If there’s one group of people you really don’t want to annoy, railroad workers have to be right at the top of the list.

They can slow down or speed up trains as they wish, so it’s best to work with them in the most gracious way possible.

The person who wrote this story shared what happened when they got a bunch of grief about how things were operating.

Check out how they handled this situation.

You don’t want us inspecting trains all day? Ok boss.

“I work for a heavy equipment contractor.

We specialize in railway work with very industry specific equipment. On this particular job, we were undercutting tunnels. Basically digging dirty or worn out ballast from underneath and between railroad ties and putting new ballast in.

It took a high rail backhoe for the digging, an excavator on a hytracker cart for removing the reject ballast and bringing in clean ballast, and a tamper for stabilizing the track when we were done. 3 operators, and a railway foreman were required along with the equipment. Cost got pretty high.

There’s a very specific process for all this.

Now, on the railway you need track time to complete any work on track. The foreman must get track occupancy permits (TOP’s) from radio traffic control (RTC) to insure our protection from getting blasted by trains.

You can only do this BETWEEN trains. They will not stop trains to allow you to work. Trains make way more money than you cost.

Especially container trains that have a guaranteed shipping date. Trains also cost a lot of money when they’re stopped, some close to a million an hour.

We had been getting lots of production through the week. Train traffic was in our favor. Until it wasn’t.

This was a crazy day.

It happens. Sometimes you get what we call a “train day”. Just so much traffic that RTC just won’t give you a track permit.

We had gotten stranded out on track with no way out other than by rail with 9 trains in the line up before we’d get enough track time to get out of there. There was a lot of overtime billed out that day.

The supervisor called our foreman wondering why we got nothing done that day and worked so late. The foreman told him why and that it was out of our control.

He wasn’t happy and proceeded to yell at him about how he doesn’t want to pay contractors to PK trains all day.

To PK a train means to inspect it as it goes by, in case there’s something wrong with the train. PK stands for pins and knuckles. It’s mandatory that you inspect a passing train and notify the train crew that you’ve done so.

He tells us the next day what happened and says we’ll be getting lots of work done today. It didn’t click with me until it actually happened.

We got a TOP with an hour of track time attached. We knew that we couldn’t get anything done in that time but the foreman assured us it would be fine.

We’re contractors, we do as we’re told.

We start working. As the end of the hour approaches we’re still digging more ballast out of the track. At the state the track is in it would take at least another hour to make the track passable for trains.

Well, what do you know…?

We keep digging…a half hour after our clear time was supposed to be. A train is now calling RTC at this time wondering why they’re stopping. And of course, it’s one of those very expensive container trains.

We are now an hour over our limit and RTC has been trying to get ahold of our foreman over the radio for 30 minutes. That’s when we start putting the new ballast in the track and tamping.

We were able to get it back together in an hour and clear the track. Total of 3 hours on track, train stopped for nearly 2. We just cost the railroad almost a couple million dollars for that train being late, and who knows how many trains behind it we slowed down.

Needless to say the supervisor was furious. He called our foreman right as we got clear wondering why he’s getting called about this huge delay. The foreman simply replied with “you told me not to have contractors PK trains all day”.

It was beautiful.”

And here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This Reddit user weighed in.

Another individual had a lot to say.

This is a good time to remind you that you should probably never mess with railroad workers.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.