I've stood at the desk waiting for the attendant to finish reticketing me and watched them make an announcement for arriving trains. Many stations do that, although not all do. They announce it for those people who are in the station waiting to meet someone coming off the arriving train.

Even at NYP they still have the arrivals listed on the monitors, although they don't announce them since that would mean that the announcer would never stop talking during rush hour.

Your experience makes me wonder if maybe the normal attendant was out sick or something and they put someone else in the lounge to cover things and rerouted some of the other duties. Yes, I've seen times when the desk isn't covered for 5 or 10 minutes, and I know to get a redcap to open the door for me in that case. But I'm usually in that lounge a couple of times each month and I haven't seen what you describe in a long time.

About 2, maybe 3 years, ago they had far less work in the lounge and what you describe could have easily happened back then. But Amtrak soon figured things out and transferred duties to the lounge, like making announcements, to keep the attendants busy. It also helped to cut costs which Amtrak really liked, since it eliminated a few employees that used to perform those duties.

As for a sleeping redcap, I couldn't really care less, since he's only hurting himself. No tips in the lounge for sleeping, only for carrying bags.