Ice, Coffee, Water, and Tips

shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Let me add, that bribing in the service industry is nothing new. A $20.00 here and $100 there to get into a restaurant or a club is nothing new. So why should it be any different on Amtrak with employees who are normally tipped? Not an uncommon thing to slip the DJ, Wedding Photographer etc. a little envelope before making special requests. Also, one does not just give cash away and hope for the best. Swap of cash occurs with couple of request that might on other occasions or depending on their mood come back with a NO. Lets use the question that pops up on here often: "Will by SCA bring me my meals if I don't have a disability?" When you ask that all your meals be brought to your room while say a $20.00 is being exchanged, chances are good that NO will not be the answer, unless the person your dealing with is clueless.
 
seat38a said:
Let me add, that bribing in the service industry is nothing new. A $20.00 here and $100 there to get into a restaurant or a club is nothing new. So why should it be any different on Amtrak with employees who are normally tipped?
Click to expand...
Go ahead and tip for a fancier meal or a nicer view or a better table or whatever else you think is worth a $20-$100 bribe. You'll be seeing the exact same scenery and eating the exact same food at the exact same tables as the rest of us. Sounds like a chumps bet to me.

seat38a said:
Lets use the question that pops up on here often: "Will by SCA bring me my meals if I don't have a disability?" When you ask that all your meals be brought to your room while say a $20.00 is being exchanged, chances are good that NO will not be the answer, unless the person your dealing with is clueless.
Click to expand...
Thus far I've never once been denied a meal of my choice delivered at the time of my choosing directly to my compartment. I generally tip for food deliveries upon arrival but never beforehand and sometimes not until the very end of my trip.
 
I've seen advice to sleeper patrons which says to tip the diner service attendants the equivalent of what they would get if you paid for the meal directly. I don't necessarily agree with that, HOWEVER... I am happy to pay for reasonable service, which is always $5 for the two of us. I have, on occasion, left an additional $5 tip "from" "the nice couple sharing the table" when they were train/sleeper noobs and left without leaving a tip. (Every trip we take starts with a pocketful of fivers, obviously.)

SCAs get $10 for a partial night (our pickup stop is 4 a.m.), then $20 for the first night and another $10 for each night after that (Texas Eagle LAX-CHI is three nights).

Which gets to the quandary we're in right now. We're on #27, and our SCA is awful. We had to beg for toilet paper, beg for soap in both showers, outright plead with him to get the A/C turned down from "Arctic Blast" to maybe "Meat Locker", and no turndown service (bedroom mechanisms are a handful). To his credit he did pick-up the room while we were at breakfast, and he's kept coffee, water and OJ handy. Side mention - he did not introduce himself and ask if we needed anything, etc. First time we've run into that.

So... do I not tip, and risk even worse treatment on our next trip if we run across this guy again? Inclination at the moment is $20 and chalk it up to Amtrak's overall service deterioration.
 
C855B said:
I've seen advice to sleeper patrons which says to tip the diner service attendants the equivalent of what they would get if you paid for the meal directly. I don't necessarily agree with that, HOWEVER... I am happy to pay for reasonable service, which is always $5 for the two of us. I have, on occasion, left an additional $5 tip "from" "the nice couple sharing the table" when they were train/sleeper noobs and left without leaving a tip. (Every trip we take starts with a pocketful of fivers, obviously.)

SCAs get $10 for a partial night (our pickup stop is 4 a.m.), then $20 for the first night and another $10 for each night after that (Texas Eagle LAX-CHI is three nights).

Which gets to the quandary we're in right now. We're on #27, and our SCA is awful. We had to beg for toilet paper, beg for soap in both showers, outright plead with him to get the A/C turned down from "Arctic Blast" to maybe "Meat Locker", and no turndown service (bedroom mechanisms are a handful). To his credit he did pick-up the room while we were at breakfast, and he's kept coffee, water and OJ handy. Side mention - he did not introduce himself and ask if we needed anything, etc. First time we've run into that.

So... do I not tip, and risk even worse treatment on our next trip if we run across this guy again? Inclination at the moment is $20 and chalk it up to Amtrak's overall service deterioration.
Click to expand...
I'd cut the his tip at least in half.

As to tipping for food. The rare occasion that I've used a coupon for a meal in a restaurant, I've tipped for what the meal would have cost w/o the coupon. The server is doing the same job regardless if I pay full price or a discounted price.
 
Personally, I would not tip at all.

I once had a SCA like that on 27. Leaving CHI, he introduced himself (although I did not get his name). He never even put the beds down or up, never cleaned the room and was never seen at all during the trip. But I did see him again - when we got off 27 at PDX, he was standing at the door waiting for a tip! (He got $000.00 from me!)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
C855B said:
I've seen advice to sleeper patrons which says to tip the diner service attendants the equivalent of what they would get if you paid for the meal directly. I don't necessarily agree with that, HOWEVER... I am happy to pay for reasonable service, which is always $5 for the two of us. I have, on occasion, left an additional $5 tip "from" "the nice couple sharing the table" when they were train/sleeper noobs and left without leaving a tip. (Every trip we take starts with a pocketful of fivers, obviously.)

SCAs get $10 for a partial night (our pickup stop is 4 a.m.), then $20 for the first night and another $10 for each night after that (Texas Eagle LAX-CHI is three nights).

Which gets to the quandary we're in right now. We're on #27, and our SCA is awful. We had to beg for toilet paper, beg for soap in both showers, outright plead with him to get the A/C turned down from "Arctic Blast" to maybe "Meat Locker", and no turndown service (bedroom mechanisms are a handful). To his credit he did pick-up the room while we were at breakfast, and he's kept coffee, water and OJ handy. Side mention - he did not introduce himself and ask if we needed anything, etc. First time we've run into that.

So... do I not tip, and risk even worse treatment on our next trip if we run across this guy again? Inclination at the moment is $20 and chalk it up to Amtrak's overall service deterioration.
Click to expand...
I am curious, was this abnormally cold condition on a Superliner or a Viewliner? Our experience was 180 degrees out from yours (Super liner)!

As for absent SCA's - no tip from me. Due to our limited forays on Amtrak, I am sorry to say that I have yet to witness truly outstanding dining car service. I have seen the range from inattentive and surly to acceptable so far.
 
I am curious, was this abnormally cold condition on a Superliner or a Viewliner? Our experience was 180 degrees out from yours (Super liner)!
Click to expand...
180 degrees? That's "Core of the Sun" on our scale. ;)

Superliner. We don't usually travel in summer months, so this was a first for us. Getting enough heat to fend off the cold outside is usually our problem. I understand there have been issues in the past with A/C failures. (Uh...duh...).
 
If this guys name was Courtney that 'splains that! He's known as the invisible man on #27/#28 and other LD trains, even to fellow crew members!

I'm with the zero crowd on this one!
 
I wouldn't tip either. Having to beg and plead means you're NOT being treated like a customer. If you tip anyway you're just rewarding a bad apple for treating you poorly. For what? So that maybe he'll treat you better in the future? Sounds like battered wife syndrome.
 
andersone said:
no tickee no washee,,,,

I tip well when served well,,,
Click to expand...
I agree.

When I travelled round trip from Kansas City to Washington, D.C. I tipped accordingly. When I was on the SWC, I had a roomettes that didn't sleep in. I still tipped the SCAs because they were nice, made themselves available, and kept the cars spotless including the restrooms.

This was my first Amtrak trip and the good service I experienced, it won't be my last.
 
Interesting outcome... as y'all recommended (and I agreed, given everything), I planned to not tip. However, it was not awkward on arrival - he was not in the usual place right next to the door. He was spending all his time playing baggage handler, having emptied the downstairs luggage bin into the vestibule and onto the platform. It created so much confusion since everybody knew where their bags were in the bin that he was having to sort through it all to find people's stuff! We spotted our single bag right away and made a hasty retreat.

It's almost like he'd never done this job before. Very strange.
 
Moving the bags to the vestibule then to the platform is not unusual. They have all done that on my trips.

I've gotten into the habit of tipping before arriving at my destination, especially if it's an terminus station, so that I don't forget since my mind is on getting my bags & getting off the train.
 
C855B:

I'm not sure I understand what happened. I always made sure to inform passengers that they should wait for MY announcement before detraining. Nevertheless, I've had situations where I was trying to get all luggage out to the platform and clear the way, and passengers have detrained on their own and pushed past me, grabbed their luggage, and gone BEFORE I TOLD THEM IT WAS SAFE TO DETRAIN. Nobody can remove all luggage from the vestibule, and safely detrain passengers, at the same time. That requires the ability to be more than one place at one time --- a skill I never perfected.

I did not like to have passengers carry their own bags over the threshold, whether boarding or detraining, because I didn't want to risk their having a misstep. I always considered it my job to move those bags for them.

What looked to you like disorganization may have actually been a systematic plan to do things in their proper order for the sake of safety.

Maybe it's not so much that he hasn't done this job before. Maybe the issue is that you haven't.

Tom

(Incidentally, I think I'm on your side regarding other aspects of this trip.)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OK, thanks for the clarity, Tom. We ride semi-frequently, so apparently my experiences with the unloading process have been atypical. Normally the bag we stash downstairs is always where we put it, so it's easy to grab and head out. Normally the SCA will be there to give us a hand with it while we step off the train, and it's certainly appreciated. Coloring our experience, however, may be that our usual trip ends at an intermediate stop. "Duh," really; what you said makes sense.

I normally seek out the SCA for tipping after we have detrained, giving him a chance to deal with whatever assistance he is giving someone else. Since we tend to be hyper-organized, confusion on unloading has never been an issue, so we have the folded tip ready for a quick handoff.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top