Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, March 3-5, 2024
We were looking forward to a relaxing final train ride home to Portland from Chicago on the Empire Builder. What we got instead was the Psycho Attendant from Hell and a rail car that was apparently being run into the ground before being sent to the glue factory.
At first impression, our attendant seemed friendly and personable. She gave a spiel over the PA system introducing herself and welcoming everyone, then came around to each room. Her name, which I will not publish here, is related to the Latin word for “bird.” So I jokingly asked her if that meant she could fly.
That turned out to be a mistake. She launched into a lengthy explanation of the various meanings of her name, from Latin and Hebrew and Spanish. This led to a personal story of how she really wanted her father to love her and she saved and saved and bought him a fancy fishing jacket with all kinds of pockets on it because he loved to fish. He tossed it aside unappreciatively. It hurt her deeply.
Sometime after that a passenger told her that in Hebrew her name means “god is my father” which she took to be a religious experience, dumping her earthly father for her heavenly one, and ever since has been a “street evangelist.” My internal alarm bells were going off at that point. All the while we’re sitting there politely smiling, wondering where this was going and how long we would be subjected to it.
A little while after she left, the gentleman from the dining car came by to get our reservation for dinner and we realized we had forgotten to discuss food with our attendant. We told him we’d like to take our meals in our room and he said he would let our attendant know.
A little while after that our attendant returned and let us know in no uncertain terms that she does NOT like being told by another staff member something about her own passengers. Her eyes were kind of big and she was all but foaming at the mouth. In hindsight, I think this was the tipping point.
In the meantime, before we had even left the station, the door to our room came off its track and our attendant had to get two conductors with a crowbar down to our end of the train to muscle it back into place. It seemed to close ok but after they were gone, and upon closer inspection, we saw that it was not staying latched. With the jiggling of the train, the little piece that holds the lock in place falls off and the lock bounces open so that, all night long, though we had the curtain closed and velcro’d, the door itself was actually ajar an inch or two. Also, there was no heat and one of the reading lights didn’t work.
This made for a sense of not feeling quite safe. At first we hoped they would move us into an empty larger room we had noticed downstairs. They did end up moving us, but only to another roomette at the end of the hall. The good news with that was we were no longer right across the hall from the attendant’s room, but the bad news was we were all the way down the hall from the bathroom. In our new room there was also no heat, and the reading light on the same side was also burnt out. At least it was familiar.
For dinner Sunday night I ordered the only entrée I can eat on the menu: salmon. The same entrée I’d eaten several times on previous trains. It comes with vegetables and “ancient grains” which on a previous train I had asked and that attendant said it was really just risotto, which is rice, so I ate it at that time. This time I ordered the salmon dinner not thinking about the grains. When it arrived, it was actually not just rice as it had been on the previous train. I’m not sure what it was. I didn’t want to make the Psycho Attendant from Hell angry at me so I took the risk and ate it.
Monday morning the Psycho Attendant from Hell knocked on our door at 7:30 am. B was still in bed but I had already crawled down and luckily had put my pants on. I cracked the door open and she asked what we wanted for breakfast. I said scrambled eggs and potatoes. She said, “that’s it, no bacon or sausage?” I decided to indulge in a bit of bacon so I said, “Oh, sure I’d like some bacon on mine, but not on the other.” Then she rolled her eyes and said, “OK hold on, now I gotta write this down”. She asked me again, “what’s just your order?” I said, “eggs, potatoes, bacon and hot water for tea.” (We had our own teabags.) She wrote it down and said, “the second one the same thing?” I said, “the second one no bacon.” She said, “eggs, potatoes.” I said, “and hot water.”
We did get our eggs and potatoes, and one plate had bacon on it, so that was very nice. But no hot water. Hot water would have been especially nice since the outside temperature, according to my phone, was all of 5 degrees, and clearly whatever heating system the train did have was not up to the challenge. I had made it through the night OK, but the cold bothers Bernadette more than me and she had been cold all night. When we mentioned the cold to our attendant she shrugged and said, “It’s North Dakota, that always happens here.” So… if it always happens here, maybe you could offer your passengers extra blankets the evening before?
She got defensive and insisted the train was set at 73 degrees, and that’s what the temperature is, and don’t go by the grate under the window which is cold, cuz that’s not where the heat comes out. It comes out at the grate near the floor. After she left, we reached down and touched the grate near the floor. It was also stone cold.
On Monday I was not feeling any symptoms from the ancient grains I ate Sunday night but still, I did not want to take the risk again. So for dinner Monday I ordered the salmon dinner and explained that I should not be eating the grains and could I please have mashed potatoes instead of the grains. I had done this with no problem on an earlier train. Bernadette did not want the salmon, so she said she just wanted the vegetables and some risotto (which was available with a different entrée). Again, our attendant kind of sighed and rolled her eyes and whined about not knowing if the kitchen would do that but she would ask. She made some notes on her order pad and read it back to us, and then crumpled it up and tossed it aside and filled out another form. (WTF? Is this an omen?)
When she finally brought the dinner, there were no vegetables. I got salmon and mashed potatoes, period. Bernadette got just a bowl of risotto and nothing else. The Psycho Attendant from Hell then proceeded to explain to us how she was taking care of us because when the kitchen first plated it, they had put vegetables on it, and she had to tell them no no they don’t want the vegetables and had them replate it for us. We kind of glanced at each other and remained quiet. Neither of us wanted to get into it with her. We really just wanted her to go away, which she eventually did.
We wondered: Is she passive aggressive and doing this intentionally? Is she punishing us for saying the wrong thing to the dining car guy when we first boarded? Is she just clueless? Did she forget to take her lithium? It seemed like every sentence out of her mouth was defensive and had to be accompanied by seven other sentences, many of which were critical of her employer, or of people not leaving tips these days, or of how hard the work was, or other inappropriate comments.
At 4:30 that afternoon after we had placed our order for dinner, she made a PA announcement that there would be no breakfast in the morning. The train splits at Spokane. Part of it goes to Seattle. Part of it goes to Portland. Turns out the dining car goes to Seattle. She said, “…however Amtrak will accommodate you, you can have anything from the club car as your complimentary breakfast.” The problem is, there is absolutely nothing on the club car menu we can eat. Well… OK, Hippeas and orange juice. We were really pissed and surprised. We had nut bars and peanut butter and bread and stuff with us so we knew we would not go hungry. It was just a very unhappy surprise.
She couldn’t have told us this earlier? She had made such a big deal when we first discussed having meals in our room, she wanted to clarify that it would be all meals for “all three days.” She couldn’t have told us then?? For that matter, Amtrak Vacations couldn’t have told us this when we made the reservation months ago? We were not happy campers.
Monday evening, she informed everyone over the PA that when the train reaches Portland on Tuesday it turns around and heads back and she has to flip all the rooms (change the sheets and such) before the eastbound passengers could come on board. Oh boo hoo. What a hardship that she has to work for a living.
She requested that anyone who was an early bird to vacate their room as early as possible in the morning, beginning at 6:30am, so she could get started. She suggested that we could go hang out in the observation car instead, which she assured us would not be crowded. This didn’t quite make sense to me since there was our sleeper car plus two coach cars that were all going to Portland. We checked the schedule. Our arrival is around 11am, and the Empire Builder eastbound does not depart until 4pm. Let’s see… there are maybe 20 rooms, and each one takes about 10 minutes… Oh, OK, sure, of course she needs to kick us out at 6:30 a.m. even though we paid for this room all the way to Portland.
Bernadette said to me, “I am NOT getting up before 8am.” As it turned out, we were both awake early. B got on the phone with Amtrak Guest Relations and was speaking with them when our attendant knocked on the door at 7:30. We had the door closed and the curtains closed and ignored her. We did NOT want to speak with her ever again. A few minutes later we heard her singing some spiritual in the hallway at our end of the car. I guess she wanted to make sure everyone was awake. When she knocked again a little later, B yelled angrily, “I’m getting dressed. I’ll be out shortly.”
We decided to go hang in the observation car until we got to Portland so we would not have to interact with the Psycho Attendant from Hell any more. I went down and found one table unoccupied (as I suspected there were plenty of people in the observation car) and tossed our coats on it, hoping that would deter anyone else from sitting there. I went back to the room and when B was done dressing, we grabbed our belongings and escaped.
Sitting in the observation car was much more pleasant. We could see out both sides of the train and we were just arriving at the north bank of the Columbia River Gorge. The light was better, the air was better, and scenery was fabulous. I went downstairs to the club car to get something to munch and hot beverages to augment our bread and peanut butter. The lady there said, “aren’t you in a sleeper?” I said yes, and she indeed gave me my Hippeas and orange juice and hot water for free.
So we spent a lovely couple of hours watching the gorge roll by and decompressing. It was so wonderful being “home” again in the Columbia Gorge, then seeing familiar sights as we rolled through Vancouver, across the bridge, and into Portland Union Station. We collected our checked bags, found our friend at the curb waiting for us, and rode home.
My first order of business at the house was to empty out all the luggage and put things away. Bernadette’s first order of business was to get back on the phone with Amtrak Guest Relations and finish the complaint process. The earlier agent had explained that we had to actually finish the trip first, if we were requesting any compensation. B once spent a miserable night at Chicago O’Hare airport when a flight was delayed. She told them she’d rather spend two nights doing that than the two nights we just spent on their train. If you know Bernadette, you know she does not mince words.
Silver lining: after listening to everything we had endured, the Amtrak agent gave us a credit voucher for the cost of that leg of the trip. Oh yes, we’ll use that, but I don’t think we’ll be getting a sleeper again. The attendants are too much of a crap shoot, and if we’ll be bringing all our own food anyway, we may as well be in Business class coach.
Safe travels, everyone! And remember, when things go wrong, it’s just so you’ll have some good stories to tell later.
Adrian Dee, flutist, composer 