Chapter 4: The Railroad Connection: The Liners, the Muckers, and Me

As a new white male hire at a Big 4 firm, I was often asked to assist with inventory auditing procedures. Our firm had engagement teams across the country who would select one of their client's locations and – if our firm had an office nearby – they would ask a local associate, like me, to observe and test the inventory counts conducted by their client's employees. On these assignments, I counted everything from barbed wire to bulldozers, including windows, microchips, seeds, and steel. The most unique inventory I was assigned, however, was at a railroad.

Even though I grew up in a town bisected by tracks, and despite the fact that I received a model train for Christmas in 1986, I knew very little – almost nothing – about the operation of a railroad. As a kid, I spent my fair share of time watching trains through the window of our family's Astro van, as my parents and I waited for a freighter to pass and for those flashing red lights to stop and for the red and white gate to return to its upright position. That was about the entirety of my experience. And so, when I arrived at the address for the railroad company, I felt the discouraging effects of imposter syndrome something fierce.