They shouldn't have to pay for it out of their pocket to get it from the Cafe car. There should be some sort of form to fill out that shows that A) FC ran out of freakin' food! and B) the employee was providing customer service recovery.
I get so annoyed that the quality of a few Amtrak personnell have demanded such strict controls over inventory that the customer is inconvenienced. That would warrant a call to customer service.
The policy is that under no circumstances are cafe items to "given" to first class car. That being said, I have been in circumstances where the f/c class attendant has come and purchased minor items, out of their tips, for passengers, as well as more serious shortages where I have provided multiple quantities of food for f/c service and written it off and "held my breath" to see what the repurcussions would be. I am assuming that due to the much documentation provided regarding incident, I never heard another word. Is that guaranteed? No, but I have enough corporate contacts to probably dispose of a situation. Are most attendants willing to go thru all those hoops? Probably not.
I hear ya loud and clear. In my opinion, it's bad policy.
There can be a process to prevent internal theivery and still meeting customer expectations by having an identified, empowered, employee (maybe the FC attendant) who will document the situation and provide excellent customer service.
The problem with an attendant paying out of their tips for anything is that then Amtrak never knows that there is a problem to begin with unless they are dishing out $100 vouchers because of the lack of a $25 plate of food. How do they know to increase par on a particular food service? If they keep running out but have no complaints, then they expect that par is perfect. If there is a paper trail showing that food is being provided from the Cafe, then the Cafe crew will put the pressure on the FC crew to increase par. If a customer isn't fed and wants to be, then they call customer service, get a nice little voucher, then it's forgotten about for several months.
This happens on business contracts all the time. Management says they can do something in 500 hours. Then they put their employees on unpaid, undocumented overtime and the total time to complete a project is really 750 hours. But the next time a similar contract comes up, Senior management says "You did it last time for 500 hours, let's take a challenge and do it in 450 hours this next time". Obviously this isn't healthy for the company OR the employees. Eventually the customer gets the raw end of the deal because the employees WON'T spend the necessary hours, only the budgeted hours and deliver junk.
The customer doesn't care where the meal comes from or how it's paid for. They paid HUNDREDS for their ticket, they are ENTITLED to a meal, and when they don't get it, they are RIGHTFULLY angered unnecessarily.
Of course, if the layover was in the couple-of-hour range, I would make the swap in NY just to stroll around Manhattan.
That was one of the attractions for me originally to change at NYP, so that I could take some time in Manhattan (and go over to Grand Central Terminal, a place I've never been).
I think NYP would be a facinating place to enjoy. I think if I ever have a change there, I would need at least 6 hours or so to stroll around town AND access to CA to make it sane.
