I've seen both happen - I think it depends on the crew as to what they do (and possibly on the length of the flight).

Crews comments on New Business class service [CX Secrets]
 

#9146 "STOP making crew life Horrible!
The New Business Class Service is a BIG failure! The service takes more than 3.3 hours to finish! Pax were unhappy as they waited too long and wanted to sleep. 10 full size rubbish bags were used to dispose all the plastic covers and rubbish. All the crew uniform were dirty and full of dirt, gravy and oil due to the unrealistic workload, pre-platting and lack of manpower. Crew were extremely exhausted and hated it so much and thinking of the same service again on the return sector.
Crews hands, skin were all peeling off from too much work and their legs were so tired as they walked back and forth! Disaster disaster!
All the J class crew looked like a sad, exhausted , over worked , dirty bunch of CX crew! This is pathetic and inhumane what management turned crew into. "

These people who post on CX Secrets complain far too much for my liking.

I agree sxc that making the meal time longer would be undesirable.

This does not surprise me. I've been involved with timing and labor analysis (those people who are wrongly considered to create work schedules leading to overload, etc: It's not ....). I raised this issue with CX cabin crew overload a couple of months ago.

The basics aren't that difficult: Make a complete movement brake down, use a stopwatch to time, etc. Then you have your overall schedule.
Then you start inserting "resting" moments. Relatively short moments, that the body is given "nothing" to do, specially intended to let the body recover very early in the fatigue process. The big problem is, many people involved with this kind of work, simply refuse to take those micro-rests, with the argument, they don't need it. Those are the people getting into fatigue problems, later on.

Of course, when the designed schedules are abused (later on, after original design), usually by managers, to increase output, or whatever, the whole system collapse, with often pretty drastic and nasty consequences.

Looking at the CX change of the basic dining processes, without seemingly reconsidering the timing and fatigue aspects, this isn't going to last long......

When additional work is added (by de-optimizing the current timing/action optimized work flows), it needs additional staff, there is not doubt about that. More work, so it needs more people to do the work.

Looks to me, CX designed the new, customer oriented processes, without considering (ie timing) the crew consequences.

So, despite a lot of whining at CX Secrets, I consider this one to be quite genuine.......

I think, you are missing the boat completely. The staff is there to optimize safety, to save lives (and avoid injured people), once things do go haywire.

To be able to decide in a matter of seconds, which (pre-defined) action to initiate, etc, does require skills.

And this whole safety theatre needs quite a lot of setups, to optimize the outcome in case, etc.... For this, you need (especially in the bigger aircraft), people able to properly organize, deal with obnoxious customers, who ignore instructions, etc.

In their idle time, the same people are assigned tasks for your comfort and the companies' customer service.

806 HKG to ORD
 

Food looks great. Thanks for the report, MADBOB !

Leave in 3 weeks on 807 in J.
Crossing my fingers things continue to improve.

Crew was not more chatty. They were more stressed in trying to learn the new system. For both crews it was their first flight with this service. Lots of confusion on who ordered what. It will take time for them to work out service and feel comfortable.

I think you're over optimistic.

I highly suspect the FA brought you garlic bread from F. F will retain garlic bread. J, from everything I've heard so far, won't. From your post it sounds like F wasn't full, given FAs were coming back from F to J to help with service.

And...welcome to the CX forum MADBOB! Great first few posts.

QRC3288 thanks for your input.

This was never a thing? Maybe years ago, but unless I'm going crazy I don't think bottled water is part of the gig proactively in regional J. Unless often it's given to DMs, or if you ask for it.

Bottled water used to be a KA thing (even in Y) though.