Acela FC attendants are notorious for being among the worst Amtrak front-line employees, especially the NYP crew base. Sorry you have to endure their service or lack thereof!

I love (and will miss) Metroliner; the newly refurbished Amfleet Club Cars absolutely clobber Acela Express First Class in every way.

As for assigned seating, it used to be that advance seat assignments were printed on your ticket, like they are for sleeping compartments. That changed a few years ago when Amtrak abandoned the Motorola contract for a conductor's hand-held ticket-lifter/inventory-management-device-thingy that was supposed to interactively display your destination on the tiny digital displays above the seats. The program was plagued with problems, and the archaic paper seat checks, a supposedly temporary solution, were made permanent. At that point, FC went to open seating. But now attendants may perhaps have seating diagrams to assign seats, much like with coach on long-distance trains.