One of the worst sleeping car attendants I had was in March 2011 on the Southwest Chief from LAX-CHI. I also wish I remembered her name, but here her picture standing on the platform at ABQ:
http://rtabern.shutterfly.com/16097
First off, she was one of "those attendants" who always seem to be impossible to find -- spending most of the day chatting it up and sitting around the diner. Once you finally caught on to that fact, you atleast knew where you could find her if you needed something. At some of the service stops she wouldn't even open the door unless she had passengers getting off or not -- she would tell you that if you wanted to smoke or get off -- you'd have to go over to the next sleeping car -- and NO, it wasn't because that car didn't clear the platform -- it did -- she just didn't really want to be bothered. She didn't even bother stocking ice or having it available -- she would tell you to go and get ice from the next sleeping car. (Hence, she didn't get a tip and the other attendant did)
My guess is she was a new hire (she was young, probably in her early 20's) from LAX which probably explains some of it.
Anyway, the real "topper" making her one of the worst attendants ever -- comes from a story I know I have told atleast once before here on the forum.
This trip was part of a 10-day, 7-train, cross country loop trip I was doing with another Amtrak Unlimited forum member... and we were sharing Bedroom #C from LAX-CHI. It had been a long day already, so we were a little tired, and requested that our beds be put down not too long after leaving Los Angeles. We were still going to have dinner, but wanted to hit the hay not too long after that since we got up early that morning to do a Surfliner turn down to Solana Beach.
Anyway, when she tried to put the beds down, the latch on the top bunk wouldn't lock in place. She did try at for about 5 minutes and no dice... so she said she was would be "right back" as she was "too weak" to get it to work... and would have to get the conductor or someone else to try. Ok, I'm reasonable and can understand that... especially with 30-year-old equipment.
BUT, instead of going to get the conductor or someone to help... we find her chowing down on her dinner at the crew table in the dining car. Nice... huh?? I actually went to her table and confronted her and she told me she "had to" take her meal break between San Bernardino and Victorville... and we just left San Bernardino. "Had to" take her meal break right then?? Even if she did -- she should have atleast had the courtesy to come back and tell us that it was going to be 45 minutes or so until she could fix the beds -- instead of leaving us sit there in the room with one bed down... one bed with a broken latch flopping around... and not much room in the room to move around!!!
I finally got the other sleeping car attendant to try and help out and even the conductor, but the latch wasn't fix-able.
So, when this young lady comes back from her meal break -- I told her that I found the conductor and other attendant -- and they weren't able to fix it.
SO, she suggests moving us into BEDROOM A. My traveling partner and I didn't really like that option because, if you didn't know, Bedroom A is actually smaller in size, than Bedrooms B-E on Superliner equipment. We wanted to stay in the bigger room.
While she was on her meal break east of San Bernardino there and it looked like we weren't going to be getting this fixed, I placed some calls to friends who work for Amtrak and have access to ARROW and found out that Bedroom B and Bedroom A were open all the way to Chicago... as well as about 6 of the roomettes.
So, I suggested, instead of being stuck in the smaller bedroom "A" for 2 days when we paid for and purposely booked "C"... that we be allowed to move to "B". She said "No, it's taken for the crew"... and wanted to move us to "A" only. We got into a pretty good argument with her about this. Finally, I suggested, how about that we be allowed to keep "C" for use during the day... my friend would sleep in there... and then maybe I could just sleep in any unoccupied roomette? She wouldn't go for this either saying "I don't think we have any open roomettes for you".
I kinda lost it at this -- and told her that I have some friends who work for Amtrak -- and that we were in-fact en route to Washington to meet with said friends who work at the HQ in Washington -- and that I knew "A", "B" and 6 roomettes in her car were indeed open. She got pretty white as a ghost, appologized, and let us keep "C" for day use and for my friend to use the lower bunk... and I used Roomette #2 to sleep in during the nights.
Well... it wasn't until La Junta, CO that we figured out what she was doing. We both over-heard her talking to the station agent in La Junta about "blocking off" Bedroom "A" and "B" so that she and her friend who was a coach car attendant on the train could sleep in there on the second night because she found the bathrooms in the car to be "gross"... she wanted her own crapper pretty much... so she wanted to have the bedrooms for her self and her co-worker.
Not only was that kinda crappy -- I think it's almost "theft" from Amtrak in my opinion. What if someone wanted to upgrade to a bedroom? or someone got on in the middle of the night and wanted a room?
We did report this to Customer Relations upon arrival.