I’ve learned well enough from any sort of travel to expect delays, leaving from Cleveland towards Hudson, NY our train was already an hour late. The thing about Amtrak is that they share lines with all the big freight train companies, which means that all of the commuter amtrak trains are at the liberty of the freights and any construction that those companies might be doing on the tracks. We arrived in Albany about four hours late.
Ben and I have the fortune of being able to travel on these trains with a much looser time frame than others, some people are not so lucky or at least have a strong desire to make it home. There was a fella on the lakeshore limited trying to get back to Albany, the place he called home, after a long weekend of working in the Midwest building stages for a concert. He expected to be home and wanted to be home but with all the delays and, although I love traveling with amtrak, on this particular train a lack of communication from the crew. It’s very odd when people start getting impatient and do not get the information they want or need to get them through the trip. Basically what happened was the impatient passenger questions the tired employee, the tired employee can’t or doesn’t answer in the way the passenger wants to hear, the passenger quips back and for some reason on this train the employees were getting rude. It’s all about perception folks.
Not to get too deep but lots of people are just moving too danged fast and the people who might be getting them somewhere are moving just as fast and there are serious communication problems coming out of this. Since this occasion we’ve done quite a bit more traveling and there have been some amazing crews and it’s great to see how much more fun these trips have been, when people know what’s going on they tend to be a lot more loose even if they feel like they need to be getting somewhere faster. To all my service industry friends be nice be open, to all the customers take your time and be patient.
