Joe, I don't always use the proper language to express myself
and in this case 'pride' was obviously inapropriate. However,
from current and past descriptions of your railway career, I've
gotten the impression that despite the frusrations you encountered
in your work environment, you didn't stop caring or did I misread
your comments? As for this rail-nerd (I prefer railfan) business
I think it's time for you to come out of the closet and accept
that you are one yourself. I don't share the same inerests as many
on this list, nor do you or many others but there is a common
interest in one or more aspect of railways and specifically the
CPR.
Rainer
--- In cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "KVRailway" <kvrailway@...> wrote:
Thanks for your thoughts, Don. You're quite right. However, pride is just
not a word that I personally can apply when I think about my railway career.
For me, the word has negative connotations when applied to my workplace,
because about the only time on the job I ever heard the words 'pride' or
'proud' was when somebody was trying to maintain a bull-s*** status quo.
I think my most dominant feeling about my years on the railroad is one of
gratitude. I was lucky to have a steady, well-paid job that put up with my
foibles as much as other peoples. I am grateful that I got through my
career without serious or even minor injuries. In the blue collar railway
forces, that isn't a small feat, especially the way things used to be.
Sometimes I can't help wondering if I accomplished one truly useful thing
during the years on the job, but for certain, it gave me the background to
do what I do now, one thing being a tendency to editorialize on these lists
a bit more than I probably should. Still, this too is something I'm
grateful for, because these groups have opened up horizons which were closed
to me on the job. People in management get to travel, see places and meet a
lot of people. Us knuckle-draggers spend our careers with the same bunch of
trolls and scenery most of the time. Tends to do something to you
sometimes. Much as rail-nerds leave me shaking my head sometimes, I have to
confess they can sure supply perspectives that would have never occurred to
me otherwise.
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: "Don Thomas" <thomasd@...>
To: <cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 10:54 PM
Subject: Re: [cpsig] Rant of the week: was Consolidated stencil block
Joe, there are a number of ways you can define pride and it looks like you
and Rainer aren't using the same ones. Someone can be proud to have worked
for the railway, i.e. the fact alone is satisfying to them. Others are
proud of having put up with something which was tough, perhaps needlessly
so. Or you can take pride in your own efforts and accomplishments,
notwithstanding what you may think about those around you or how
management behaved. You can be proud of what the company has accomplished.
You can like and appreciate the people you have worked with, which can be
incorrectly thought of as "pride".
Company management has been criticized for how it has treated employees,
or customers and communities; or how it has managed it's own business
compared to one's interpretation of its own best interest. You can be
critical of the company but still be proud of your efforts. Personally I
am proud of things I have done, whether they were merely a good job done
in a routine matter or something which has an effect on the business as a
whole. I've worked on the tracks, and while I'm grateful not to have made
a career at it I was proud of what my co-workers were able to learn and
accomplish in a short time. I'm proud to have been given responsibilities
and taken intitatives which were carried out successfully, sometimes due
to my own efforts and more often through working with a group. Not that
there weren't lots of mistakes which are hardly sources of pride, but at
least some of them were learning experiences!
It's largely a matter of how you approach it. I don't go to work for the
pride, but because I need to feed and house my family just like everybody
else. But you can be proud of what you do, or how well you do it, or in
the results of the work, or in how the organization as a whole works or
what it accomplishes. There's nothing wrong with finding something related
to your work that you can be proud of. In fact it can help you put up with
the slings and arrows that working life, and life in general, send your
way. This doesn't mean being proud of putting up with nonsense. Pride and
pragmatism are not opposites, in fact they have nothing to do with each
other. You can be both proud and pragmatic, or either one, or neither. You
can also be disaffected and still have some pride (and not just in having
endured). Just because some people are dull enough to be "proud" of
putting up with foolish practices or mistreatment doesn't mean that you
can't interpret and feel pride in something else -
Just don't adopt someone else's self-serving definition of "pride" in
being mistreated or ignorant. Those who take a macho pride in putting up
with indignities, and criticize anybody who complains as a whining baby,
can just as easily be categorized as masochists and the complainers as the
onnes who are actually brave enough to stand up against it. It all depends
on the circumstances.
If you ever did anything at work that was worthwhile then you should be
proud of that. You should also be proud of the fact that your railway
experience and your willingness to share it with others has contributed so
much to other peoples' knowledge, and correction of their misconceptions.
Pride doesn't equate to a Pollyanna attitude that everything was
wonderful; in fact a healthy dollop of pragmatism and cynicism are
essential too. I'm ruthlessly cynical in my work, but ultimately you
can't live like that.
Don Thomas
(and proud of it)
