Justice No More

I got my ten demerits on Thursday afternoon. I forgot to tell you. I was standing in the bull pen at work, chatting with a couple of engineers when someone called my name. I turned around and saw the boss motioning to me from the door to his office.

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Dale?” he asked.

I turned back to the lads I’d been talking to and said, “Here it comes, guys. This is where I get my ten shares. I’d hoped maybe they’d come to their senses, but I guess not.”

As I marched toward the trainmaster’s office, someone slapped my back.

“Give ‘em hell, Doc.”

I entered the small, bright office and stood awkwardly by the door. I felt a little angry, Ms J, but mostly I felt tiny and powerless. Mostly, I felt sad. The company had absolutely no grounds whatsoever for assessing me this discipline. They’d interviewed the entire crew of our train regarding the red light incident last month. We had all cooperated fully and all the stories matched. But they fired A.J. They fired him. I’m still in shock. FIRED him. No demerit marks, no second chance. Fired. And now they wanted to give me demerits when clearly, there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened.

“I guess you know why you’re here, eh?” Don said as he removed a sheet of paper from a desk drawer.

“Yeah,” I said. “I reckon I do.”

He handed me the paper and looked away as he spoke.

“There’s a place at the bottom there where you’re supposed to sign it. If you want to. You don’t have to, though.”

“No,” I said quietly. “I’d rather not sign it. Consider it a form of protest.”

And I took the paper from him.

“This is bullshit, Don, and you know it. A.J. shouldn’t have been fired. Nothing happened for God’s sake. No one was hurt. No damage was done. We all cooperated in the investigation. I guess the company has an agenda. They planned to fire poor A.J. from the very start and discipline the rest of us. Why did they even bother taking statements from us?”

“I’m sorry, Dale. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me it’s all a bad dream,” I said. “Tell me there’s been a mistake and A.J.'s being brought back to work and paid his back time. Tell me ...…”

I didn’t know what else to say, Ms J, and it was quiet there for a long time. Don looked at me then sat down at his desk and shook his head sadly.

“Tell me the name of the man who decided this,” I said. “So I can hate the son-of-a-bitch.”

“I’m sorry,” Don said. “I know it’s not fair. I know it’s wrong. But there’s nothing I can do.”

I nodded solemnly and closed the door quietly as I left his office.

You know it’s a strange thing, Ms Journal. I had worked nearly fifteen years without ever getting a demerit mark. Now, in the past two months, I’ve been disciplined twice and given ten demerits each time.

The first ten were for exercising my right to book rest, a long-standing right afforded us by collective agreement. And the second ten, according to the piece of paper I got from the trainmaster, were assessed for “failing to provide a proper job briefing. More specifically, failing to discuss the presence of, and significance of signal 57.2 at Hamilton.”

I used to be proud to work for the CNR. I was proud to walk in my father’s footsteps. Today, my heart aches to see what greed has done to my daddy’s railroad.

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