New York Moynihan Train Hall At Penn Station — Local services in New York

I really enjoy traveling, and I really, REALLY enjoy traveling by train - more so than by air actually. During the pandemic Amtrak ran promotions for really affordable tickets on a near weekly basis, and I took advantage of that wholeheartedly! On a near weekly basis.

I had my fun.

And I also gained a special appreciation for the Amtrak staff, conductors, etc., who work non-stop to keep us all moving and shaking.

Unfortunately there are some times when you may witness a customer pulling their entitled and privileged card, simply to talk down on the employees. Many of whom are minorities.

I've seen my share. Hell, even I've been mistreated by another Amtrak rider who saw a Black woman traveling alone (me) and decided that she was the boss of the Business Class "Quiet Car" we were riding in (see my other Amtrak review for that scenario).

But on this particular occasion, I happened to witness a man going off about the dining car while the train was boarding hundreds of people at Moynihan Train Hall (connected to Penn Station) NYC. I mean, this is likely one of the busiest train hubs in the country, yet this man was giving the conductor all kinds of grief about a dining car at the worst possible time.

While the train was loading and preparing to depart a major metropolis. Like, on time.

The Amtrak staff have a whole job to do, a job that needs to be done with precision, it needs to be done effectively, and there are schedules and procedures and tasks that are essential - yelling at the conductor about a dining car is not one of those important issues when preparing to depart a city with 8.8 million people.

And then trying to gaslight the conductor into feeling that HE was the one doing something wrong is just Grade A narcissism.

I support all essential workers, city workers, and those who are working hard to keep the wild machine fine tuned, oiled and moving along - and it just eats me alive to see the entitled treating them like they are their personal slave-like servants.

They are not!

With that said, please enjoy this video of the entitled vs. the hard working.

p.s. This is my 2nd time uploading this video, because when I uploaded it the first time, someone hacked my account and modified the video - stripping it of its audio. They then hacked my iCloud account and deleted the original source file. Just that ONE file. So the quality of this particular video is poor because I had to re-record it from off of my Twitter timeline. Entitled...

The Amtrak workers behind the counter are incompetent and unwilling to do their actual job, Troy and a woman I unfortunately was unable to catch her name on her name tag. We arrived an hour before our train was scheduled to depart as our email said to arrive 45 minutes before to check in luggage. When three of us walked up to the counter with three large bags to check-in and were immediately turned away and in a snotty attitude filled voice said, "you can't check-in 'til 15 minutes before your train leaves". Our train was leaving at 7:04am so we walked out of the enclosed area to the main hall to wait. Staring at the clock we walk back to the line and are told we can't just stand there and we are blocking people. To preface, we are in the same line as everyone else trying to get to the counter, having a friendly conversation with the people behind us in line. It's now 6:50 (14 minutes before our train is scheduled to leave), and we tell them as we are being told to get out AGAIN, that we can't check bags this close to departing. We then responded to say, we tried to check in our bags earlier and you turned us away and were rude about it. As this conversation was going on, Quadir, an Amtrak worker that helps assist train ticket holders, overheard the conversation. He's the reason for the extra star (if it was an experience with Quadir alone, I'd give ten stars if possible, but incompetent Troy and the woman would be given a negative star review if it were possible. Quadir, knowing our train was about to leave, in a professional and personable manner led us to our train, helped load our check in bags, and let us board the train before other passengers were able to board. Quadir was amazing, the other two workers...

Just want to write a big thank you to conductor Thomas Love of amtrak TRAIN 86: New York, NY - Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Sta. to Boston, MA - South Station (One-Way) departed 12:30 PM, Tuesday, May 23, 2023.

We are a family of 6 travelling and we arrived at the terminal 30 mins ahead of departure time. However, the annoucement for which platform to go to didn't come until around 12:25 PM.

We had 10 pieces (checked-in size bags, carry-ons, backpacks) and needed to use the elevator to move all the stuff with 2 seniors and 2 kids. Elevator took forever because of others who are moving luggages as well...

By the time we got to the platform it was after the scheduled departure time and so we rushed into the 1st coach car.

We scrambled to find seats in the 1st three cars for the family to sit together... but we couldn't find seats for two people together, let alone 6...

To make matters worse, the 1st car we got on was the "QUIET car" and this is where we put all the luggages while some of us went to find seats in the other cars... well, we didn't know it's the "QUIET car" and got "shushed" handling our luggages and finding seats.

We settled to sit on our luggages and single seats that were not occupied near our luggages...

This is when conductor Thomas Love came in to save the day. He offered our family to go to the business class car so we could all sit together, and even got us the seats with a table so we could eat the take-out lunches we brought on-board.

Totally made our experience with Amtrak 1000% better. Thank you so much for helping...