gatelouse

Let me try to steer this discussion back onto the main track before it gets diverted to OMNI. Focus on culture. People can come from any number of cultures that cut across demographic boundaries. Some cultures are service-oriented, some crave power, some feel self-entitled, some are unusually ambitious. There's also an internal culture within an organization; this forms as a result of morale, relations between labor and management, dominant cultures and personality types in the workplace, and so on.

I'm willing to bet that Amtrak's internal culture isn't the most supportive of newer, enthusiastic employees and is driven by those with lots of seniority. The culture that forms within Amtrak is one of, "Our job is hard enough and is getting harder with all these budget and staffing cuts, so we save ourselves first." Not a customer-friendly attitude by any means. The good employees resist this, but I do see this attitude more often than I should on the non-corridor trains.