It’s always oh-so satisfying when a person who thinks they know everything gets what’s coming to them.

And the story you’re about to read definitely fits into that category!

No doubt about it!

Take a look at how this railroad worker maliciously complied with orders from someone who just couldn’t seem to listen to reason…

Don’t want my advice? Then suffer the consequences.

“So this story involves a railway, and the collective agreement that we railroaders operate under.

I’ll try to simplify it since some terms are industry specific.

This happened a few years ago.

There was a problem in the rail yard.

My crew and I were called for work on a train leaving east from the port.

While doing our paperwork at the start of the day, I noticed through our live train tracking system that a westbound train was about 30 minutes travel time out from the yard, but only had 1 hour left on their federal hours of service… which absolutely can not be exceeded.

They also had 12,000 ft of traffic to yard, which alone takes 1-2 hours to compete.

As soon as I realized this, I called the local manager (called a TM). Now, I had 13 years seniority at that point.

The manager had spent 6 months as a trainee railroader before switching to management…total seniority, maybe 1 year.

They offered up a suggestion about how to fix the situation.

I suggested that he “swing” us to a Rescue ticket in the payroll system and we would go out immediately and help that train.

Normally this would entitle us to a 2hr off duty spacing between tickets, and up to 8hrs rest if we wanted it, but we offered to decline that to help the other crew.

He immediately declined and confidently explained that the crew was just fine and they would be setting half their train out enroute at a storage track.

Okay, whatever you say…

That move takes even longer than yarding in the port, due to track clearances and stuff needed to allow the moves.

So, I just shrugged, hung up the phone and continued with my paperwork.

It turned out, that even if they had the time on their clock, that track had unreported cars in it! So the TM frantically tells them to make a run for the port.

During this time, we had gone out and started working on building our own train.

We talk to the inbound crew and agree to help them land the first cut of cars, and secure their tailed cut before their federal 12th (required by law).

The guy made a call to them.

So, there we sat… the inbound crew landed half their train before houring out…. and left 6000ft of train blocking the only piece of rail in or out of the entire port terminal. TM then calls us on the radio and the conversation went like this:

TM: Hello Crew, I need you to go down and pull that second cut in to clear the rail

Crew: OK, and then we taxi home?

TM: No, no… you get back on your own train.

Crew: No… we only handle 1 train per ticket, and this ticket terminates at our home terminal, so if we handle their train, we taxi home on pay. You could cancel us and put us on a Rescue Turn ticket like we originally suggested… but if we do it on this ticket we go home.

TM: OK, you’re cancelled and called on a Turn.

Crew: So you’re saying we’re cancelled?

TM: Yes

This guy was in for a surprise.

Crew: OK, since we are cancelled after working we are all taking 8hrs rest, and we are the only crew in the terminal to do this work.

TM: Wait what?!?

Crew: So are we cancelled, or is there a taxi coming after we yard that train?

TM: Yard the train…

Lesson learned!

Funny thing is, it was a beautiful summer day. If he had just taken my suggestion, we would have yarded their train, and jumped back on ours…. making 2 tickets worth of pay, but saving the railroad a lot of headache.

Instead, we yarded half a train, and got paid to play on our phones in a 4.5 hr taxi ride, for the same rate of pay as we would have gotten on the 10hr train trip home.”

Here’s how people reacted.

One person wants more of these stories to get out…

Another individual made an excellent point.

This Reddit user said the guy in charge was a total idiot.

One reader talked about the importance of unions.

And this reader was nice enough to translate all the railroad terminology for us.

Some people just can’t get out of their own way.

I think he learned a valuable lesson!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.