On airlines that sell meals rather than give them for free (such as Easyjet), flight attendants do make tips.
I suppose it's the problem with the whole tipping culture that people judge you and then treat you according to the projected tip, rather than seeing it as their job to treat everybody in the best way possible, regardless of who they are or how much they tip.
While that may be true on easyJet, it is absolutely not true with any airline I've travelled. United, US Airways and all domestic carriers sell meals in economy, and there is no tipping permitted. It is not just that it is not customary. It is not permitted.
That's a rather insulting statement IMHO, and many of the workers are college grads and almost all have at least completed high school.
It takes a lot more to make up an Amtrak bed than you would think and far more than making up the bed in your house/apt. When was the last time you tried making the bed while an earthquake was occurring around you? That's about what it's like while the train is busy bouncing down the tracks. And one SCA has at a minimum around 50 beds to make up every trip. Plus they have to put the beds down at night and up in the morning. They're also waiters, bringing food to those who request it; responsible for opening the door at each stop; responsible for the safety of all passengers in their car and they get special training in that area. And they've got a bunch of other duties. They're far more than say a housekeeper at a hotel.
Those working a 1 night run can at best manage 2 trips a week. Those working 2 night runs can only manage 1 trip per week.
I worked in pizza delivery during college. People often treated me like "uneducated, unskilled" scum. They had no idea I was on the Dean's List and headed toward grad school. They'd sometimes refuse to tip me as an "incentive to get a better job", even though I'd just gotten their pizza to them within 20 minutes in a snowstorm and then waded through the knee-deep snow they couldn't manage to shovel from their sidewalk.
Sadly, the benefits at Amtrak are FAR from "unparalleled". The amount each employee is required to contribute to the company healthcare plan, provided by United Healthcare, is only slightly less than buying an individual, independent policy. Many companies have far better. Amtrak does not pay for sick days. For those employees who hold a regular route, missing a day because of illness generally means missing an entire trip, 60 hours or more, with no guaranteed way to compensate for the loss; this means that many employees report to work sick, putting themselves, their coworkers, and the general public at risk. Although Amtrak does offer vacation pay, it takes 7 years of service to get beyond 2 weeks' vacation.
I agree that there is a lot more to being a train attendant....in addition to the above, there are times when you have the extremely unpleasant task of cleaning up a room after a passenger has gotten sick in it--or perhaps had an incontinence 'accident'......there isn't enough money to compensate one for those tasks....
Yes. And, I do. I expect nothing from an SCA and that's usually what I get.
Sounds like someone who also has been there, done that!
Well, I'm sorry you've had some bad experiences. Not everyone is cut out for customer service. It's a hard job. I often end up picking up where some of my lazy co-workers leave off and apologize for their mistakes and attitude. I hope you have better service in the future.
Not really. If you want to calculate operating costs you need to double those rates to account for all the benefits and such that the employer has to pay in addition to the persons salary. In my calculations for LD trains I used $40-50 an hour for OBS and $90-115 for T&E times the total hours the train takes to make an end to end trip. I did not even try to calculate all those extras such as down time on the train nor prep time before the train departs. I figure it all just evens out in the long run and I did not want to understate costs. Labor costs are one of Amtraks biggest costs on these LD trains and the longer it takes to make its run the more it costs which is why such popular LD trains as the EB and CS still show large losses and why a simple day train can break even or better. Then, of course, there is that 'bloated overhead' to add also.
Amtrak uses a formula to calculate and report what each attendant and waiter made in tips for the year. The revenue gererated by each trip you worked would be used to assign a percentage of that revenue to each tipped employee as "tipped wages." This amount is reported to the IRS and on employees' W-2. The IRS requires that tipped employees keep basic records and to report tipped earnings. It does not have to match what your employer actually reported though. I haven't been a tipped employee for a long while but I believe the percentage that Amtrak uses was or is something less than ten percenct, like eight percent of someting.
In my former life, I was a Social Security Disability Judge for (11) years. After (1) year of medical training, I commenced reviewing cases. After all medical evidence was received or enough to make a decision was received we went through a step by step process. One of the steps was determining if a person was phyically and/or mentally able to return to a previous job or go to an unskilled job if they couldn't return to a previous job. To determine that we used the government's DOT jobs classification table. In that table jobs were determined to be unskilled (SVP 1-2), semi-skilled (SVP 3-5) and skilled (SVP 6-9). Using those tables the following AMTRAK jobs are rated as such.
Janitor SVP 3 Semi-Skilled
GOE=Guide for Occupational Exploring Used by counseling professionals to try to match a person's interests and/or talents to a vocational "grouping" for possible
I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way Alan!
