7 ms·

How My Six Months Working on the Railway Changed My Life

113 points by qkeast 2y ago

Traubenfuchs 2y ago
https://archive.ph/gsF1Y https://archive.ph/gsF1Y
readthenotes1 2y ago
I had a boss once who told us why he got serious about school: His dad had him work in the lumber mill one summer. He noticed in a few days that none of the old timers still had all 10 fingers. ---- An old relative told me why the source of hens frugality: The summer hen turned 10 was spent mowing lawns around his small town. At the end of the summer, hen spent all that money in a few hours at the fair. ----
- atoav 2y ago
  In my country every kid had to do some internship as a teen (from school), I remember carrying half a ton of tiles into the third floor with no elevator while my collegues told me about doing nothing in their boring office jobs. At least I learned how to lay tiles in bathrooms. It wasn't as if I didn't plan to study before, but this gave me some respect for those doing that kind of construction work. It was hard, but mentally it was harder to work with troubled kids.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    I moved a three-foot-high stack of 4x8' sheetrock from one section of strip mall through the gap in the uncovered metal studs to the next one over, maybe 10ft away. Sheetrock is heavy and unwieldy. Such mindless (but necessary) work. Unforgettable. So, yeah, I've got much respect for our hard working brothers and sisters, even if I only did it for a summer. But I have even more respect for you, friend. Trying to help troubled kids is infinitely more difficult and, I imagine, draining. I hope you feel the joy of your (perhaps rare) successes in helping another human being feel like someone cares about them. My father, after retiring from his outstanding 21yr enlisted Navy career, finished his teaching degree summa lum laude. His student teaching semester was in a "last chance" high school, where a student got in his face one day. He took his degree and got a job driving heavy equipment like graders for a construction firm. He was/is far too old-school for that shit. Peace be with you, friend.
- codpiece 2y ago
  Are you referring to something other than a female chicken?
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    swedish neuter pronoun
    - pcthrowaway 2y ago
      Is this a new neo-pronoun I'm not familiar with yet?
      - dagw 2y ago
        It was first coined in the 60s and has been floating around since, but it's really only seen regular use in the past decade or so.
    - codpiece 2y ago
      Thank you!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      This reminds me of something Jimmy Carr said. Oh! gender neutral elder, oh! gender neutral elder, what’s a joke? YOU ARE!
    - isoprophlex 2y ago
      "They" would have been a lot less confusing here...
      - laserlight 2y ago
        I'm baffled by why one would use a Swedish pronoun in an English text. We live in a strange world.
- drmpeg 2y ago
  Same here. The summer I mowed lawns in 1973, I spent all the money on pinball and pizza in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Some of the older pinball machines were still a nickel.
  - Isamu 2y ago
    I have to ask: what did you get for a lawn at that time? My lawn mowing career started maybe five years later but I remember 7 dollars being good pay. On the other hand I mowed some gigantic areas for that pay, and sometimes extremely high grass. That was sometimes hours on very steep ground
    - drmpeg 2y ago
      I can't remember now, but I want to say less than 5 dollars. I do remember that one of my customers with a fairly large lawn paid 2 dollars an hour, which I was very happy with.
somenameforme 2y ago
And then you finally find yourself on the other side of the window, only years later to think only about being back on the ground once again. Nostalgia, wisdom, or just humanity's constant search for something different - even if just leads you in a circle.
- physicles 2y ago
  And going in a circle is fine. If you do arrive back where you started, you’re a different person because of the experiences you had along the way.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    Very much true, but your experience carries you up a level, so it's really an upward spiral. I like to imagine that the sun is hurtling around the galactic center so the Earth is tracing a spiral around that giant black hole out here in the near-emptiness of the outer rings of our Milky Way.
hahahacorn 2y ago
Beautiful writing. I know the nostalgia of your first tough job. Mine was certainly not as blue as the oil fields of Alberta, nor the railways, it really wasn’t even blue collar. But I did find it tough. I was a food runner in a kitchen built to serve 90 that served 450 + catered events. The chaos and heat was overwhelming. My most active day was doing 30,000 steps during a 5 hour lunch shift, half of which were walked with a 40+ pound tray being carried just over my shoulder (on the shoulder was not classy enough). The kitchen was easily 110 degrees and had a single comically small fan that did absolute fuck all. The steam from the washing machine blasted you every time you went to grab bread, the chef was a maniac who makes “the bear” look really chill in comparison. And even without him every person in that kitchen was ready to explode at any time. Fortunately I make quite a bit more now than I did then. I’ve made it to the other side of the dining car window, so to speak. But I really do miss it. Especially the chaos. If you spent 30 seconds in that kitchen, you’d be confused as to how a single dish ever made it out the door. And yet we consistently served 2k+ people on our busiest days. It was the best job I’ve ever had and likely will ever have.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  > The kitchen was easily 110 degrees and had a single comically small fan that did absolute fuck all. I worked as a server at a Golden Corral (large all-you-can-eat buffet here in the States). One summer Sunday, the AC went out early afternoon. By the shift change, I was already literally soaked, other servers called out, so I decided to help out and work a double. Note that this was Sunday, so the church folks (nice but hardly the best tippers, as GC is cheap American grub) were more interested in buffet eating than the insane heat, so it was still packed! But the best job I ever had was walking security routes (not for intrusions, but for spotting safety problems like leaks or smells or a worker in distress, none of which ever happened) on ships in local shipyards, including a massive BAE one. We'd walk the routes and tap the RFID tag-dots with the wand, twice an hour. The first ship I walked (for $8/hr) was one of only four transocean cable laying ships. It had two huge vertical cyllindrical wells that stored the cables that would be fed out the back as it laid them. Getting to see the entire ship, walking up and down the ladders, into the engine room and around the bridge and those two giant wells was sooo cool. Other ships I got to work on were a navy ammo resupply ship being decommissioned, a cruise ship, and, best of all, a huge container ship with a geek-salivating bridge whose engine room was massive and clean and spacious. I got to see it all, and be paid to exercise. And seeing a pair of guys wrangling a huge elbow pipe section out of its very tight space using chains and pulleys to inch the giant (meter in diameter with inch-thick steel) up and over using hand-crank lever things was impressive. The connections were ringed with maybe inch-thick bolts, just massive. I often poke my nose into my daughter's all-metal-gear Singer 503a sewing machine's top to get a whiff of that industrial grease to remind me of that badass engineering room smell. Another great assignment was for a smaller shipyard that did small yacht repairs. It only had room to do one at a time, but the part of the walk that went through their office had a little living room-style waiting room that had a coffee table with a coffee table book on it that catalogued the Dodge brothers' (founders of the automobile company) use of their profits to build and sail luxury yachts on the Great Lakes. Those early 1900s ships were gorgeous. Those engine guys did well for themselves (I believe they built the original engines for Ford). The key to the job, however, was I got weekly overtime at 1.5x, so I'd pick up any shift I could, as all hours >40 were $12/hr. One week I worked 64 hours, including 20 straight! My wife and I would sometimes literally just see (or just miss) each other as she got home from her restaurant work, and I would be going to the shipyard. Thanks for the inspiration, friend. Yes, times used to be far simpler, and in many ways more enjoyable in that simplicty, sweat, and smells.
Animats 2y ago
Here's the Union Pacific's management recruiting video.[1] They're up front about it being a tough job in miserable conditions. The video opens in a railroad yard in Chicago in a snowstorm at 5 AM. The CEO started in track maintenance and worked up to driving a train. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMViWazEYoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMViWazEYoc
- defrost 2y ago
  Before working on Cayley/Magma, back in the day, I worked cattle stations in high school, mining during university breaks, with two days a week kitchen handing during term time. My eldest son started rail work and is still doing it a decade later .. it does keep you well grounded: https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/eleven-workers-struck-by-lightning-in-the-goldfields-20171015-gz1ezd.html https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/eleven...
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  That is a good ad. Makes me want to work there. Seems quite tough.
piokoch 2y ago
TLDR: the author applied for a hard, physical job and he didn't like it, so he decided he does not want to do hard, physical job in future. Terribly fascinating. Instead, the author decided to go into graphomania and made sure nobody published in the journal, where he was an editor, reports of molestation against Epstein. Nice.
- igleria 2y ago
  well, that got really dark.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    [flagged]
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  For anyone who was also curious about the last part: - https://archive.ph/2XYxp https://archive.ph/2XYxp - Why Didn’t Vanity Fair Break the Jeffrey Epstein Story? (Feb 8, 2022) - https://archive.ph/iW4xi https://archive.ph/iW4xi - Graydon Carter on Vanity Fair, Jeffrey Epstein and an editor’s power. (Jul 19, 2019) - https://www.siriusxm.com/clips/clip/951fcb1d-f631-3120-4bd7-0231e8c8d75e/6e5741c5-3d9e-477c-a234-830d899034a3 https://www.siriusxm.com/clips/clip/951fcb1d-f631-3120-4bd7-... - Vicky Ward: Jeffrey Epstein and Graydon Carter cut a deal (Audio, Jul 9, 2019)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
bux93 2y ago
"As it happened, one of my father’s sisters, Aunt Irene, was a vice president of the Canadian National Railways" kinda says it all. Put on "Common people" by Pulp in the background when you read this article.
- fedeb95 2y ago
  the part on the sandwich made me stop reading.
- 3D30497420 2y ago
  It isn't like he was given some hard-to-get, high-paying, cushy office job.
  - magic_hamster 2y ago
    That's true, but failing was never going to have an effect on him, which is sort of the point of the song (which is really good).
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Probably losing a leg would've.
  - julienEar 2y ago
    facts
- ludicrousdispla 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    Oh my god, this is amazing. Thank you!
6stringmerc 2y ago
The modern railway jobs, thanks to Hunter Harrison and PSR, are terrible by modern standards. Extensive over-work, safety issues, and constant cost cutting pressures while making longer and longer trains. Even while I’m searching for jobs currently, getting involved in that industry again is appalling. Source: worked at a railroad safety engineering firm (preemption and crossings)
- mpclark 2y ago
  I’ve recently changed career in the UK — I’ve gone from web dev to a passenger train conductor/manager. The conditions are excellent, the money is terrific for the work involved, and overall the experience is very rewarding. I couldn’t be happier.
  - fransje26 2y ago
    I know someone who did the same in the Netherlands and he couldn't be happier.
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    Who on earth would downvote this comment? If I could choose a social media with no downvoting, I would. It always starts with good intentions and ends up with "this comment pisses me off and rather than reply I'm going to pretend this is a distracting take". Off-hand downvoting seems to simply double the popularity effect of voting and exacerbate reduction in diversity of opinion. Daily I see flagged comments where I can't think of a single reason why a comment was flagged outside of unpopularity. Daily, posts that flagrantly violate the rules hit the front page. Plus, I can't say the ranking of comments actually does anything positive for the site. Ordering by most responses would likely be as effective. After twenty years of trying to justify scoring commentary I simply give up. This isn't a commentary on moderation, btw—dang is excellent. this sort of forum is just essentially broken at a community-consensus layer. I have just come to seriously resent downvoting. I don't think it does anything positive for the site and mostly acts as a wet blanket for opinions unorthodox in silicon valley. I certainly don't see it as the bulwark between us and civility.
brainzap 2y ago
railway can also be scary, 3 deaths on the night shift team in one year
gadders 2y ago
Posh kid larps as working class and learns valuable lessons about life.
ForTheKidz 2y ago
This reads like someone who knew they'd never have to work a day in their life. At least they had the spine to admit it.
crabbone 2y ago
As everyone here seems to recall their blue-collar jobs, let me list some of the difficult or bizarre jobs I worked: * Aluminum factory. Lots of acidic vapor from the bath where aluminum pieces are washed before painted. Large heaps of aluminum pieces are carried by hand between stations. Your back is breaking by the end of the day so much so it's hard to lie down straight in bed. * Roofing materials factory. I worked in the section that made and portioned sealant. The day consists of eight hours of putting a ten liter bucket on the scales, opening the faucet, waiting for the bucket to fill, and then putting it on a pallet. Add to the whole experience the fact that the factory is in the desert where heat reaches 40 degrees Celsius most days during summer. Your clothes are permanently wet and display large sediment of salt. Rephrasing WH4K, your clothes break way before than you do. Any shirt, boots, pants will disintegrate in a matter of weeks. * Bakery. I was hired to help baking doughnuts for Hanuka. 16 hour shifts. Start 5 in the morning and 9 in the evening you crawl home to try to get some sleep. If it wasn't so cold, I'd probably just sleep on the bench in front of the factory. * Walking a bear cub (it was in a circus). Not physically difficult but scary as hell. Also the smell... * Coca-Cola delivery. Hell on Earth. Worst job I ever worked. Stuff you need to haul, a lot of it by hand because the cart won't fit, or because of stairs etc. Nobody works this job for more than ten years, and you have to be exceptionally strong and healthy to get to that point. Most people start having back problems after a year or so. * Picking. Picking avocado was a fun one though. I got to climb the trees, which was fun. Most picking is miserable though.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  > Coca-Cola delivery The shipping and handling of liquid is something I've become acutely sensitive to. I must say that with Coca-Cola, it may be junk soda, but at least you weren't delivering beer or liquor. Among legal jobs it must be a moral struggle for some guys to deliver thousands of gallons of the stuff. At least bartenders and restaurants have discretion to stop serving customers, but delivery is just a middle-man, no-questions-asked thankless job. I used to shop and ride the bus home, and so instinctively I avoided large quantities of liquid because they were too heavy and the cost/weight/benefit ratios favored substantial food or everyday items I could really use. Shipping liquids seems to be a huge logistics problem overall. Instacart began charging me "heavy item fees" and a lot of drivers really hated lugging any liquids up the stairs here. And even a restaurant delivery with fountain soda[s] seemed troublesome, for many reasons! No wonder they began to steal all of my drinks! I was trying to chase down some food-grade H2O2 and realized Amazon wouldn't even ship it here because of HAZMAT regulations, and relying on taxis isn't much better. I need to be concerned about heavy glass clinking together, how to secure bottles upright in random strangers' trunks. There is a reason that "milkmen" and milk delivery services used to be ubiquitous in urban America. Solving the logistics of shipping cold, perishable liquids in bottles and bringing them direct to customers was a huge marketing and engineering win. Once I had a sizable shipment of organic juice in glass bottles which was held up at the USPS station. At the counter, they told me that the bottles broke and it was a huge mess and they had to clean it up and didn't even want to show me. I have no doubt that it may have happened that way and they were enjoying the remaining bottles on my dime... can't blame 'em!
scryers_bloom 2y ago
I'm a young software developer only 5 months into their new job (after graduating for a year, sucks out here). I feel privileged and guilty for coming out of a single parent household in one of the poorest counties in NYS without ever working one of these jobs. I only ever have respect and admiration for those that work grueling, long hours in blue-collar, hospice care, restaurants, etc.
initialed85 2y ago
That was a great read- what an experience to have lived through

113 points by qkeast 2y ago

https://archive.ph/gsF1Y https://archive.ph/gsF1Y

I had a boss once who told us why he got serious about school: His dad had him work in the lumber mill one summer. He noticed in a few days that none of the old timers still had all 10 fingers. ---- An old relative told me why the source of hens frugality: The summer hen turned 10 was spent mowing lawns around his small town. At the end of the summer, hen spent all that money in a few hours at the fair. ----

atoav 2y ago
In my country every kid had to do some internship as a teen (from school), I remember carrying half a ton of tiles into the third floor with no elevator while my collegues told me about doing nothing in their boring office jobs. At least I learned how to lay tiles in bathrooms. It wasn't as if I didn't plan to study before, but this gave me some respect for those doing that kind of construction work. It was hard, but mentally it was harder to work with troubled kids.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  I moved a three-foot-high stack of 4x8' sheetrock from one section of strip mall through the gap in the uncovered metal studs to the next one over, maybe 10ft away. Sheetrock is heavy and unwieldy. Such mindless (but necessary) work. Unforgettable. So, yeah, I've got much respect for our hard working brothers and sisters, even if I only did it for a summer. But I have even more respect for you, friend. Trying to help troubled kids is infinitely more difficult and, I imagine, draining. I hope you feel the joy of your (perhaps rare) successes in helping another human being feel like someone cares about them. My father, after retiring from his outstanding 21yr enlisted Navy career, finished his teaching degree summa lum laude. His student teaching semester was in a "last chance" high school, where a student got in his face one day. He took his degree and got a job driving heavy equipment like graders for a construction firm. He was/is far too old-school for that shit. Peace be with you, friend.
codpiece 2y ago
Are you referring to something other than a female chicken?
- 0_____0 2y ago
  swedish neuter pronoun
  - pcthrowaway 2y ago
    Is this a new neo-pronoun I'm not familiar with yet?
    - dagw 2y ago
      It was first coined in the 60s and has been floating around since, but it's really only seen regular use in the past decade or so.
  - codpiece 2y ago
    Thank you!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    This reminds me of something Jimmy Carr said. Oh! gender neutral elder, oh! gender neutral elder, what’s a joke? YOU ARE!
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    "They" would have been a lot less confusing here...
    - laserlight 2y ago
      I'm baffled by why one would use a Swedish pronoun in an English text. We live in a strange world.
drmpeg 2y ago
Same here. The summer I mowed lawns in 1973, I spent all the money on pinball and pizza in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Some of the older pinball machines were still a nickel.
- Isamu 2y ago
  I have to ask: what did you get for a lawn at that time? My lawn mowing career started maybe five years later but I remember 7 dollars being good pay. On the other hand I mowed some gigantic areas for that pay, and sometimes extremely high grass. That was sometimes hours on very steep ground
  - drmpeg 2y ago
    I can't remember now, but I want to say less than 5 dollars. I do remember that one of my customers with a fairly large lawn paid 2 dollars an hour, which I was very happy with.

somenameforme 2y ago

And then you finally find yourself on the other side of the window, only years later to think only about being back on the ground once again. Nostalgia, wisdom, or just humanity's constant search for something different - even if just leads you in a circle.

physicles 2y ago
And going in a circle is fine. If you do arrive back where you started, you’re a different person because of the experiences you had along the way.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Very much true, but your experience carries you up a level, so it's really an upward spiral. I like to imagine that the sun is hurtling around the galactic center so the Earth is tracing a spiral around that giant black hole out here in the near-emptiness of the outer rings of our Milky Way.

hahahacorn 2y ago

Beautiful writing. I know the nostalgia of your first tough job. Mine was certainly not as blue as the oil fields of Alberta, nor the railways, it really wasn’t even blue collar. But I did find it tough. I was a food runner in a kitchen built to serve 90 that served 450 + catered events. The chaos and heat was overwhelming. My most active day was doing 30,000 steps during a 5 hour lunch shift, half of which were walked with a 40+ pound tray being carried just over my shoulder (on the shoulder was not classy enough). The kitchen was easily 110 degrees and had a single comically small fan that did absolute fuck all. The steam from the washing machine blasted you every time you went to grab bread, the chef was a maniac who makes “the bear” look really chill in comparison. And even without him every person in that kitchen was ready to explode at any time. Fortunately I make quite a bit more now than I did then. I’ve made it to the other side of the dining car window, so to speak. But I really do miss it. Especially the chaos. If you spent 30 seconds in that kitchen, you’d be confused as to how a single dish ever made it out the door. And yet we consistently served 2k+ people on our busiest days. It was the best job I’ve ever had and likely will ever have.

MrMcCall 2y ago
> The kitchen was easily 110 degrees and had a single comically small fan that did absolute fuck all. I worked as a server at a Golden Corral (large all-you-can-eat buffet here in the States). One summer Sunday, the AC went out early afternoon. By the shift change, I was already literally soaked, other servers called out, so I decided to help out and work a double. Note that this was Sunday, so the church folks (nice but hardly the best tippers, as GC is cheap American grub) were more interested in buffet eating than the insane heat, so it was still packed! But the best job I ever had was walking security routes (not for intrusions, but for spotting safety problems like leaks or smells or a worker in distress, none of which ever happened) on ships in local shipyards, including a massive BAE one. We'd walk the routes and tap the RFID tag-dots with the wand, twice an hour. The first ship I walked (for $8/hr) was one of only four transocean cable laying ships. It had two huge vertical cyllindrical wells that stored the cables that would be fed out the back as it laid them. Getting to see the entire ship, walking up and down the ladders, into the engine room and around the bridge and those two giant wells was sooo cool. Other ships I got to work on were a navy ammo resupply ship being decommissioned, a cruise ship, and, best of all, a huge container ship with a geek-salivating bridge whose engine room was massive and clean and spacious. I got to see it all, and be paid to exercise. And seeing a pair of guys wrangling a huge elbow pipe section out of its very tight space using chains and pulleys to inch the giant (meter in diameter with inch-thick steel) up and over using hand-crank lever things was impressive. The connections were ringed with maybe inch-thick bolts, just massive. I often poke my nose into my daughter's all-metal-gear Singer 503a sewing machine's top to get a whiff of that industrial grease to remind me of that badass engineering room smell. Another great assignment was for a smaller shipyard that did small yacht repairs. It only had room to do one at a time, but the part of the walk that went through their office had a little living room-style waiting room that had a coffee table with a coffee table book on it that catalogued the Dodge brothers' (founders of the automobile company) use of their profits to build and sail luxury yachts on the Great Lakes. Those early 1900s ships were gorgeous. Those engine guys did well for themselves (I believe they built the original engines for Ford). The key to the job, however, was I got weekly overtime at 1.5x, so I'd pick up any shift I could, as all hours >40 were $12/hr. One week I worked 64 hours, including 20 straight! My wife and I would sometimes literally just see (or just miss) each other as she got home from her restaurant work, and I would be going to the shipyard. Thanks for the inspiration, friend. Yes, times used to be far simpler, and in many ways more enjoyable in that simplicty, sweat, and smells.

Animats 2y ago

Here's the Union Pacific's management recruiting video.[1] They're up front about it being a tough job in miserable conditions. The video opens in a railroad yard in Chicago in a snowstorm at 5 AM. The CEO started in track maintenance and worked up to driving a train. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMViWazEYoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMViWazEYoc

defrost 2y ago
Before working on Cayley/Magma, back in the day, I worked cattle stations in high school, mining during university breaks, with two days a week kitchen handing during term time. My eldest son started rail work and is still doing it a decade later .. it does keep you well grounded: https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/eleven-workers-struck-by-lightning-in-the-goldfields-20171015-gz1ezd.html https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/eleven...
noisy_boy 2y ago
That is a good ad. Makes me want to work there. Seems quite tough.

piokoch 2y ago

TLDR: the author applied for a hard, physical job and he didn't like it, so he decided he does not want to do hard, physical job in future. Terribly fascinating. Instead, the author decided to go into graphomania and made sure nobody published in the journal, where he was an editor, reports of molestation against Epstein. Nice.

igleria 2y ago
well, that got really dark.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  [flagged]
rrr_oh_man 2y ago
For anyone who was also curious about the last part: - https://archive.ph/2XYxp https://archive.ph/2XYxp - Why Didn’t Vanity Fair Break the Jeffrey Epstein Story? (Feb 8, 2022) - https://archive.ph/iW4xi https://archive.ph/iW4xi - Graydon Carter on Vanity Fair, Jeffrey Epstein and an editor’s power. (Jul 19, 2019) - https://www.siriusxm.com/clips/clip/951fcb1d-f631-3120-4bd7-0231e8c8d75e/6e5741c5-3d9e-477c-a234-830d899034a3 https://www.siriusxm.com/clips/clip/951fcb1d-f631-3120-4bd7-... - Vicky Ward: Jeffrey Epstein and Graydon Carter cut a deal (Audio, Jul 9, 2019)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

bux93 2y ago

"As it happened, one of my father’s sisters, Aunt Irene, was a vice president of the Canadian National Railways" kinda says it all. Put on "Common people" by Pulp in the background when you read this article.

fedeb95 2y ago
the part on the sandwich made me stop reading.
3D30497420 2y ago
It isn't like he was given some hard-to-get, high-paying, cushy office job.
- magic_hamster 2y ago
  That's true, but failing was never going to have an effect on him, which is sort of the point of the song (which is really good).
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Probably losing a leg would've.
- julienEar 2y ago
  facts
ludicrousdispla 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  Oh my god, this is amazing. Thank you!

6stringmerc 2y ago

The modern railway jobs, thanks to Hunter Harrison and PSR, are terrible by modern standards. Extensive over-work, safety issues, and constant cost cutting pressures while making longer and longer trains. Even while I’m searching for jobs currently, getting involved in that industry again is appalling. Source: worked at a railroad safety engineering firm (preemption and crossings)

mpclark 2y ago
I’ve recently changed career in the UK — I’ve gone from web dev to a passenger train conductor/manager. The conditions are excellent, the money is terrific for the work involved, and overall the experience is very rewarding. I couldn’t be happier.
- fransje26 2y ago
  I know someone who did the same in the Netherlands and he couldn't be happier.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  Who on earth would downvote this comment? If I could choose a social media with no downvoting, I would. It always starts with good intentions and ends up with "this comment pisses me off and rather than reply I'm going to pretend this is a distracting take". Off-hand downvoting seems to simply double the popularity effect of voting and exacerbate reduction in diversity of opinion. Daily I see flagged comments where I can't think of a single reason why a comment was flagged outside of unpopularity. Daily, posts that flagrantly violate the rules hit the front page. Plus, I can't say the ranking of comments actually does anything positive for the site. Ordering by most responses would likely be as effective. After twenty years of trying to justify scoring commentary I simply give up. This isn't a commentary on moderation, btw—dang is excellent. this sort of forum is just essentially broken at a community-consensus layer. I have just come to seriously resent downvoting. I don't think it does anything positive for the site and mostly acts as a wet blanket for opinions unorthodox in silicon valley. I certainly don't see it as the bulwark between us and civility.

brainzap 2y ago

railway can also be scary, 3 deaths on the night shift team in one year

gadders 2y ago

Posh kid larps as working class and learns valuable lessons about life.

ForTheKidz 2y ago

This reads like someone who knew they'd never have to work a day in their life. At least they had the spine to admit it.

crabbone 2y ago

As everyone here seems to recall their blue-collar jobs, let me list some of the difficult or bizarre jobs I worked: * Aluminum factory. Lots of acidic vapor from the bath where aluminum pieces are washed before painted. Large heaps of aluminum pieces are carried by hand between stations. Your back is breaking by the end of the day so much so it's hard to lie down straight in bed. * Roofing materials factory. I worked in the section that made and portioned sealant. The day consists of eight hours of putting a ten liter bucket on the scales, opening the faucet, waiting for the bucket to fill, and then putting it on a pallet. Add to the whole experience the fact that the factory is in the desert where heat reaches 40 degrees Celsius most days during summer. Your clothes are permanently wet and display large sediment of salt. Rephrasing WH4K, your clothes break way before than you do. Any shirt, boots, pants will disintegrate in a matter of weeks. * Bakery. I was hired to help baking doughnuts for Hanuka. 16 hour shifts. Start 5 in the morning and 9 in the evening you crawl home to try to get some sleep. If it wasn't so cold, I'd probably just sleep on the bench in front of the factory. * Walking a bear cub (it was in a circus). Not physically difficult but scary as hell. Also the smell... * Coca-Cola delivery. Hell on Earth. Worst job I ever worked. Stuff you need to haul, a lot of it by hand because the cart won't fit, or because of stairs etc. Nobody works this job for more than ten years, and you have to be exceptionally strong and healthy to get to that point. Most people start having back problems after a year or so. * Picking. Picking avocado was a fun one though. I got to climb the trees, which was fun. Most picking is miserable though.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
> Coca-Cola delivery The shipping and handling of liquid is something I've become acutely sensitive to. I must say that with Coca-Cola, it may be junk soda, but at least you weren't delivering beer or liquor. Among legal jobs it must be a moral struggle for some guys to deliver thousands of gallons of the stuff. At least bartenders and restaurants have discretion to stop serving customers, but delivery is just a middle-man, no-questions-asked thankless job. I used to shop and ride the bus home, and so instinctively I avoided large quantities of liquid because they were too heavy and the cost/weight/benefit ratios favored substantial food or everyday items I could really use. Shipping liquids seems to be a huge logistics problem overall. Instacart began charging me "heavy item fees" and a lot of drivers really hated lugging any liquids up the stairs here. And even a restaurant delivery with fountain soda[s] seemed troublesome, for many reasons! No wonder they began to steal all of my drinks! I was trying to chase down some food-grade H2O2 and realized Amazon wouldn't even ship it here because of HAZMAT regulations, and relying on taxis isn't much better. I need to be concerned about heavy glass clinking together, how to secure bottles upright in random strangers' trunks. There is a reason that "milkmen" and milk delivery services used to be ubiquitous in urban America. Solving the logistics of shipping cold, perishable liquids in bottles and bringing them direct to customers was a huge marketing and engineering win. Once I had a sizable shipment of organic juice in glass bottles which was held up at the USPS station. At the counter, they told me that the bottles broke and it was a huge mess and they had to clean it up and didn't even want to show me. I have no doubt that it may have happened that way and they were enjoying the remaining bottles on my dime... can't blame 'em!

scryers_bloom 2y ago

I'm a young software developer only 5 months into their new job (after graduating for a year, sucks out here). I feel privileged and guilty for coming out of a single parent household in one of the poorest counties in NYS without ever working one of these jobs. I only ever have respect and admiration for those that work grueling, long hours in blue-collar, hospice care, restaurants, etc.

initialed85 2y ago

That was a great read- what an experience to have lived through