Good and bad SCAs

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jmbgeg

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Nov 15, 2008
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Just completed SPK-LAX in a bedroom. Jaime southbound on 11 was good. George northbound was great. Meals in room were timely. Filled my small ice chest several times. He was integral in helping me upgrade to add the adjacent room (bedroom suite). Opening the door was great. I did this mid trip. The Paso Robles SEA fare was only $455. Cool.

I decided to jump off in PDX instead of going to SEA. SEA was a safety net in case 14 was late and missed 28. 14 was early so I switched to 28 from 8. The SCA on 28 was not good. She did not want to hear my special requests. As it turned out, she ignored my wakeup request and no one came to wake me up before the midnight SPK arrival. She missed me on meal delivery and seemed not to care when I called her for a meal. (PDX-SPK meals are in room). She went MIA at bed turndown time. :angry:
 
 Sounds like a lame SCA on #28 and mirrors one of my experiences, where I had to send out search party to find the SCA and my dinner box. Anyone know if the 28 sleeper is still crewed out of Chicago? 
 
Gotta love the maddeningly inconsistant service amongst SCA's. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: By contrast to John's situtation, probably the best SCA I've had was on 27 on the Chicago-Portland leg of the dearly departed Slidell Loophole trip I took with my uncle in 2009, Daniel Foley. Excellent service all the way, and he took the time to interact with us and all the other sleeper passengers in our car on a regular basis. Best of all, he gave us some good dining tips in Portland, as we were going to have a few hours' layer in Portland before connecting with the CS to Los Angeles.

My uncle and I are taking another nice long trip in July, Ft.Lauderdale-New York-Chicago-Sacramento-Portland-Spokane, bedrooms all the way. I hope we don't get stuck with the same SCA as John. After such a long trip, I'd hate to have it end on a bad note. :angry:
 
Get rid of the Chicago crew base and allot of rotten apples will disappear. If they transfer to other crew bases hopefully they won't be able to stand the good employees with happy personalty's and will go insane and quit.
 
What is the story with the Chicago crews? Do they just not care? Do they have nothing to fear from bad service? Seems like this has been an ongoing issue for quite some time.
 
Sigh!

Chicago doesn't have a monopoly on bad attendants. And they most certainly have some very good ones, I've had some in the past. In my recent travels, that is within the last year, the worst attendant that I've had was on the Coast Starlight and based out of LA.
 
AlanB said:
Sigh!

Chicago doesn't have a monopoly on bad attendants. And they most certainly have some very good ones, I've had some in the past.
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I'd agree. Some of the best sleeping car attendants I've had were on the Portland sleeper. In fact it has always seemed to me that on Amtrak, on-board service gets surlier the closer you get to New York City. Probably luck of the draw.
 
AlanB said:
Sigh!

Chicago doesn't have a monopoly on bad attendants. And they most certainly have some very good ones, I've had some in the past. In my recent travels, that is within the last year, the worst attendant that I've had was on the Coast Starlight and based out of LA.
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Monopoly? Too strong a word. But an overrepresentation? There may be something to that.  
 
On 4/1/12 I traveled on 27. Darryl, the sca in 2730 car was outstanding. He was attentive and insisted on dealing with the beds. When I mentioned a potential delay because of status map info, he actually called and checked on it. We conversed about it several times.

Ms Oliver in the lounge car was outstanding too. She has a seductive, pleasant voice that draws one to the lounge car. I'm sure sales are up on her trips.

The metropolitan lounge attendants were very pleasant too. The attendant in the pdx station fc lounge was very pleasant too.

Kudos to coast starlight crew for serving lunch out of pdx. The sca on 11 was prompt and made beds and stuff. So he was ok. Sometimes seemed out of it, but did his job. The ppc attendant was a lot of fun at lunch and dinner on the last day. He played smooth jazz during dinner while we traveled along the coast. Nice.

The crew on 4 was great to. Especially Freida, the LSA. She had laryngitis. Yet she still did her job with a smile. She was one of my all time favorites.

I have met some rotten apples, so I know about that. I was really greatful to hit the trifecta and have three great crews.
 
Daniel was our SCA to PDX from Chicago and return in 2005. He was great and very entertaining. He always knew where to look to see the interesting sights along the way.
 
We just rode the Silver Meteor out of FTL to NYP on Friday, and had Larry a wonderful SCA, the entire crew was attentive and happy to help. The crew going south was O.K., but the crew going north enjoyed their jobs and it showed.
 
Mr. Foley, Stephanie, Paul Linker, are all Chicago based however they are all outstanding sleeping car attendants.

The SCA is not up at SPK on either #27 or #28. The conductor would be expected to give SPK bound passengers a wake-up.
 
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jmbgeg said:
She missed me on meal delivery and seemed not to care when I called her for a meal. (PDX-SPK meals are in room). She went MIA at bed turndown time. :angry:
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If this was last night/this morning I know who you are talking about. I never see her as I said, the SCAs are not typically up at SPK.

Please call customer service with the usual information and a description of the lacking service. These do add up eventually.
 
Stephanie out of Chicago was the best SCA I've had. It was on EB PDX to Minneapolis in November. She was always pleasant and always available. She got a big tip on that trip. Christine L worked in the dining car on CZ last summer... I really enjoyed having her, too. She was terse but good-natured.

I'd say the NEC has the rudest staff but we won't go there. :)
 
JayPea said:
Gotta love the maddeningly inconsistant service amongst SCA's. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: By contrast to John's situtation, probably the best SCA I've had was on 27 on the Chicago-Portland leg of the dearly departed Slidell Loophole trip I took with my uncle in 2009, Daniel Foley. Excellent service all the way, and he took the time to interact with us and all the other sleeper passengers in our car on a regular basis.
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I have had him too.......... one of the best !!

Peter
 
My rotten apple was on 29 from Washington last November. My SCA on 27 from Chicago to Portland, Lawrence, was a good guy, and over a year ago the two ladies from Chicago in the #5 diner ( both named Mildred ) from Nevada into California were sweethearts.

In defense of New York, as a tour guide, I find New Yorkers to be my favorite guests. They are usually friendly, interested, and tip well. A few exceptions, yes, but I stand by New Yorkers - they may sound gruff but they are the best. And last year I recall the gracious service on the LSL diner west of Albany with a New York crew. " Welcome to the Dining Car! "
 
AlanB said:
Sigh!

Chicago doesn't have a monopoly on bad attendants. And they most certainly have some very good ones, I've had some in the past. In my recent travels, that is within the last year, the worst attendant that I've had was on the Coast Starlight and based out of LA.
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The bad Starlight attendent's name wasn't Garrett (maybe Garth) was it? I've had him and he basically hides the whole time.

With SCAs, it is always YMMV regardless of crew base. With that said, on average I've generally had better luck with Los Angeles and Seattle based crews than Chicago ones. I don't have enough experience with the other bases to have a baseline.
 
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greatcats said:
My rotten apple was on 29 from Washington last November. My SCA on 27 from Chicago to Portland, Lawrence, was a good guy, and over a year ago the two ladies from Chicago in the #5 diner ( both named Mildred ) from Nevada into California were sweethearts.

In defense of New York, as a tour guide, I find New Yorkers to be my favorite guests. They are usually friendly, interested, and tip well. A few exceptions, yes, but I stand by New Yorkers - they may sound gruff but they are the best. And last year I recall the gracious service on the LSL diner west of Albany with a New York crew. " Welcome to the Dining Car! "
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Just a general kudo to New Yorkers. I've been in every major American city, and I think New Yorkers are the friendliest of any big city inhabitants. They'll tell you their life story at the drop of a hat and are proud of their city, and free and friendly with directions and suggestions (maybe a little too much so).

Just don't dawdle over routine transactions. Have your money ready, get your coffee/donut/ticket/whatever and move on. Anything else ticks them off and rightfully so.
 
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acelafan said:
Stephanie out of Chicago was the best SCA I've had. It was on EB PDX to Minneapolis in November.
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We were lucky to have Stephanie as our SCA on the Portland sleeper last week. It was her last run on the Empire Builder for a while, as she was transferring to the 532 sleeper on the California Zephyr for the summer.
 
LadyWidget & I were quite impressed with Linda, our SCA on #14 from LAX to SEA in late April. Linda stayed on top of her passengers' needs and we never had to think about using the call button - Linda had already thought of whatever was needed and taken care of it. She was always available, and the preparation of her car (and the care of it enroute) was impeccable. Her skills wouldn't be out of place in any first-class resort.
 
My experience is that there are good and bad SCAs at all the SCA crew bases.

It does puzzle me that there can be such wild variableness in the crews from one day to the next on the same route, despite the fact there is a single route manager who oversees that route. I know they can't be on every train, but it seems there ought to be ways for the managers to get better feedback on the preformance of the employees under their jurisdiction.
 
I've been pretty lucky with SCAs. On a recent westbound Empire Builder to Seattle, Bonnie was an excellent SCA, Alexis was wonderful in the lounge car, and Joyce kept things pleasant as my dining car server. On the return trip back to Chicago, I got great service from Chris as an SCA, Bob as the LSA -- and Chris and Manuel were a hoot during the wine tasting.

On another recent trip from Chicago to L.A. on the Texas Eagle, my SCAs were Michael as far as San Antonio, and Jose on to LAX. No complaints about either one. I returned from this trip via the Southwest Chief and my SCA was Pinkey. She is so well known that at least three of us on that car surprised her by telling her, wow, we're lucky to have you!
 
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