Many of the cons to working as a conductor for CPKC are the same, or nearly the same, across the freight rail industry. The biggest con is the schedule. When you start, you work off of an 'extraboard' with a 2-hour call window. You might sit for two days as the next person to be called, or you might be called the minute you are rested from the last trip. There is no regular work schedule. There is also no vacation for the first year, though you do get 4 paid leave days. You can take one no-questions-asked sick day per month, but if a couple of them touch on your off days over a few months there will be questions which could lead to a longer period of time off without pay. Also, taking a sick day means that you will not be paid the weekly guarantee that is in place for weeks when the extra board slows down. Your PL days are by request, and sometimes you can't get the day you want because someone else has taken it. You could call off sick that day instead, but then again, there may be questions. Training is haphazard, at least in the OJT portion. After you complete it and are working, you often wonder why they didn't explicitly teach something that would have been useful for the work in front of you. Communication within management and from management to those of us in train and engine service is equally haphazard. Also, training for lower and middle management leaves the same kind of knowledge gaps as conductor training does. Once you are a qualified conductor, you are regularly "efficiency tested." A middle manager with a quota of failures to hand out will watch you work. It is usually not an adverse outcome, but there is a "gotcha" culture around these tests. This is especially true when the "gotcha" is for one of those things not specifically covered in training or that was actually taught as the correct procedure. This "gotcha" culture is so common in the industry that conductors and engineers often have "can insurance" for when they are given time off without pay.
