New railroad manager costs the company $940k in just 6 weeks while trying to save $700 after ignoring the advice of experienced workers: 'If my boss isn't going to have my back, I'm not going to stop this inevitable disaster'

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 2, 2025 6:00 PM EDT

A new manager coming in and making decisions about things they don't understand, looking to make a splash in their new role, and impress their superiors by cutting down on costs is almost a trope at this point. And it happens so frequently that it's something that almost every worker can relate to or will witness at some point in their career. These managers often come on board full steam and waste no time before trying to make changes, asking no questions, and ignoring the warnings from seasoned workers and dismissing them as "inflexible" or "unchangeable" before going ahead with their plan anyway, often to disastrous results.

The phrase, "Tripping over dollars to pick up dimes," has never been more fitting than it is in this instance of a new manager coming on board and insisting on changes to something they don't properly understand.. This inexperienced manager came in and tried to make adjustments to the night shifts of these railroad workers, all in an effort to save the company around $700 a day, ignoring the protests of experienced staff that the changes to the shifts were logistically a terrible idea.

Ultimately, this gaffe would cost the company close to a million dollars, but—hey—at least he saved the company around $700 a night.

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    Cheezburger Image 10500980736
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    "Don't want to pay 4 guys to not work for 6 hours? OK, you can pay 30 guys to not work for 6 hours."

    To make an already long story as short as possible, some background. I am a manager for a North American railroad, and a lot of our work involves different crafts of employees. Different crafts have different unions and different work rules. The managers of the other crafts and I work together well to get done what we need to get done, especially when some of the work needs to get done at night.
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    The track guys can have a crew assigned to nights, while the signal guys can't. Even better, the signal guys who work overnight have to be let go after 12 hours, and if it's now their regular shift because they came in last night, they get paid the rest of the day to go home and sleep.
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    Track guys have all three shifts, but we only have a day shift and an evening shift, but no night shift, because the big hats don't want to hire enough people to do it. Now, the company has decided that paying guys to go home 2 hours early on a Thursday, come in and work overtime all night at 10pm, and go home at 10am, getting another 4 hours pay to go
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    home and sleep is the ending of all that is good and pure in the universe, and will eventually lead to the collapse of capitalism, the nation, and indeed the universe itself. So they decide that the second shift guys have to stay 4 extra hours, and the first shift guys have to come in 4 hours early.
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    I point out that: 1. I can't force employees to work overtime unless it's an emergency, and the union isn't likely to agree that "we want to do this at night so we don't affect traffic" is an emergency. 2. Not all employees are qualified on the same things.
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    3. Since they took half of my trucks away 5 years ago (because savings!!) I don't have enough vehicles for an entire second crew to show up at 2am and relieve the guys working in the field so they can go home. The guys currently working will have to stop work, pack up the tools, drive back to the office, let the (smaller) relief
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    crew load up, drive back out to the work site, do the starting paperwork and briefings, and begin the work. And most importantly: 4. That while we aren't there, the track guys can't work, because we have to keep taking things off of the rail so the track guys can do their work, and then put them back when the guys are done so we can run the trains in the morning.
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    All of it falls on deaf ears, because the freckle-faced college kid (who opens every conversation with "I have an MBA, ") who has somehow gotten to a position where he's in charge of the estimates wants to complain about those 24 hours a night.
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    So, after having gone on the meeting record for all of it, I get out of the kids way. I decide that if my boss isn't going to have my back, I'm not going to stop this inevitable disaster. After all, I have only been doing this for 27 years, but he graduated with a 3.6 GPA from UTEP, so he must know better.
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    So, the first night, the job grinds to a halt like clockwork at 1am, the second crew shows up at about 4:15, and they get to work. The track folks pack it in, because by the time anything gets dismantled, there won't be enough time to get anything done and put it all back together to start moving trains by 7.
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    Second night, the shift change was a little smoother, so they got out there at 3:45. Managed to get a little work done before packing up. Third and fourth night it rained REALLY hard, so the drive back to the shop and out to the jobsite took extra time. No work done after the new crew showed up at 4:30.
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    Bright and early Monday morning we show up at our morning meeting to find that the track guys got about 30% of the work done that they'd planned for the week, and at this pace would finish a 6-week job more than 15 weeks behind, and over budget by more than 300%
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    Mr. MBA proceeds to launch into his carefully-rehearsed speech about Key Metrics, Percent Spent vs Percent Complete, and all sorts of other nonsense. Then he decides to start in on me. Since I obviously conspired and colluded with my employees to "egregiously erode progress" for an entire week.
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    I held up the meeting minutes from the previous week, told him in no uncertain terms that he had asked, in fact demanded that we have a full shift change in the middle of the track department's work. I looked across the table at him, and asked him if he wanted to revise that position. Completely unwilling to let this lowly engineer tell him what to do, he said no, and I was supposed to somehow magically make the shift change FASTER.
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    Next 3 weeks were the same story. They've now been out there for a month, and have managed to accomplish just shy of a week and a half of work. Mr. MBA shows up on the site one night, just in time to watch my night guys walk off, watch the track guys shut down the machines and gather outside to smoke, hang out, and generally carouse, because they know they
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    now have 3 hours to screw off, and be paid for it. My guys had called me when Mr. MBA showed up, so I get out of bed and get to the jobsite just in time to see this guy in his shiny fresh-from-the- package safety gear screaming at the top of his lungs to the guys to get back in their equipment and "get the <naughty> back to work!" They all refuse because they all know that they can't work
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    without us there. Not that they care all that much about our equipment, but because they know Mr. MBA has been throwing a little too much weight around, and nothing makes union employees stick together better or faster than putting the screws to a manager who really needs it.
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    I walk up during a profanity-laced tirade, and cut right in and say "Well, Mr. MBA, I'm sure you're not suggesting that these qualified employees violate Rule which clearly states that they shall not, under any circumstances, run that equipment through a switch that the signal department hasn't checked, would you? That would be a serious violation, and could
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    get him a 30-day suspension without pay. And if you were to suggest that he do that, you wouldn't have a union card in your pocket, and he would have 30 witnesses that saw you give him that directive. So you wouldn't be suggesting that, would you?"
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    He turned three shades of purple, stomped back to his little white company sedan, and drove away. He held on to his asinine mid-shift shift change for another 2 weeks until he couldn't hide the massive production delays from his boss anymore, and suddenly he wasn't in charge of the estimates anymore.
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    The total cost of his little venture? Just over $940,000 over the course of 6 weeks. But, he did manage to save $700 a night on those off hours that he didn't have to pay for. EDIT: Without doubt, the best part of this post is that I'm up to 11 different railroads being mentioned between the posts and the DMs of guys swearing that this has to be their railroad.
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    Frari The total cost of his little venture? Just over $940,000 over the course of 6 weeks. But, he did manage to save $700 a night on those off hours that he didn't have to pay for. Sounds like he has earned a nickname. "Million Dollar Man" or maybe "millionaire"
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    GrecDeFreckle I have had the distinct displeasure of meeting three people in the last year that held high level of qualifications and are complete idiots. Suppose it's the danger of teaching just the books and expecting people to suddently work out it's a mix of books n boots. And I really hope someone sent him a framed pie chart showing "Money Saved vs. Money Set on Fire."
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    vasishtsrini The definition of penny wise and pound foolish. We see this in healthcare routinely. Boeing is finding out the hard way what happens when you let bean counters take over highly technical and specialized industries.
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    [deleted] Whenever he tries to give you an order, just ask him "oh, so you want me to waste another million dollars?"
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    ludditte Used to work for a big telecom company and you pretty well described the timeline of the MBAs coming in and taking over the old Bell system guys. Still an ongoing disaster. Share prices right now are MBA certified.
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    EmploymentOk1421 My spouse calls this stepping over a dollar to pick up a nickel.
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