your Doctor if its right for you!