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[CBQ] Re: Employee Moves and Crew Calling

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Subject: [CBQ] Re: Employee Moves and Crew Calling
From: "Chuck Hatler" <gnhistory07@live.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:08:03 -0600
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Pete and Q fans, 

That is interesting that even a regular job had to be called at El Reno.  The 
other term for it was ‘shagging.’  Not sure where that came from.

With centralized crew calling, everybody has a phone, cell phone, pager, and 
they are usually watching the computer if they know they are first or second 
out.

In my days as a crew caller, 1997-1998, I have sent the trainmaster to 
somebody’s house in the middle of the night when I could not get an answer on 
the phone.  I even sent the sheriff out to one employee’s house at 2 in the 
morning.  I knew that she lived out in the toolies by herself and she never 
missed a call.  Boy, was she surprised, and she called me right away and took 
her call.  I was truly concerned for her safety.  But if she had answered the 
phone, she would have had to take the call. 

Employees had a way of not answering their phone if they did not want to go to 
work, and even though it was a miscall, they usually beat the wrap after 
confessing their ‘sin’ to the trainmaster and being chewed out.  

One of my caller bosses told the story of a guy that would not take answer his 
phone, so he drove over to the house.  The employee’s unfriendly dog was in the 
front yard, and was not going to let the caller in the yard to knock at the 
door.  He still managed, somehow, to get the employee’s attention, and when the 
man stuck his head out the door, the caller told him, ‘you are called.’

Crew callers were very good and very persistent in getting their man.  We knew 
that if we delayed one train, then we were going to delay every train for 
hours, usually until sunup, when folks would begin answering their phones.  
Often times, it was the wife who would answer, and hand the phone to the 
husband, as if to say, ‘it’s time to go earn some more money for the family, 
go!’  This was especially so, if we had already canvassed the entire board, and 
then had a new train to call.  Once you had a new train, you would start the 
canvassing all over—that is to say, calling everybody on the list—and I do mean 
everybody.  By the time we had woken up the wife two or three times at 2 in the 
morning, and she had to get up and go to work or get the kids to school, she 
just wanted to sleep, and she would answer the phone, and maybe even take the 
call just to get the phone to stop ringing.

One night I had a Z train to call at Havre.  First out engineer turn was 
vacant, the extra board was depleted.  I called the second out man and asked 
him if he would step up to take the call.  Perfectly legal on my part, but he 
had the right to turn it down and wait for his turn to be called.  Also 
perfectly legal.  He refused.  

I called the trainmaster, told him to order up the junk train for 30 minutes 
after the z train. The train was in the lineup so what I did was also legal.  
He did.  I called the employee back, because his turn was now called.  I said 
‘you are called for the M XXX XXX.  Do you want to step up and take the Z?’ 

The Z train would be at the away from home terminal in under 2 hours.  The M 
train would be there in 6 hours to 10 hours.

‘Yes, I’ll take the Z train, you SOB.’

‘Thank you, and that is Mr. SOB.’  We rarely let name calling get to us, 
because it was an everyday occurrence.  The fellow that called you names today 
would be the fellow that went to work ahead of turn tomorrow.  All part of the 
job.  If the employee was really obscene, then we turned it over to the 
managers and they took care of it.











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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