Amtrak onboard personnel variability

This fall, I've been taking Amtrak regularly, on one long-distance train. I'm really surprised by how much variation there is among crew members; there are some really tough ones onboard.

How would you handle this with Amtrak, if you were me?

Trip 1, Episode 1
When I boarded a long-distance train recently, I boarded through one sleeping car; my room was in the car next to it. After I boarded and was midway down the corridor, I heard am Amtrak employee screaming at me, and he aggressively approached me, screaming that I was ignoring him. I told him (angrily and forcefully) that he could refund my ticket and remove me from the train if he wanted. He screamed more and insisted that I go back to the doorway, get off the train and board through the right car, which I did.

Trip 1, Episode 2
The next morning, my sleeping car attendant (a different person) came by and pointed down the hallway, indicating that it was almost time to get off. When I left my room, I couldn't remember which direction to go; I saw another passenger in the vestibule of the next car, so I walked towards that vestibule and said good morning to that passenger. The same employee who had screamed at me the day before looked at me and said, "Your sleeping car attendant is at the other door and you'll have to get off there". I said, in a normal voice, "May I have your name, please?" and the employee turned away so that I couldn't see his namebadge. I was then able to see his name badge, and he shouted his name at me, and I said, "Thank you", and he screamed at me again. I walked to the other car and exited.

Trip 2, Episode 3
Yesterday, I took the same long distance train. When I boarded, I said hello to the sleeping car attendant at the door, and he told me to board and pointed me to my room.

It was the same employee who had screamed at me before. A few minutes after I got to my room, he came by and knocked on the door and said:

"I had you a few weeks ago and I'm not comfortable with you. You have to move to another car if you want any service on this trip." I asked him if I could just get a refund and not take the trip and he said no.

I responded, "May I think about it for a minute?" He answered, "There's nothing to think about. If you stay in this car, you're on your own. You need to move to another car."

I shook my head and said "no", in a normal voice. He said, "I'll have the conductor come by and talk with you."

When the conductor came by, he said, "I heard that you were offered the choice of moving to another car. He (the employee) said that he had you a few weeks ago and you were all over the place. You need to do what he says. I'd hate to have to interrupt your trip." Then the conductor left.

Later, the employee who had screamed did knock on my door to take my dinner order; I had already decided never to deal with Flexible Dining or Amtrak employees unless I had to, so I declined dinner. This morning, I didn't get a wake-up call at all, and another Amtrak employee (who was fine) came to my room and motioned when it was time to get off. The employee who had screamed did end up being the one who put the step box on the ground when I got off; I thanked him and he didn't respond.

How to Handle with Amtrak?
I find this type of customer service to be completely unacceptable. Would you raise Trip 2, Episode 3 with Amtrak? If so, what would you ask for, if anything?

I had contacted Amtrak about Trip 1 and only asked that the employee be re-trained. I did not ask for anything else. Amtrak didn't respond.

Now with Trip 2, Episode 3, I think it's time to contact Amtrak again.

I will accept responsibility in part for Trip 1, Episode 1; in retrospect, I should have simply apologized to the employee, rather than forcefully telling him that I'd take a refund in exchange for not taking the trip. But aggressively coming at me and screaming at me when all I did was board through another car was inappropriate. Further, coming up to me and affirmatively refusing to provide service wasn't appropriate.

I figure on Trip 2, Episode 3, the employee figured I'd complain about him and he didn't want to run that risk. If I were a truly unacceptable passenger, it wouldn't make sense to move me to another car; it would have made sense to put me off the train and refund my ticket, which I had offered to accept.

Thanks.

It's harassment. File a report. You'll wind up with him again because nobody ever gets fired unless you're a protected minority and his behavior is possibly driven by that.

I suggest a bodycam so next tine there's no he said she said. It's legal anywhere you can take photographs.

And you shouldn't have to move. Let him work a different car if he's uncomfortable serving you. You paid for a specific accomodation.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

Amtrak's customers are riding trains somewhere 24 hours every day, 7 days every week.

It's a principle of management - and a lesson to all supervision - that you'll get the performance that you're willing to accept.

These horror stories are preventable. There are a few dedicated supervisors who are seen aboard trains, in stations, or at maintenance facilities, at night or on weekends and holidays. Too few. Waay too few.

Whether by assigned work schedules (M-F, 9-5) or indifference in practice, the management is organized to fail.

Thank you both.

I reported the incidents to Amtrak and for an emailed apology from Amtrak and was told by Amtrak that the incidents had been logged in its database.

I commute every week, and the train’s schedule (in one direction) works well. So Amtrak could easily be getting over $15,000 per year in revenue from me. I took Amtrak enough to get Select Plus status, and that was for only a fraction of my trips this year.

But the employee’s nastiness (which was by far the worst and most malicious customer service that I’ve ever received), plus Amtrak’s poor value for the price mean that from now on, I’ll just fly.

For the price I would pay on Amtrak, I would expect more than microwaved frozen dinners served with industrial plastic wrap still on them, a run-down sleeping car with duct tape covering some problems but still lots of rattles and, most of all, a hostile staff that clearly hates customers and gets away with treating customers with malice.

Mr. Night Jet, I trust you know your handle is the name of overnight services that have been resurrected in Europe.

After every other State carrier over there was ditching their "Night Trains", the Austrian state rail system stepped up and resurrected Night Trains under the brand NightJet.

Last August, I almost got to ride one Salzburg to Munich. I wanted to allow plenty of time to get to my flight home, and an NJ from Rome was "a bit" late.

It would have just been in a Second Class compartment with maybe seven "of my closest friends", but still it would have been an experience. But alas, there it goes just when I was walking from the hotel to the Hbf.

No big deal; plenty of other trains to get there in time.

Understaffed and overworked is the name of the game everywhere today. The airlines aren't much better.

As others said, report it and keep reporting it.

RPA is actually collecting surveys of this kind of thing. Check out this link:

https://www.railpassengers.org/happenin ... heard-now/

Thanks, everyone! I reported it to Amtrak and the Rail Passengers Association.

I will be flying from now on. The nastiness of the Crescent’s crew vs. the friendliness of American Airlines’ crews is the deciding factor. I don’t want to spend my hard-earned money to pay people who hate me.

Don't blame you in the least, Mr. NightJet; save your rail travel experiences for when you next go overseas - and an overnight ride on "your handle"!!!

I’m curious as to why, in my subjective view, Amtrak has such variation in its onboard crew members and station employees. A few are great, but a lot are less customer-oriented than airline crew members are.

I fly every week and started taking Amtrak for some trips, and in my view, airline crew members are generally helpful and pleasant. There is less variation than among Amtrak crew members. There are plenty of Amtrak crew members who are gruff and abrasive and simply clearly are uninterested in customer service; customers are an inconvenience. I’ve been repeatedly fussed at, yelled at and bossed around on Amtrak.

What gives?

Did pre-Amtrak railroads also have gruff crews; is the rail industry just like this?

Are Amtrak customers (including in first class) just so difficult that crews have had it?

Does Amtrak just have low hiring standards?

Is Amtrak just a terrible place to work?

Thanks.

Mr. Night Jet, I think the safe answer to your perfectly appropriate inquiry is "All of the above".

Allow me to address your first point.

As one of the rapidly diminishing number of members around here with extensive pre-Amtrak riding, there could be many an experience with "Groucho" to share, but let's pass on that. A point to remember with regards to Conductors and Brakemen, to get into passenger service, they had to spend many years in freight service, which is kind of saying to take someone who has spent a good number of years on the production floor and move him (yes, him: "no girls allowed") into a public contact position. Of course, many made the transition without incident, but others?

And lest we forget, while there were provisions within then prevailing labor agreements to disqualify one from bidding on a passenger job, seniority did prevail.

Now so far as air transport goes, remember that any airline employee you encounter has spent their entire career in public-contact positions. Also remember that with any direct domestic flight itinerary, "it's six hours or less and it's over and done".

Airline crews also get customer service training along with safety procedures. Does Amtrak train new hires for customer service?

As someone who works in a public-facing position I will play devil's advocate and say that the general public has become rude, impatient, ignorant, and just downright nasty over the past few years. I don't see nearly the amount of customer numbers that the train crews do and there are days where I want to say F-it and find myself a nice office cubicle job.

The rail passenger behavior over the pandemic I've witnessed has not been great either. There's been several First Class Acela trips where I've watched passengers slam their seats back which in turn dumped drinks into the laps of the people behind, passengers get nasty with other passengers over mistaken seat numbers, passengers get on the wrong train and not do a single thing the conductor suggests to get tickets transferred. The Empire trains often have people talking loudly on speakerphone, leaving baggage in seats despite crew requests to free up seats, and in general just bad behavior. Quite frankly I'm not surprised more train crews don't have a bad attitude. You also don't know if a crew member got in a fight with their spouse that day, had their car break down, got cut off in traffic, stepped in dog mess, etc. People just have bad days. There's days where I just wake up in a bad mood and every little thing people do that day just cranks my chain.

That's all to say I'm not making excuses for the behavior you've experienced, which of course isn't right either. I've also experienced some cranky train crews. Over the pandemic we had a couple trips on the LSL from BOS to ALB in a room to avoid masking for hours; one trip the crew was stellar, the other the crew was rude and very obviously did not want to deal with the public. Unfortunately you'll get that in every industry. Does it suck? Yes. Is it necessary? No. But as long as there are people on this earth there are going to be both good and bad varieties.

TLDR: It's a two way street; people tend to just suck in general these days lol

Mr. Naugy, your immediate reminds me of a regional fast food chain ( Portillo's) around my parts that has signage (to the effect of) at their order point:

Our employees are our family, and that's how we treat them. Please join us

NaugyRR wrote: ↑Fri Oct 28, 2022 1:34 pm As someone who works in a public-facing position I will play devil's advocate and say that the general public has become rude, impatient, ignorant, and just downright nasty over the past few years. I don't see nearly the amount of customer numbers that the train crews do and there are days where I want to say F-it and find myself a nice office cubicle job.

I would agree there's some truth to this. And yet, my complaints about large variations in customer service goes back decades. As I've related in the past, the absolute worst was when a conductor basically shoved an employee of mine into his seat. This was hard enough that it popped the cell phone off my employees belt onto the floor where the battery came out. It was serious enough that I actually asked my employee if he was interested in pressing assault charges. (for those who want more context, the prelude to this was my employee basically asking the conductor a question, I think about moving seats. The train was not in motion and there had been no other interaction between the true. We were still in the process of boarding in Albany.)

This is the same conductor on a separate trip (also departing Albany at 5:10 AM), when I asked about the unturned seats basically snarled, "You don't expect me to turn all the seats, do you?"
Based on his age and a discussion I had with another Amtrak employee, the impression I got was he was close to retirement and honestly was just putting in his time at point.
That said, I definitely think he was an outlier.

I have had several other employees give less than professional service, including the car attendant on the Crescent who ranted at a passenger who dared to move his seat long enough to sightsee a bit. Eeven after apologizing and promising to move back to his assigned seat, she continued to openly complain about how difficult folks were making her job.

Most others have been, pretty decent.
And a few outstanding.

I think Amtrak suffers from a few issues:
While I understand Amtrak has service training and the like, Amtrak seems to suffer from two things:
1) A consistent level of service. Consistency has a LOT going for it.
2) A corporate policy of making it a high priority. Some companies live and breath customer service and it comes from corporate. My impression is that headquarters has never really done this. Yeah, they've had programs over the years, but it's never struck me as holistic or consistent. For example, like 2 decades ago they had the "money back guarantee". Basically you complain, you'd get a refund. Sounds like great customer service right? "Hey you'll love the ride!" But, some people definitely abused it. But I also go the feeling that it was sort of held over the heads of the poor employees, "Oh look you cost us a fare, do better!" That probably didn't help employee morale at all.

Now that all said, yeah I think customers have probably gotten worse over the years. And there's probably only so much crap employees will put up with (I'll still give credit to the conductor's reaction when I showed him the feces covered bathroom. He handled that about as well as anyone could

One thing that think is related to the problem, but not THE problem is "unions". Yes, I suspect some employees hide the behind the fact that they've got a union protecting them. But, airlines are heavily unionized and as some have noted, some have great customer service. I would often fly Southwest and while many don't like it because of its boarding, etc, I found on pretty much every flight, the customer service was consistently good. And considering I was usually flying at the end of the day when they were on their last legs, that says a lot. So I don't htink one can necessarily say, "oh, it's unions" and blame it all on them.

Ultimately, I think part of the solution would be to hire someone, perhaps with title of CHO - Chief Hospitality Officer, whose mandate is to develop a corporate culture from the top down of customer service. I think the biggest challenge to this would be consistent funding.
I do want to suggest individual improvements. I think it has to be a culture change starting at the top.