He wouldn’t let me finish my sentence. Then he got loud. I told him there was no reason to be hostile. Then he yelled, “I’M NOT BEING HOSTILE!”
No, I was not babysitting a 13-year-old, or buying crack cocaine from a hyper, young entrepreneur — just interacting with one of Champaign-Urbana’s Amtrak station employees.
You know Amtrak, right? It’s usually what we’re talking about when we say “the train.” Shamefully, it is — with few exceptions in the U.S. and zero exceptions in our area — the only rail option to get from one city to another. It is also, strangely enough, a U.S. government-owned corporation. According to Wikipedia: “all of Amtrak’s preferred stock is owned by the U.S. federal government. The members of its board of directors are appointed by the President of the United States and are subject to confirmation by the United States Senate.”
And, I hate to say it, but if Mitt Romney wants to hit the message home about how government is not the answer, one effective — and unusually fair — television ad would be to showcase the employees of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation who work at our Illini Terminal. Jesus, God. You get the right kind of RNC strategist to make these guys the poster boys for government-run business, there’ll be such a knee-jerk reaction that eight years from now Paul Ryan will be the top oligarch of the land. He will host dinners at the White House for Rush and The Koch Bros, where they’ll dine on the ribs of former inmates of privately owned prisons (grass-fed, of course) and discard the bones into spittoons sculpted in the likenesses of the fellas who once worked on the second floor of that little ol’ train station in central Illinois.
It would be the least of ways in which that unholy triumvirate could celebrate the stars of the world’s most tragic marketing campaign.
How frightening it is to think that, with little effort, Karl Rove could make our guys at the local Amtrak even more powerful of an image than Willie Horton eating government cheese while reading a porno mag on a swift boat — while, of course, simultaneously revealing that he worshipped Allah with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
So let’s pray to whatever that doesn’t happen.
We can do better. Our government can do better. And by “better” I mean hiring individuals — individuals who are going to work with the public — who are not dopey, cowardly, and downright mean.
I’m not saying these guys are “attack dog” mean. I’m saying they are “teenage-bed-wetter-turned-cop-who-would-maybe-mace-and-choke-a-jaywalker” mean. (Thank Christ we haven’t armed these guys!)
While I lived in Washington D.C. I commuted for work, sometimes weekly, to Philadelphia on the Amtrak. Sure, sometimes there were delays. Sometimes there were excruciating delays. However, in my experience, the service was always somewhere between decent and good. Last fall, I very much enjoyed traveling through Oregon on the Amtrak. There, the service was, literally, friendly.
However, here, in Champaign, I’ve been yelled at, lied to, told that I’m banned, then told I’m not banned, then told I’m banned again in front of a friend, only to then be let on the train after the embarrassment, told multiple times that my ticket has been printed up in Carbondale — and then given guff each time as if I would plan such bullshit, then threatened, misled, and insulted.
Am I a victim? No. I have just made poor choices. I chose to continue to seek transportation services from individuals who can’t pull their knuckles off the ground, or breathe with their noses. I admit fault. I should know better.
However, our federal government should also at least have standards for employment that are higher than those who work the door karaoke night at the Moose Lodge in Tillatoba, Mississippi. Trust me, I recognize that employing thugs at the Amtrak is not anywhere as big of a deal as, say, employing a surgeon with a fatal track record to operate on veterans — or, for that matter, employing mercenaries that go run over Iraqi women with a humvee.
This is a problem, though, with a much easier, kinder, fix. Let’s send the ol’ boys home to the backwoods, and bring in some folks with even the least sense of manners and professionalism. The public will be better served, and I’ll stop having nightmares about these guys ending up in an ad funded by American Crossroads.