Lessons In Leadership

     During my 2 weeks in Jacksonville, FL for my front line supervisors training we were voluntold to participate in a community service event on Saturday morning.  Perhaps working for the railroad has skewed my perception some, as we are often voluntold to do things, but this really didn't bother me.  It was for a good cause, and I am missing doing physical labor.  We were tasked with helping an organization called Dignity U Wear (http://www.dignityuwear.org/)  They are an organization that helps everyone from wounded warriors to battered wives and everyone in between to be dressed well for interviews and work situations.  Since they spend so much time giving people makeovers, we were going to give their warehouse a makeover. 
   
     We all showed up at 0730 on  Saturday morning, got our matching t-shirts, name badges and a light breakfast.  There were cameras everywhere and some newspaper reporters as well.  When we were called to order there was the usual handshaking photo ops and that included CSX's VP of transportation, Cindy Sanborn.  Many of us little folks in the crowd assumed that Ms. Sanborn would get the pictures taken and then be off to her ivory tower, and we would be proved very wrong.  Along with Ms. Sanborn there were some other higher level officers of the company and there were also families and kids that other employees had brought with them to support a good cause. 

     All day everyone there worked their butts off to help this great organization, we painted, we pulled stumps, we scraped old paint off of concrete blocks and so on and so forth.  It was hot, and we were all sweaty... well with the exception of 2.  There were 2 guys who stood and watched all day, never picking up a paint brush or a scraper.  These 2 guys are supposed to be the mentors of our management trainee program and our leaders.  When asked why they weren't working they responded that "we are a higher level than you"  which is true, but they were not above some of the people there. When the VP is sweaty and dirty, you don't have an excuse. That didn't seem to matter to these 2, but I can proudly say the rest of the people that showed up worked really hard, from the VP's on down to the kids.  When we were done we had painted the entire warehouse, inside and out!   No one other than those 2 "leaders" left clean and dry, we were all dirty and sweaty.  And we were all proud of what we had accomplished that day.

    So to those aspiring leaders, don't stand there and watch.  Some of the comments I heard afterward about these 2 were pretty nasty, and whether they deserved them or not, they chose to say "Do what we say, not what we do" and they never even had to open their mouths.  If you are acting as a leader know that you are being watched by your subordinates and even if you are not the top tier there is always someone looking to you to show by example.  This can be an old head teaching a lemon head, or a lemon head showing his children what he has learned in his life, or a new manager getting their hands dirty.  We are all leaders to someone.

Sorry there aren't any pictures, I was pretty busy and figured I could find some online since there were so many people running around with cameras. Turns out I was wrong, but if you can find some pictures I would love to see them, and please check out Dignity U Wear they are a pretty cool organization. 

Trainmaster Trainee and Hotel Living

This is a picture of the Main St. Bridge in Jacksonville, I am staying right behind where I took this pic from

 

      Sorry I  haven't written I a while, I have taken on a new role here at CSX and I wasn't sure what the rules were about social media and posting about my experience.  As I expected, they are fairly strict and I am limited as to what I can or can't put on a blog.  Here is what I can tell you. I have gone back to the dark side (transportation) and am now working as a trainmaster trainee.  I do miss the signal department, but this job is pretty challenging in its own right and I am nervous and excited about it.

     This program is 8 months long and none of that time is at home.  I traveled a fair amount with the signal department and add the last few months of this and I am now a platinum or diamond member with 3 different hotel groups (Marriott, Hyatt and IHG)  I can say with confidence that if you want to know about hotel living I can give you the ins and outs of it.  I have spent time in Atlanta, GA, Avon, IN, Jacksonville, FL and Ontario, OH and that is just in the last 3 months.  Since I feel incredibly qualified to comment on hotel living, I thought I would make a list of a few tips that would have made my life a bit easier.

1.  If you can stay in a Marriott, DO IT!
   It doesn't matter if it is one of there more reasonably priced hotels like the Fairfield or one of their premiere resorts, Marriott knows how to take care of its customers.  The beds are always super comfy and the rooms are always clean.  Oh yea and they give you cookies!

2.  I don't care how lazy you are feeling, room service is just not worth it. 
   This morning I decided to have a lazy Sunday morning and called down for a cheese omelet, crispy bacon, OJ and some rye toast.  I expected it to cost more than Denny's but $30 for breakfast almost made me lose my appetite, and they forgot my toast!  The omelet had just a teeny bit of shredded cheese and the grits were instant, it did come with the smallest bottle of tabasco ever.

    
3. Don't leave anything valuable in your room.
    This seems obvious but really, even just to let the maids in.  Take laptops, watches, purses etc. and lock them in your trunk if you have one.  If not and you are only going to be there a few days, pass on the maid service, you probably don't have one at home and you can live without one for a few days in a hotel.

4. Check your receipts at check out!
     Again, it may seem obvious but there have been many over charges or extra charges show up on a hotel bill.  Once you sign your name, your done.  A new trick hotels are trying is "I am sorry we don't print receipts anymore, I can email it to you"  Say yes please, and then check it before you leave. 

5. Your bed is always better.
    I have heard a few people lately tell me how "cool" it must be to get to travel so much, or how "exciting" it must be to stay in so many different hotels, I can say with confidence they are wrong.  It is "cool" and "exciting" to stay in a hotel for a few weeks, not a few months.  My bed is still my favorite (Marriott's are a close second)  They also must be forgetting that I work most days, and most days I work 12+ hours (oh yea salary and no hours of service!)  I have a little time to see the sights, but mostly I am working and sleeping.

I hope to be able to add some more to my blog that probably will not be directly railroad related, but I can post some generalizations and answer broad questions about how this place works.

The Dangers of Volunteering

     When I was a kid we had two choices, volunteer for a job or be assigned one.  It didn't take us to long to realize that if you were the first to volunteer you usually got your pick of jobs.  This mentality has kept on into my adult life.  I generally volunteer for everything, call me a kiss up, or a brown noser but really I am trying to get the good job and sticking you with the crappy one.  So this year when they started planning our second half safety certification and they asked for volunteers, naturally my hand went up.  Then I was appointed the lead of this team.  Hmmm, I thought, this isn't how this is supposed to go, but since I had already jumped in head first I figured I would go with it.   

     Then on our first call, we came up with some ideas of classes we would like to have and again were asked to volunteer to take one class on to research and again I spoke up first.  Surely I thought this would go better. I volunteered to build a box filled with dirt showing a ground go from one wire to another, this sounded much more interesting than researching standards.  So far so good, I build a dirt box and the other suckers get stuck researching standards,  jumper policies and the like. 

     We have our second call and everything is going great, we are paring down the classes and figuring out logistics and so on.  Then the boss man doesn't ask, he tells me that I will be teaching a class on metering and grounds to go along with the dirt box. What?!?! eeekkk.  Folks let me remind you that I have a little less than 2 years in this department, I am one of about 5 females and I am blonde and polish.  I will be teaching this class to the entire east region construction, not new guys but 30+ year guys who were probably working out here before I was born.  Oh yes, and did I forget to mention I have to create this class?!?! 

     I will have some help from managers, and I am sure to learn a lot from this experience, but to say I am a little nervous about this would be a gross understatement.  I tell this story just in case you have grown up in a household like mine, where volunteering to vacum was much better than being assigned toilet cleaning.  Sometimes volunteering doesn't work out quite the way you planned, be cautious in your hand raising. 
    

Dumpster Diving

      Yea I said it, dumpster diving.  Thanks to the track department, I spent my afternoon taking the trash that they put in the dumpster out.  Why in the world would you take trash OUT of a dumpster?  I know this is what your thinking so I will explain.  You see we (the signal department) has ordered a dumpster from a company that is for concrete ONLY.  My foreman gets very nasty phone calls from the lady at the dumpster place if she finds wood or regular trash in the concrete dumpster.  We had attempted to make this clear by hanging a sign, and speaking with the Roadmaster. Apparently, we needed to resort to a more obvious form of communication.

     Please note the big spray painted sign that says CONCRETE!  There is a matching one on the side.  Hopefully this will clearly convey what the contents of this dumpster should be, and prevent nasty phone calls from the dumpster lady and me climbing in any more dumpsters...blech

 

     We also got to see the Dominion Power guys in action today, and I have to say they are braver than I am.  Here is a picture of them. Please notice the lake that they are in.  To me electricity + water = bad idea, but they put on some really big gloves and had our service swapped in about 20 minutes.  Kudos to the Dominion guys!

 

 

 

And to follow up on a previous post, my horse is still sick, and we have a diagnosis.  She has Alopecia Areata, which is an auto immune disorder that attacks her skin cells.  Not good, she is on steroids for about 2 months, if she doesn't founder we will be looking at immune supplements and a lot of praying.  She also looks pretty gross, but she is starting her very own collection of blankets, and I think she has more than me right now. 

 

One more note, NEW DUCK DYNASTY TONIGHT!!

So What do you DO in the Hotel

     Since we had a pretty boring half, I thought I would talk a little about what we do in the time we have sitting in the hotels in the evenings.  We spend at least 16 nights a month in a hotel and recently we have been spending a bit more than that.  So other than racking up some serious hotel points, what do you do?
     Well, I go to school online, which does pass the time, but it is also fairly boring. The boys on my crew all have high end RC cars.  Every single member of the crew with the exception of me, has one.  Even the brand new guy we got last week!  His had been in the garage for a year, but he was happy to bring it out and play with everyone.  The reason I don't have one is simple economics, I already have one very expensive hobby in horses, I don't need another one.  They are pretty cool, and they get new bodies, and tires and motors etc. to make them faster or prettier (I should probably say bad ass looking, not prettier)
     The other thing we have decided to do is run in the Marine 1/2 marathon in May.  I did decide to participate in this one.  I am not sure what I was thinking when I said I would, probably "hey I will look good in a bikini this summer!" So we started our training last week. I may need to quit smoking for this one.  The marathon training schedules all assume that you can run for 30 minutes straight! So sadly I am in the marathon "pre-training" stage. This will be much harder mentally and physically, but also much cheaper.  I already own sneakers, there is a treadmill at the hotel, and entrance into the marathon is only 75 bucks.  I am still waiting to discover this "runners high",  I think all those runners are damned liars trying pretend that running is more fun than real sports like football or baseball. 
     I actually have off all week so I will be working on my science experiment and sitting around in my pjs.  I have some scrap cable in the truck and need to run to the hardware store for a good sheet of plywood and some screws, probably have to get out of my pjs for that one though.  (you know you are being lazy when you type this and think, well I could just throw my coveralls on over the pjs and no one would know!)  I also plan on going to the outdoor show in Fishersville, hubby and I never got a honeymoon (thank you railroad schedule) so we are thinking of taking a hunting trip in the fall. 

Back to Work...kinda

     Well I haven't written a new blog post because miracle of miracles I had a few days off.  I did get the house cleaned, some homework done and read a few books.  I even got to spend time with my husband!  The farrier came to shoe the horses and when I showed up this is what I found on my horses side.  Bald horses are not a good thing, so I called the vet.

 

 

     The vet couldn't get out here until today so my week has been full of laps across Virginia.  On Monday, I left Covington, VA (west coast of VA) and went to Richmond, VA (east coast of VA). I did this so I could work on Tuesday.  Turns out my job for Tuesday was to take a broken grapple truck to Covington, soooo I drove to Covington, and then turned around and went back to Richmond.  When I got to Richmond, I hopped in my personal truck and drove back to Covington.  Then of course today, after the vet showed up I jumped back in my truck and drove back to Richmond.  I am a little tired of driving at this point. If it never occurred to you to check out the size of Virginia, its a pretty big state, and that drive takes 3 hrs, one way. 

 

     The vet is a little stumped as to why my horse is losing her hair and has swelling in her legs.  He put her on a fungicide, an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory and some dermawipes to try and wash the balding areas.  I can't wait to get my vet bill.  He took some skin scrapings to try and find a root cause, so now we are waiting for something to grow in the petri dish. 

 

     As for railroading this week, we will be mostly working clean up of the old stuff we took down last week.  This entails taking old signals and cases to scrap and busting concrete with a hammer hoe (we really do get some great toys out here) .  After the concrete is busted up, we will need the broken grapple truck to pick it all up, so somewhere in the future is another lap across Virginia, but I may let someone else take that trip. 

 

     One other intersting note, I have a new science project.  At our first saftey certification of the year I volunteered to be on the committee for the second half safety certification.  We had our first conference call on Tuesday, so while the boys ate at Jack Masons Tavern, I sat on a conference call.  One of the classes that we came up with was a grounds class, and thats where my science project comes in.  I need to build a box of dirt, with 2 wires in it, to show how a ground can jump from one wire to another wire.  I am sure I will post some pictures when I am done with this one.  

I Survived!

     I survived the cut-in, and more importantly so did everyone else!  I am also still employed, which is always a good thing.  Let me explain a little bit more about my job for this cut in.  I am assigned a section of track, in this case about 3.5 miles, and anyone who wants to be on that track has to talk to me first.  Cool right, you are the God of your 3.5 miles. Well yea kinda, but after being God of 3.5 miles I sure don't want God's job.  Here is the thing, when I say anyone, I mean ANYONE, must talk to me first.  This includes, trains, trucks, persons, train masters, road masters etc. and my job is to keep all of those people from hurting each other. For example, I had 8 crews spread out in my territory that were working on the signal system, one truck on the track taking down old signals and and trains calling me and asking to come through, or into the yard etc.  My job is to get the people that will be in the way of that train out, be sure the truck won't be in the way and then bring the train through.  If I forget someone, there is a chance they could get squished, and if I forget a truck, there is an even better chance of a WhamO. 
     The moral of the story is take good notes and pay attention.  Knowing your territory also helps, which is why I got this job. When I was a conductor I worked out of this yard, so I was more familiar than most of my counterparts.  However, I have already told my boss, someone else can have the privilege for the next cut-in. 
    
     In other exciting news, I am typing this from my very own living room! Which to me is pretty exciting.  It needs to be cleaned, but I can handle that.  My husband was good enough to keep most of the dishes clean and all of my pets are still alive so I will assume everyone got fed as needed.  Maybe I am easy to please but just doing those few things keeps me pretty happy.   This is a picture of me and my dogs laying in front of the fireplace.  It is one of our favorite pastimes

   
     I also go back to school this week.  I take classes online through Liberty University, mostly compliments of CSX.  I am a business major with a minor in project management.  This semester I am taking Theology 104 (Intro to Christian Thought) and Accounting 212 (Principles of Accounting 2).  Some people may ask why a business major is taking Theology, and the simple answer is, its required.  This is Liberty University and they are very big on teaching Christian thought as well as the normal college classes.  This is my last religious required class and I hope to find it interesting.  I am a Christian, which does help, but I never thought myself as a "bible beater" or a "fundamentalist".  I simply believe the word of God as truth.  There were two other required religious courses, Bible 101, which I liked, and Apologetics 101, which I wasn't a huge fan of.  Bible 101 taught the history of the Bible which I found very interesting.  Apologetics taught how to argue christian thought, which I found misaligned with the word of God.  He said tell people about it, don't argue or beat them over the head with it. 

   So dear readers, that is what has been happening here.  I am hoping for a nice break from work before getting back at it on Tuesday.  The farrier will be here tomorrow, I am hoping to actually ride a horse that I own this weekend and get some of that house cleaning done that I mentioned earlier.  If I am really lucky I might get a massage to!  Hope everyone has a great weekend.