I worked a few years out of high school as a freight conductor until realizing this wasn't the career for me. I later landed a job during my junior year of college transcribing audio recordings from railroad investigation hearings. Weird coincidence, eh? They hired me on the spot because they didn't understand railroad lingo and I did.

I transcribed probably a couple hundred investigations. There was plenty of incompetence from the management side, lots of weak cases, lots of backstabbing, etc.

Just as disturbing was the poor representation from the BLET/UTU local chairmen. I'll never understand why railroaders prefer the biggest curmudgeon out there to represent them at investigations. Granted, these guys know how to piss off the hearing officer, but they offer little substance to attack the merits of the charges or impeach the witnesses. I transcribed two or three recordings where the LC's couldn't control their tempers and got ejected from the hearing. One LC became so pissed off he suggested the hearing officer meet him in the parking lot to settle their differences. THAT didn't go over well...

There were LC's who barely understood the rulebooks and/or weren't familiar with the territory. I cringed whenever this happened and sometimes the charged employee would ask for a recess, shut the LC down, and when they came back on record did cross-examination himself. I'd estimate that ten to twenty percent of the hearings I listened to were well executed by the LC, the rest were mediocre to terrible.

All these years later, I still wonder why railroaders tolerate this kind of crap? You're paying for this awful representation.

Comments appreciated.

Jason Schneider