Employee Undermining Amtrak Revenue Efforts

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A

Anderson

Engineer
Joined
Nov 16, 2010
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10,432
Location
Virginia
I will name neither the route nor the dates nor the crews (I delayed mention of this for a reason), but I came across an employee in the last few weeks who was in several ways doing everything in their power to undermine Amtrak's revenue-generating efforts in the food service cars. To clarify, I do not mean the casual neglect which will appear on occasion; I mean active and aggressive efforts to drive away revenue that would have made Southern Pacific proud.

I'm not sure to whom or where to mention this, but I mentioned the issue to another member of another crew on the route and they noted that what I said was very much in keeping with the revenue numbers attached to that crew member...so it clearly wasn't just me.

Whom can I contact? I don't like doing this at all, but the level of revenue negation which I saw truly stunned me.
 
I would contact Mr. Boardman's Office directly. If indeed records can tie this behaviour to this employee then hopefully he or she will be looking for a new career in short order.
 
Crap. I've got a card for Boardman's office, but it is back home and I'm on the wrong side of the continent for that. Is there contact info on the Amtrak website?
 
If you have crew member name, position, date, time, train number, etc., and can describe the incidents in detail... well, the proper thing to do is to report it to the correct manager in the hierarchy, but it's a little hard to look that up.

Boardman's office would certainly be able to push it down to the correct manager. I believe Customer Relations is also supposed to do that, though I don't know whether they actually do.

FWIW, I have lately seen no efforts by Amtrak to generate revenue in the food service cars. I may have mentioned the failure to actually stock the dining car on my last trip? Can't generate revenue if you don't put the food in the car. I reported that to Customer Relations while I was on the train, but I'm wondering if I should escalate it, because it's completely ridiculous.

I don't have the information for Boardman's office, but it would be useful. Failure to actually stock the food in the dining car is pretty egregious....
 
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neroden said:
If you have crew member name, position, date, time, train number, etc., and can describe the incidents in detail... well, the proper thing to do is to report it to the correct manager in the hierarchy, but it's a little hard to look that up.

Boardman's office would certainly be able to push it down to the correct manager. I believe Customer Relations is also supposed to do that, though I don't know whether they actually do.

FWIW, I have lately seen no efforts by Amtrak to generate revenue in the food service cars. I may have mentioned the failure to actually stock the dining car on my last trip? Can't generate revenue if you don't put the food in the car. I reported that to Customer Relations while I was on the train, but I'm wondering if I should escalate it, because it's completely ridiculous.

I don't have the information for Boardman's office, but it would be useful. Failure to actually stock the food in the dining car is pretty egregious....
Click to expand...
Stocking issues are an eternal problem for Amtrak, and that goes back to the 1980s at the very least. You'd think they could find some CompSci students somewhere and hire them for a project to develop some sort of algorithm to determine based on space sold X days before departure (and taking into account some limits on both diner capacity and train capacity) how much food should be stocked to avoid running out...but in at least a few cases, space in the diner/cafe (or lack thereof) is the governing constraint. This is what causes headaches on the Adirondack, for example: They don't have a back-end base in Montreal, so they have to somehow stack NYP-MTR-ALB and then do a quick, limited refill at ALB for the return into NYP. I gather the same issue has plagued the Buffalo trains as well...God help the Adirondack if they could add another few coaches.

This isn't an excuse, but it represents an institutional issue that is definitely not the path of least resistance for management to fight on. With some of the western LD trains, the problem may be legitimately unsolvable without intermediate commissaries due to space constraints...and I genuinely shudder to think of Amtrak trying to deal with additional passenger capacity on this front. I don't know how they would handle the scaling with existing constraints on, say, the California Zephyr since even if they could force the diner to absorb the seating capacity, the storage capacity would be at issue. You'd need to look at something like having a station employee in Denver handle shipments of at least some goods for something like this. The Sunset Limited could present a similar challenge.

That said...to Boardman's office this is going as soon as I can get it there. If someone can PM me something other than the generic website contact page for this I would appreciate it.
 
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And unlike airline meals a lot of what is stocked, especially in the Lounge does not "die" when the trip ends and has to be disposed of if unused. So if these items are overstocked, they simply stay on board, get rotated to the top of the pile and the pile gets topped up.
 
Anderson said:
Stocking issues are an eternal problem for Amtrak, and that goes back to the 1980s at the very least.
Click to expand...
I understand limited problams in stocking, but 70 side salads for a train with 400 people is blatantly too low. I was at the *first seating* of the *first meal* after the train departed the commissary.
They were completely out of multiple items on the menu and understocked on others (such as the aforementioned side salads). This is not ordinary incompetence, this is *gross* incompetence in stocking.

I expect to be able to get everything on the menu if I am at the first seating of the first meal on the trip. This is a pretty minimal expectation, no?
 
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What do you expect when you keep cutting amtraks budget or demanding they cut costs that don't need to be cut,or management that just doesn't care.
 
CALL 1-800-USA-RAIL (weekdays) and ask to speak to Customer Relations.
 
Anderson said:
neroden said:
If you have crew member name, position, date, time, train number, etc., and can describe the incidents in detail... well, the proper thing to do is to report it to the correct manager in the hierarchy, but it's a little hard to look that up.

Boardman's office would certainly be able to push it down to the correct manager. I believe Customer Relations is also supposed to do that, though I don't know whether they actually do.

FWIW, I have lately seen no efforts by Amtrak to generate revenue in the food service cars. I may have mentioned the failure to actually stock the dining car on my last trip? Can't generate revenue if you don't put the food in the car. I reported that to Customer Relations while I was on the train, but I'm wondering if I should escalate it, because it's completely ridiculous.

I don't have the information for Boardman's office, but it would be useful. Failure to actually stock the food in the dining car is pretty egregious....
Click to expand...
Stocking issues are an eternal problem for Amtrak, and that goes back to the 1980s at the very least. You'd think they could find some CompSci students somewhere and hire them for a project to develop some sort of algorithm to determine based on space sold X days before departure (and taking into account some limits on both diner capacity and train capacity) how much food should be stocked to avoid running out...but in at least a few cases, space in the diner/cafe (or lack thereof) is the governing constraint. This is what causes headaches on the Adirondack, for example: They don't have a back-end base in Montreal, so they have to somehow stack NYP-MTR-ALB and then do a quick, limited refill at ALB for the return into NYP. I gather the same issue has plagued the Buffalo trains as well...God help the Adirondack if they could add another few coaches.

This isn't an excuse, but it represents an institutional issue that is definitely not the path of least resistance for management to fight on. With some of the western LD trains, the problem may be legitimately unsolvable without intermediate commissaries due to space constraints...and I genuinely shudder to think of Amtrak trying to deal with additional passenger capacity on this front. I don't know how they would handle the scaling with existing constraints on, say, the California Zephyr since even if they could force the diner to absorb the seating capacity, the storage capacity would be at issue. You'd need to look at something like having a station employee in Denver handle shipments of at least some goods for something like this. The Sunset Limited could present a similar challenge.

That said...to Boardman's office this is going as soon as I can get it there. If someone can PM me something other than the generic website contact page for this I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I've occasionally got to look in the baggage cars during the trip, and I've never seen them close to full. Would it be possible to use some of the baggage car space to store some extra food? Especially now thatthe new baggage car apparently have heat/AC and power.
 
MARC Rider said:
Anderson said:
neroden said:
If you have crew member name, position, date, time, train number, etc., and can describe the incidents in detail... well, the proper thing to do is to report it to the correct manager in the hierarchy, but it's a little hard to look that up.

Boardman's office would certainly be able to push it down to the correct manager. I believe Customer Relations is also supposed to do that, though I don't know whether they actually do.

FWIW, I have lately seen no efforts by Amtrak to generate revenue in the food service cars. I may have mentioned the failure to actually stock the dining car on my last trip? Can't generate revenue if you don't put the food in the car. I reported that to Customer Relations while I was on the train, but I'm wondering if I should escalate it, because it's completely ridiculous.

I don't have the information for Boardman's office, but it would be useful. Failure to actually stock the food in the dining car is pretty egregious....
Click to expand...
Stocking issues are an eternal problem for Amtrak, and that goes back to the 1980s at the very least. You'd think they could find some CompSci students somewhere and hire them for a project to develop some sort of algorithm to determine based on space sold X days before departure (and taking into account some limits on both diner capacity and train capacity) how much food should be stocked to avoid running out...but in at least a few cases, space in the diner/cafe (or lack thereof) is the governing constraint. This is what causes headaches on the Adirondack, for example: They don't have a back-end base in Montreal, so they have to somehow stack NYP-MTR-ALB and then do a quick, limited refill at ALB for the return into NYP. I gather the same issue has plagued the Buffalo trains as well...God help the Adirondack if they could add another few coaches.

This isn't an excuse, but it represents an institutional issue that is definitely not the path of least resistance for management to fight on. With some of the western LD trains, the problem may be legitimately unsolvable without intermediate commissaries due to space constraints...and I genuinely shudder to think of Amtrak trying to deal with additional passenger capacity on this front. I don't know how they would handle the scaling with existing constraints on, say, the California Zephyr since even if they could force the diner to absorb the seating capacity, the storage capacity would be at issue. You'd need to look at something like having a station employee in Denver handle shipments of at least some goods for something like this. The Sunset Limited could present a similar challenge.

That said...to Boardman's office this is going as soon as I can get it there. If someone can PM me something other than the generic website contact page for this I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I've occasionally got to look in the baggage cars during the trip, and I've never seen them close to full. Would it be possible to use some of the baggage car space to store some extra food? Especially now thatthe new baggage car apparently have heat/AC and power.
Click to expand...
I really don't think the problem has anything to do with a lack of physical space.
 
TVRM610 said:
MARC Rider said:
Anderson said:
neroden said:
If you have crew member name, position, date, time, train number, etc., and can describe the incidents in detail... well, the proper thing to do is to report it to the correct manager in the hierarchy, but it's a little hard to look that up.

Boardman's office would certainly be able to push it down to the correct manager. I believe Customer Relations is also supposed to do that, though I don't know whether they actually do.

FWIW, I have lately seen no efforts by Amtrak to generate revenue in the food service cars. I may have mentioned the failure to actually stock the dining car on my last trip? Can't generate revenue if you don't put the food in the car. I reported that to Customer Relations while I was on the train, but I'm wondering if I should escalate it, because it's completely ridiculous.

I don't have the information for Boardman's office, but it would be useful. Failure to actually stock the food in the dining car is pretty egregious....
Click to expand...
Stocking issues are an eternal problem for Amtrak, and that goes back to the 1980s at the very least. You'd think they could find some CompSci students somewhere and hire them for a project to develop some sort of algorithm to determine based on space sold X days before departure (and taking into account some limits on both diner capacity and train capacity) how much food should be stocked to avoid running out...but in at least a few cases, space in the diner/cafe (or lack thereof) is the governing constraint. This is what causes headaches on the Adirondack, for example: They don't have a back-end base in Montreal, so they have to somehow stack NYP-MTR-ALB and then do a quick, limited refill at ALB for the return into NYP. I gather the same issue has plagued the Buffalo trains as well...God help the Adirondack if they could add another few coaches.

This isn't an excuse, but it represents an institutional issue that is definitely not the path of least resistance for management to fight on. With some of the western LD trains, the problem may be legitimately unsolvable without intermediate commissaries due to space constraints...and I genuinely shudder to think of Amtrak trying to deal with additional passenger capacity on this front. I don't know how they would handle the scaling with existing constraints on, say, the California Zephyr since even if they could force the diner to absorb the seating capacity, the storage capacity would be at issue. You'd need to look at something like having a station employee in Denver handle shipments of at least some goods for something like this. The Sunset Limited could present a similar challenge.

That said...to Boardman's office this is going as soon as I can get it there. If someone can PM me something other than the generic website contact page for this I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I've occasionally got to look in the baggage cars during the trip, and I've never seen them close to full. Would it be possible to use some of the baggage car space to store some extra food? Especially now thatthe new baggage car apparently have heat/AC and power.
Click to expand...
I really don't think the problem has anything to do with a lack of physical space.
Click to expand...
Right. There is not a storage issue. And since food is required to be stored at safe temperatures, temperatures that are monitered, the baggage car would not be legal anyway. The catering vendor determines the par for each trip. They do use some kind of algorithm. The diner crew or LSA can request additional items over par, but as I understand it that would be a "backorder" that would have to be approved by a manager at the start location. They can "backorder" enroute but there would have to be a commissary enroute that could fill the backorder. Food can't be stored at stations enroute that don't have a commissary operated by the catering vendor.
 
But they could certainly store non-perishable, or non-food items at stations enroute (plates, plasticware, tablecloths, or whatever; that would free up space to store more food items on board?
 
The biggest issue with increasing revenue is being sure to announce to coach passengers that the dining car is open for them as well, but, you need to anticipate the demand, stock enough food and invite the coach passengers to come in. On a number of trips, no dining car announcement was made, not even for the sleeper passengers. The staff did go door to door to take dining car reservations from the sleeper passengers but that was it. After that, it was silence on the PA system. Must admit that this approach makes the job of the food service people much easier and perhaps that is the goal..
 
dlagrua said:
The biggest issue with increasing revenue is being sure to announce to coach passengers that the dining car is open for them as well, but, you need to anticipate the demand, stock enough food and invite the coach passengers to come in. On a number of trips, no dining car announcement was made, not even for the sleeper passengers. The staff did go door to door to take dining car reservations from the sleeper passengers but that was it. After that, it was silence on the PA system. Must admit that this approach makes the job of the food service people much easier and perhaps that is the goal..
Click to expand...
This has been a pet peeve of mine for years. I'd say only 50% of the time (though it's been getting better honestly) have I heard announcements in coach for the dining car and when I've gone up on my own I've found the dining car more than 1/2 empty.

While I can understand them wanting to make sure sleeper car passengers get their promised meal, I'd really hope that they'd do more to keep the tables as full as possible otherwise.
 
railiner said:
But they could certainly store non-perishable, or non-food items at stations enroute (plates, plasticware, tablecloths, or whatever; that would free up space to store more food items on board?
Click to expand...
I don't think there is a space problem in the diner.
 
dlagrua said:
The biggest issue with increasing revenue is being sure to announce to coach passengers that the dining car is open for them as well, but, you need to anticipate the demand, stock enough food and invite the coach passengers to come in. On a number of trips, no dining car announcement was made, not even for the sleeper passengers. The staff did go door to door to take dining car reservations from the sleeper passengers but that was it. After that, it was silence on the PA system. Must admit that this approach makes the job of the food service people much easier and perhaps that is the goal..
Click to expand...
On the east coast trains like the Silvers and Crescent I have been on they go thru the coaches taking reservations. As far as the PA system, that is unfortunately unreliable on those trains. They could be making an announcement from the dining car, and usually do. but it may not be heard in all the cars and the crew making the announcement does not even know its not propagating. That is part of why they walk back and take reservations.
 
No excuse for having only 40 Salads and zero popular menu items on the first meal setting after leaving the originating station!

In past year I've run into more and more Diner crews telling passengers they shorted us on various popular items, once out of CHI on the TE they had No Steaks!!!!

The thing about Maagers having to sign off on special orders or requests for regular menu items by the LSA is idiotic, sounds like something out of "Mash"or "Catch 22"!!!
 
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Guest said:
The catering vendor determines the par for each trip. They do use some kind of algorithm.
Click to expand...
It's obviously completely, utterly defective.

The diner crew or LSA can request additional items over par, but as I understand it that would be a "backorder" that would have to be approved by a manager at the start location.
Click to expand...
The manager at the start location should approve such requests routinely, unless there's a record of severe overstocking by that particular crew. Generally the crew knows what they're going to need.
These approvals obviously aren't happening. This system is grotesquely broken.

I suppose there's probably some vice president who is actually responsible for this, not Boardman directly, but I don't know who.
 
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Cafe stocking on the Empire Service is no better, though. Maybe this really should go to Boardman directly.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
neroden said:
Guest said:
The catering vendor determines the par for each trip. They do use some kind of algorithm.
Click to expand...
It's obviously completely, utterly defective.
The diner crew or LSA can request additional items over par, but as I understand it that would be a "backorder" that would have to be approved by a manager at the start location.
Click to expand...
The manager at the start location should approve such requests routinely, unless there's a record of severe overstocking by that particular crew. Generally the crew knows what they're going to need.
These approvals obviously aren't happening. This system is grotesquely broken.

I suppose there's probably some vice president who is actually responsible for this, not Boardman directly, but I don't know who.
Click to expand...
I don't know if it is utterly defective and you don't know either. It is not obvious. Are you ten years old?

Ditto with what happens to requests made at the start of a trip.You don't know what happens.

Since overstock will be wasted which has a cost there has to be a balanced system. Sometimes it will be better to run out of stock rather than trash a lot of stock. No stocking algorithm is going to be perfect in anticipating demand.
 
neroden said:
Cafe stocking on the Empire Service is no better, though. Maybe this really should go to Boardman directly.
Click to expand...
Neorden, this may be hard to believe, but at least last year cafe service for west of Albany was under LD but Adirondack and Ethan Allen was under NEC or something completely wonky like that. I don't remember the details, but Bruce Becker explained it to me and I came out with my head spinning in disbelief!
 
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