Been awhile since I've had a good rant: Hit the delete button now.
Rainer, to most old rails, guys like youse (sic) is rail-nerds. There's
usually no malice intended by the use of the term. By definition (of a
rail-nerd) you're interested in all sorts of arcane details which bore the
pants off most rational people and which nobody but certain employees care
about and even then, probably most of them don't know or had long forgotten.
For that reason, to those of us who've had no choice but suffer it on the
job for long years, you're nuts. Nothing wrong with that! You can't be
interested in OR work for long periods on a railway and not be at very least
a little bit strange somehow. :>)
However: It always irritates me when people talk to me about being 'proud.'
I can assure you that I was not a proud employee, but rather a pragmatic
one. I had a family to feed, period. My ego and identity and sense of
self-worth had nothing to do with going to work. Any pride I felt in
carknocking soon dissipated as I learned and saw how the system really
worked. In my experience, 'proud' often meant the willingness and ability
to put up with discomfort, inconvenience and mindless routines that hadn't
changed in decades. I used to get this crap all the time about 'pride in
the job' from management - most especially when they were trying to avoid
acknowledging that improvements were feasible and worth spending money on.
This crap could really get laid on sometimes when managers were trying to
skirt the contradictions between what the rules said, the realities of the
hazards and what they wanted done. The practical reality of 'proud' too
often translated as the company playing on timid, gullible and/or religious
employees in order to take advantage of such employees in ways that were
certainly neither in the best interests of those employees nor (usually)
very scrupulous when examined under a bright light.
In other cases, pride was a macho thing for a lot of the men and the
companies took every advantage of that too. A surprising percentage of guys
took pride in being 'tough enough' and actively resisted attempts to improve
poor working conditions. More of a problem for progressive-minded people
are those employees who have a real servant's mentality and pleasing the
boss is everything to them. What is ironic is how many of those same men
got a bitter surprise when cut-backs /downsizing came and they were among
the first to be shown the door. I saw a lot of these guys who just loved
their jobs - and who (whether promoted or not) didn't have any use for the
union or unions - find out the hard way that loyalty to the company and/or
length of service didn't count for squat when push came to shove. Even now,
I'm watching certain, loyal, long-time (over 30-year) railway employees
either get fired outright or forced to take their pensions for infractions
that are often chicken-s*** on the Richter scale. Their pride and
conscientiousness hasn't protected them in the slightest from a ruthless
management that will drop them at the slightest pretext.
I'd say I'm disaffected, Rainer. A LOT of people on the railroad (and
elsewhere) paid for their pride and loyalty with dismissal the moment
corporate priorities changed - never mind those who paid with their blood or
occupational health problems that corporations and health-insurance
companies ignored or fiercely disputed at every turn of the road. The good
thing about the job was a steady pay-cheque, a strong union and a pension at
the end of it all.
Joe Smuin
1. - "Joey, the secret to telling a good railway story is to always try to
stick just as close to the facts as possible." --- (the late) Cliff
Inkster; CPR Engineman, raconteur and philosopher.
2. - The secret to contacting Joe by email is to be sure to insert "Joe" or
"Smuin" into the main text portion of any message you send to him, and thus
your message should percolate through his spam filters.
----- Original Message -----
From: "b4cprail" <rr_auer@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 2:56 PM
Subject: [cpsig] Re: Consolidated stencil block
Joe I hardly think you're a disaffected former employee of
BC Rail, disappointed perhaps, with government subtrefuge etc.,
but I expect you were a proud employee. Everyone has had ups
and downs, but when one sticks around for decades, the good
usually outweighs the bad.
I do hope the Nerd label wasn't cast too far afield as some
seniors may resent the label, i.e. me. ;^(
Rainer Auer
Saskatoon, SK
