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Crew Management Systems (aka Centers, Services(?)) are corporate monsters that the various carriers are determined to make work no matter how much money it cost them or how many of us are fired or killed as a result of their action.
Our caller on the UP are the best, but they're to be pitied. They are grossly overworked and do the absolute best they can with what they are given to work with, the information they are given and the lack of an adequate number of locomotive engineers and conductors.
UP's callers have had to work for the most arrogant, un-caring, most brain-dead management I have ever dealt with in my whole working career, both on or off the railroad.
If no one answers within 20-minutes when you call UP's CMS, the telephone menu machine tells you the caller is not available and hangs up on you. Then, you have to start all over: call back, key in your social security number, punch (1), and start the wait all over again -- I went through this three different times on one occasion. ALL OF THIS IS DONE ON YOUR TIME -- IT EATS UP YOUR QUALITY TIME OFF!
The analogy to this is being in a long checkout line at the supermarket and having them close the checkout stand when it becomes your turn.
This B.S. has been going on for a year at least!
The first time this happened to me, about this time last year, I thought something was wrong and tried to report it. Of course, no telephone number is lister for CMS managers. In desperation, I called the Harriman Dispatch and asked a manager if they had a number for CMS Management (Surely, they must communicate occasionally). Some Smart Alec there gave me what turned out to be the main number for UP Headquarters. I call that number and was put on hold by a machine which hung up on me after 20-minutes -- Fortunately, I wasn't an outsider trying to report a washout, a bridge fire or a train wreck.
Nearly an hour later, after calling various numbers at Omaha, I called the President's Omsbudsman who put me in contact with a manager at CMS. After I told the manager what I had encountered, he asked with a bored, condescending tone, "What's your problem?"
I told him, "You have the problem. I was hoping to reach someone who had enough sense to care about it." This idiot's uncaring attitude made me so mad, I hung up the phone, lest I say something I'd regret into their cowardly recorder.
I have been told that they have changed the management at CMS and that changes will be made. I sincerely hope it is not just an echo.
I think UP could have started solving their problems a year ago if they had done something about CMS.
UP is eaten-up with the "Internal Customer" philosophy, where everyone and every department is supposed to treat the other as a customer. If we treat our "External Customers" anything close to the way CMS treats us, its Internal Customers, we might as well go in the scrap business.
Cy Martin is a locomotive engineer at Centennial Yard in Fort Worth, Texas.
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