Cummins Confidential : Robert Cole – Don’t Panic

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Robert Cole Cummins - Don’t Panic

Robert Cole did not need to diagnose me. He only needed to answer an email.

On 26 November 2021, I told the Cummins Operations Team Manager that I had suffered my first severe panic attack while driving to work. My breathing went, I pulled into the Shuttle and Loom car park, sat there shaking for around 15 minutes and eventually drove home.

The email was direct, apologetic and painfully loyal to the factory. Even while describing a mental-health emergency, I worried that Hot Test was short-manned and apologised for letting the team down.

Robert Cole did not reply. When I returned, he did not ask how I was. No welfare conversation followed.

Three months later, on 3 March 2022, Cummins suddenly found its voice. Cole appeared on the production line and tried to usher me into a formal SAL meeting with five minutes’ notice.

That was one day before I reached two years’ continuous service.

Not for my health. For the process.

As if I wasn’t aware of the quiet animosity against me. Feel it. Like I wasn’t aware of the potential move and unorthodox way to invite me for a short notice meeting. I’m not an idiot.

The Panic Attack Robert Cole Ignored

My email to Robert Cole was not vague. I said that I had lost control of my breathing on the drive to work, pulled over and suffered what I believed was a severe panic attack. The message also explained that I had never experienced one before and did not know what to do.

Cummins already had relevant medical context. An Occupational Health report dated 3 June 2021 recorded raised anxiety levels and said it was possible that I had a long-term generalised anxiety disorder.

Against that background, a manager receiving an email about a first severe panic attack might reasonably have managed a sentence. “Are you all right?” would have done. “Let’s speak when you return” would have demonstrated that the company’s interest extended fractionally beyond the attendance spreadsheet.

Nothing in the correspondence held by TCAP shows a reply. More importantly, my account is that nothing happened when I returned either. There was no welfare check, no conversation about what had happened and no visible attempt to establish whether I needed support.

I had gone through something frightening on the way to work. Management treated it like a missed bus.

The absence still mattered, of course. My health did not prompt a conversation, but my sickness record remained capable of feeding the SAL machine. That distinction runs through this entire fucking story.

Lieu Time For Some, A Trigger For Me

The same email asked whether I could use accrued lieu time. I was candid about why. My sickness record was becoming dangerous, so I would rather have used lieu or holiday than add another absence.

Later, I formally complained that another employee had been allowed to use lieu for the express purpose of avoiding a SAL trigger, while I had not. I also complained that Cole had ignored the written concerns he had instructed me to submit, even after reminders.

Cummins may say that circumstances differ. Fine. Then identify the relevant difference and explain the exercise of discretion. A rule applied firmly to an employee management dislikes and flexibly to somebody else is not much of a rule. It is unfiltered favouritism.

For me, the result was brutally efficient. The panic attack produced no welfare response, the lieu request went nowhere and the absence remained useful to the process.

Support was unavailable. The trigger worked perfectly.

Five Minutes Before Two Years

By early March 2022, Robert Cole and the SAL process had moved on. I had asked three relevant recipients to rearrange the next meeting and received no reply. Then, at about 9.25am on 3 March, Cole approached me about attending at 9.30am.

Five minutes.

I was not a union member. There was no realistic opportunity to arrange an appropriate colleague, gather the correspondence or mentally prepare for a formal meeting tied to absence and possible progression towards a decision stage.

Robert Cole later disputed only the most revealingly petty part. In his email, he said that he had approached me at 9.18am and had offered to wait if I needed more time.

There we have it. My five-minute ambush was apparently a 12-minute ambush. Break out the fucking bunting.

His reply nevertheless admitted that the notice was short. He said rescheduling had not been easy, wanted to prevent further delay and proposed 8am the following morning instead.

The timing was not an invention reverse-engineered years later for TCAP. On 18 March 2022, I put it in writing that Cole’s “unorthodox” approach had occurred one day before I reached two years’ continuous service. I even added, with considerably more restraint than the moment deserved, “Coincidence, I’m sure.”

The documents do not prove what Cummins intended to do before that anniversary. They do prove the date, the lack of notice, my immediate objection and Cole’s own acknowledgement that the notice was short.

Perhaps the timing was innocent. It was still a hell of a coincidence to present to an already anxious employee whose requests had gone unanswered.

Anxiety Did Not Make Me Stupid

This is the part the corporate retelling usually misses. My anxiety was genuine. So was my ability to recognise a trap.

I did not stumble obediently into the room because an Operations Team Manager appeared beside me and said the meeting was happening. Instead, I stopped, assessed what was being attempted and refused to be hoodwinked into a formal process without proper notice.

Someone less alert might have followed Cole. A more intimidated employee could have entered alone, unprepared and without the records needed to challenge whatever was said. The label “supportive” would not have made that person any less exposed.

My contemporaneous email described heightened anxiety and said the handling had left me immensely distressed. It asked why my rescheduling request had been ignored for a week, why no revised invitation had been sent and whether I would simply be summoned from the production line again.

Those were not the calculations of somebody incapable of understanding events. They were the calculations of somebody frightened enough to feel the pressure and clear-headed enough to see what the pressure might achieve.

Anxiety did not make me stupid. It merely meant Cummins could hurt me while I watched it trying.

Support Without The Occupational Health

Robert Cole was the manager for my SAL2 meeting. I objected that the stage had proceeded without the Occupational Health input described in the invitation and despite mounting evidence of a potentially long-term condition.

Kathryn Davies later explained that Cummins did not necessarily obtain an Occupational Health report before every SAL meeting. She preferred an initial conversation to decide whether a referral was necessary, partly because demand for the service was high.

That explanation may describe the company’s practice. It does not make the contrast any less grotesque.

When I emailed Cole about a severe panic attack against a background of recorded anxiety, there was no apparent rush to ask Occupational Health anything. During the earlier bowel-related process, I said an opportunity to obtain advice and prevent further absence had been missed.

Months later, when Cummins was posturing towards capability dismissal during an absence caused by mental-health problems, Nicole Newall’s referral retained a barrage of disputed IBS questions. Toilet distance, short-notice access, hydration and snacks suddenly became matters requiring finer measurements.

When support might have meant asking whether I was all right, nobody appeared curious. Once the company wanted a medical file robust enough to propel a capability process, my bowels became the fucking Zapruder film.

The Adjustments Cole Already Knew About

Occupational Health had recommended practical adjustments for my digestive condition. They included being near toilet facilities, being able to go at short notice and taking regular brief breaks to hydrate or eat snacks.

Robert Cole knew about the condition. Yet in an email to Holly Palarm on 14 July 2022, I wrote that he was aware of it and “continues to ignore the recommendations anyway”. That was an informal attempt to flag the problem at the time, not a grievance manufactured years later for a search result.

The issue arose again when Cole instructed that I work in a different area of the plant without properly respecting the adjustments. I raised it with my team leader, Paul Hardt. My recollection is that he replied with words to the effect that sometimes we have to do things we do not want to do.

Quite so. I had already done things I did not want to do. By then, I had discussed an embarrassing bowel condition with managers, attended medical appointments and handed stool samples to my GP. Nobody submits a little pot of shit for recreational career planning.

What was I meant to infer from the response? Either the people giving the instruction were ignorant of the health information and adjustments, or they imagined that I had gone through medical testing merely to avoid working in another part of the plant.

Robert Cole could not credibly rely on ignorance. My July email expressly recorded that he knew about the condition and, in my view, continued to ignore the recommendations.

The company later claimed it had received no information suggesting the adjustments were not implemented. There is a reason that wording deserves inspection: information had been sent. Perhaps Cummins did not accept it, investigate it or pass it to the right person, but my written concern existed.

Management cannot turn an email into silence merely by declining to hear it.

The Selective Curiosity Department

Taken together, the episodes reveal a remarkable system of selective attention.

A first severe panic attack received no reply from Cole and no welfare check on my return. My request to use lieu time arose because I feared the attendance consequences. It failed, even though I later identified another employee who had allegedly received that discretion.

The SAL machinery then arrived with either five or 12 minutes’ notice one day before my two-year anniversary. Known bowel adjustments were treated as negotiable when operations wanted me elsewhere. Later, the same condition became irresistibly fascinating when HR wanted answers for a capability process.

None of this requires pretending that every manager sat in a dark room and planned every move. Bureaucracies can produce cruelty through indifference, convenience and a hundred small decisions made by people protecting the process instead of the person.

However, calling that process “supportive” does not bleach the conduct. A supportive process that ignores a panic-attack email, skips the welfare conversation and springs a formal meeting on an anxious employee is support in the same way a mugging is an unscheduled financial review.

Robert Cole’s contribution was not theatrical. It was worse in a more ordinary way. He had the information, held managerial authority and repeatedly behaved as though the inconvenient parts of my health could be left outside the room.

Apparently, he also prefers describing the Chilton side of the roundabout as Rushyford. Perhaps even geography gets a managerial upgrade when the plain version does not flatter enough. Funny, but let’s not go astray. It’s a bit like when moped riders refer to their vehicle as a motorbike.

TCAP Verdict

Robert Cole received an email saying I had suffered my first severe panic attack while driving to work. He did not reply, and no welfare check followed when I returned.

My request to use lieu time went nowhere. The absence remained on the record, while I later complained that somebody else had been allowed the same discretion to avoid a SAL trigger.

On 3 March 2022, after my request to rearrange had sat unanswered, Cole tried to bring me into a formal SAL meeting with five minutes’ notice. His correction made it 12. The attempt still occurred one day before my two-year service anniversary.

I saw the move and avoided it, though the angst was genuine.

That matters. Cummins was dealing with an anxious employee, not an oblivious one. The distress was real, the warning lights were visible and I still had enough presence of mind to refuse the hoodwink.

Later known bowel-related medical adjustments were being ignored. When I raised the problem through my team leader, the answer was effectively that people sometimes have to do things they do not want to do.

I agree.

Sometimes a former employee has to preserve the emails, compare the dates and explain exactly how the “support” worked.

Don’t panic, Rob.

It is only your management record arriving on Google.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources (held by TCAP)

  • Lee Thompson email to Robert Cole, subject “Absence today”, 26 November 2021.
  • Occupational Health report dated 3 June 2021 concerning raised anxiety and possible long-term generalised anxiety disorder.
  • Email exchange between Lee Thompson and Robert Cole concerning the SAL meeting, 3 March 2022.
  • Lee Thompson email to Kathryn Davies, Robert Cole, Gemma Penk and Daniel Martin concerning short notice and anxiety, 3 March 2022.
  • Lee Thompson emails recording the two-year service timing and formal concerns about lieu time, Occupational Health and unanswered correspondence, 18 to 19 March 2022.
  • Lee Thompson email to Holly Palarm concerning known adjustments and Robert Cole, 14 July 2022.
  • Cummins correspondence identifying prior Occupational Health recommendations for toilet access, short-notice bathroom use, hydration and snacks, 30 November 2022.
  • Lee Thompson and Kevin Graham correspondence concerning the unanswered panic-attack email and absence of welfare follow-up, January to February 2023.
  • Lee Thompson’s account of his conversation with Paul Hardt, including wording reproduced only as a recollection rather than a verbatim quotation.
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