Re: Really, does Amtrak always suck so badly?
I can tell you from my personal experience, they really do suck. As an organization, they are merely a government agency, with all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of a privately operated transportation enterprise.
Amtrak is infested with substandard on-board service people, who would never be able to hold a position in any private enterprise that works with the public.
My experience has largely been negative, ranging from overly bossy conductors, who belong back in freight service to lazy, arrogant on-board "service" people, who believe their personal comfort and ease are more important than the service mission they are there to fulfill. (They will take a break during meal hours, because... "It's my mealtime")
As an organization, they are incapable of figuring out the most fundamental of logistics, which is to anticipate how many meals should be on-board, so they don't run out of food. I always ensured I took the first seating on long distance trains, because I knew that by the second and third seating, they would run out of food. It's ridiculous. Can you imagine United or American running out of food on a flight? Approximately the same number of passengers per train, as on a plane, yet Amtrak fails routinely, in this regard.
And the dining car staff? Hah! The old railroad tradition is to place four people to a table in a dining car (if they don't forget to couple a dining car into the train and substitute a "dinette" - basically a half-diner/"lounge" car), and then, when the service attendant (aka waiter/waitress) deigns to stroll by, literally drops a paper pamphlet, passing as a menu onto your table, with a pencil stub to make your selection.
So, you fill this menu out and some minutes later, either the report that they're out of the item you selected or it comes out. It's an edible meal, devoid of any professional presentation and expensive, for what your getting. The wait staff are always rudely interrupting you in conversation and after a barely satisfying meal, more often not, people drift off.
If you're traveling in one of the coaches, the conductors always try to group you into one coach, loudly proclaiming the passenger load down the line will be heavy and that there will be a full load, which almost never materializes. In the meantime, you're stuck in a seat with squalling babies and uninteresting traveling companions and officious conductors, patrolling the cars. It has all of air of a prison train, with a warden and deputies, ready to slap the side of the seat, to get you to "straighten up".
If you opt for one of the sleeping cars, probably the only really tolerable way to travel by rail, you get a small sleeping space (which I understand, due to the space constraints of getting reasonable capacity out of an 85 ft. long car), and meals included, but with lackluster, unenthusiastic sleeping car "attendants". After the initial greeting and maybe some help with your luggage, they usually disappear for the remainder of the trip.
Your trip is frequently interrupted by loud, unnecessary and verbose announcements, with junk canned and scripted "information". This passes as "professional" and the on-board staff seem to revel in using the intercom.
I was told an old joke: "What are the first three words of an Amtrak conductor on the intercom"? Answer: "FFFF FFFF FFFF", which is the conductor blowing into the handset, to test if it's working.
Being in the industry, I used to be sympathetic to rail, as a mode and would, in general, support them at every opportunity, but in the end, there were just too many negative experiences to ignore, rationalize or excuse. I could relate a long litany of unpleasant anecdotes to echo the OP's experience and might be compelled to, upon further reading of this thread, but suffice it to say that Amtrak is such a completely negative experience, that I do not consider them an travel option.
Except for very short trips along the NE Corridor (Washington DC to Ny or maybe even Boston), I consider Amtrak unusable and not an option.
Good luck to all who suffer them.