"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
11/21/2016 at 18:08 • Filed to: Jobs, Train driver, Trainlopnik
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"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
11/21/2016 at 18:08 • Filed to: Jobs, Train driver, Trainlopnik | 0
| 7 |
Example no. 1:
Train driver.
Boring sounding job, isn’t it? You just sit there and carry out two main functions: Going faster and going slower. Occasionally you get to open and close the doors. That, basically, is it. So nobody wants to do it?
They do. Oh, they do. Virgin Trains in the UK recently advertised for 73 trainee drivers so they got maybe a few hundred applications? Nope. A few thousand? Nope. Fifteen thousand. That’s about 200 per position. If they had fewer vacancies they could have had four or five hundred per job. Why on earth? Because it’s very well paid (militant unions), you don’t need much in the way of qualifications and you can pretty much work by yourself with nobody looking over your shoulder.
Wondering how they weed through that mass of applications? You had to apply by email so all the forms could be reviewed electronically, anything with an error rejected and the rest examined for enough key words to trigger an invite to do an online perception/concentration test to see if you can stay both awake and aware while doing a tedious job, followed if you’re lucky an invite to an assessment which is the first time actual humans get involved. The humans give you a day’s worth of psychometric testing including the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , with those who fail any element being sent home, and the successful get an interview. After all that you might get lucky. Fail? Try again next time, but there’s a nasty catch. If you fail two assessments you get a lifetime ban, partially because if you need more than two goes to pass you have some fundamental weakness, but mainly because it’s an easy way to restrict applications.
Now, let’s have some dots. Your task is to pick out, very fast, the boxes with four dots.
Done that? You’d then have to do another ten pages or so. The aim is to be consistently fairly accurate, not to get 80% on page 1 and then less each time which shows that you can’t concentrate.
DynamicWeight
> Cé hé sin
11/21/2016 at 18:29 |
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Damn, now I really want to take these tests. Also, as a child I was completely fascinated by trains, so I can totally see the appeal. Being in command of something so large and powerful? Sign me up! Can’t imagine it as an actual job though. That sounds incredibly dull.
Also, and I really don’t want to be an internet pedant, but when I learned that psychosomatic isn’t a catch all term and is actually a specific word just referring to imagined stomach reactions, I felt like I had learned something and wanted to pass that on. The word you’re looking for is just “psychiatric” I believe.
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Cé hé sin
> DynamicWeight
11/21/2016 at 18:31 |
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Sorry, wrong psycho! It’s actually psychometric.
Yes, the job sounds tedious. It’s surely a prime candidate for automation as it’s very procedure driven and reliant on track knowledge. They’ve been automating some light rail for many years and while heavy rail is a much more complex problem technology has moved on too.
The real difficulty would be the unions.
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DynamicWeight
> Cé hé sin
11/21/2016 at 19:19 |
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Yeah, automation was the first thing I thought of too. But I bet those unions are going to have a word or two to say about that. It seems especially true because, from everything I understand, the train driver basically has zero ability to stop in time even if they do spot someone crossing the tracks anyway.
I know when I took a driver’s ed course, one of the things that really stuck with me was the “scared straight” accident video where they interviewed “light rail” drivers. It turns out that, on average, if you drive a light rail train for a year, you are highly likely to have killed someone. They have specific support groups just for these train operators. While being interviewed one of the train operators said something I’ll never forget: “I saw the car stopped on the tracks and I set the brakes and braced myself for the impact. The lurch never came. The train went straight through the car and I didn’t feel a thing”
Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
> Cé hé sin
11/21/2016 at 19:58 |
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I guess few of the applicants know about the downside of the job:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-train-drivers-torment-20120604-1zrxp.html
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Cé hé sin
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
11/22/2016 at 09:49 |
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Yes, that’s very much an issue. I understand train operators are more understanding than they used to be but it’s still something which is going to confront many drivers at some point in their careers.
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Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
> Cé hé sin
11/22/2016 at 14:47 |
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I couldn’t find a reference so I didn’t cite it above, but I recall a newspaper article from after a particularly horrendous car vs train incident saying that train drivers have the highest probability of killing someone during your career and the highest rate of PTSD of any career: higher than the military on both counts.
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Cé hé sin
> Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
11/22/2016 at 15:16 |
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I googled it and found a forum where one driver reported that he had two so far. As it happens he was able to deal with it quite easily by rationalising that there was nothing he could have done, it was the victim’s wish and they would have died almost immediately and he was back at work the following week. He’ll never forget their faces though. Others obviously react differently.
Another guy knew of a case where a woman had parked her car at a level crossing and waited. He was furious because she was risking more lives than hers.
Nobody thinks of the maintenance crews who have to wash down and repair the train afterwards.