I break quality service domestically as follows:
Excellent service - FA is working the cabin 80 percent of the flight time
Good service - FA is working the cabin 60 percent of the flight time
Poor service - FA is working the cabin less than 60 percent of the flight time
Attitude helps but most FA's have a good attitude in my experience. Its the nature of the job and all of us have bad days. Of course, even with bad days, we still have to do our job, i.e., work the cabin.
Y should have FA's working the cabin the same amount of time as F. Of course, since there are two FA's in Y and many more pax, there isn't as much time for personal attention.
As for working the cabin time, FA's deserve breaks like the rest of us. That being said, breaks of no more than 25 minutes on a two hour flight, 36 minutes on a three hour flight, etc. seem pretty reasonable.
I have around 50 domestic F segments so far this year. Using my definition, 75 percent have been excellent, 10-15 percent good, and 10-15 percent poor.
In some ways that's good (and I commend Sluggoaafa, Skylady and other FA's who routinely provide excellent service) but it is a little lower than my experience on F9 and B6 where I have 30 segments so far this year. Their FA's are almost always working the cabin 80 percent of the flights.
Who to blame - certainly the union culture may have some role (I'm certainly no fan of unions) but I tend to think AA Management is to blame. I'm not familiar with the service rules but suspect that AA Management has not set out express rules requiring FA's to be working the cabin. If they have, then they need to be enforcing the standards. Unfortunately, like all of us, I'm sure some of the excellent FA's occasionally look around and say "I'm working like crazy while XXX is shamming. It's not worth it." Management enforcing the standards will help eliminate this problem.