Focus
I went to a focus group tonight -- not because I'm so hard up for money to finish my house that I'll take (or give) anything just so I can have those special mini halogen bulbs in my laundryroom. No, I went because when the droning lady from the research company called me and mentioned that the subject of the group was Amtrak, I got tremendously excited at the opportunity to spout on in a room full of strangers about something I care about. Come to think of it, that's all this blog really is....
So the group consisted of mostly older people -- a retired, tanned dude in shorts who kept telling us how he was an eternal child (one you would want to spank), a granola-y plump woman with a bubbly (and slightly over-stoned) personality, a man named Clarence who just needed to talk to someone -- anyone; and a skinny, 70 year old woman who had to stand through the entire group due to a medical condition -- in short, your average Amtrak passengers. And me, Mr. Food Snob, Mr. Attention to Detail, Mr. Son of a Doctor...you get the picture.
The moderator started the "session" by asking each of us about our last Amtrak trip and our overall impressions; somehow, this got translated into an opportunity for each "focuser" to launch into stories about fear of flying, dying relatives and/or birthday parties, or even birthday parties for Aviophobs who were about to die.
Anyone, somehow we rolled past this through a reading and critique of the Amtrak Dining Car Menu, the importance of proper spoonware, why "Bob Evans" is the only item in Red on the breakfast menu (and it's a mean scramble, let-me-tell-you), until finally, after 1 1/2 hours, arriving at the AHA! moment of the evening -- PLATES.
Turns out that Congress, spurred on by an administration bent on spending more money on Thanksgiving meals in Baghdad, and less on -- well -- plates, has ordered Amtrak to cut, cut, cut millions from their food budget. Besides laying off the cooks, wait-staff and chefs that used to make $30/hour over-cooking barely mediocre food for diners with a combined median age around the size of the national deficit, and moving toward "pre-cooked", "reheat-ready entrees", they now want the remaining members of Amtrak (minus the engineer, of course) to serve us the rolling equivalent of a hungry meal on a plate that looks like a plate but is actually a piece of disposable plastic -- a close, very close facsimile of the real thing that you don't know is fake until you use it (slightly akin to the way I have, in the past, mistaken Paris Hilton for an actress.)
So the issue is plates, and my fellow focusers now wax on about food placement and color combinations and the size of the salad dressing packs (which look like crap, by the way), and how Uncle Fillbert used to take his teeth out to eat the chocolate ice cream onboard because it would stain). And as this symphony of noise is swirling around in my head, I'm looking at the plate of Chocolate Cake with White Chocolate sauce on top that they've put down in front of my nameplate which indicates my "focus spot," and I find myself getting sad in a way I haven't experienced in months.
It's not that Amtrak has to cut back and find other ways to do the things they've always done. Hell, they're great at that by now. It's not so much that the plates being thin plastic are now disposable and environmentally unsound, which removes the romance of train travel, It's not even that all of those people will lose their jobs and we'll get crappier food in return. No. Not those things.
It comes down to this. The people who called this group together have a problem: they need to cut the budget. So they look at numbers and pick areas and then get out to people to see how they'll feel about the change so they can craft an advertising and PR campaign around these reductions, to keep their already tenuous brand from becoming so unappealing that people stop taking the train. These "train execs" are human tourniquets put on in Amtrak's last hour arm to stop the flow of money that continues to make our country's railroads more like a dinosaur getting stuck in the mud for the last time.
No, the big sadness for me on this is the complacency. I'll admit it, I love train travel. It's easy, cheap, fun and a great way to get somewhere. Everything onboard is stuck somewhere around when the Berlin Wall came down, but it's the little things onboard that make the difference (the flower in the vase, the route guide, the free coffee dispensers). It gives it character and makes it unlike any other experience. Taking away plates is just a step closer toward making it like other modes of travel.
My motley crew of fellow yappers did not share my romantic view of things. They said, "hey, it's a train, what do you expect?"
I expect a lot more, not less. There's a saying I have: "Don't break something that isn't fixed."
So the group consisted of mostly older people -- a retired, tanned dude in shorts who kept telling us how he was an eternal child (one you would want to spank), a granola-y plump woman with a bubbly (and slightly over-stoned) personality, a man named Clarence who just needed to talk to someone -- anyone; and a skinny, 70 year old woman who had to stand through the entire group due to a medical condition -- in short, your average Amtrak passengers. And me, Mr. Food Snob, Mr. Attention to Detail, Mr. Son of a Doctor...you get the picture.
The moderator started the "session" by asking each of us about our last Amtrak trip and our overall impressions; somehow, this got translated into an opportunity for each "focuser" to launch into stories about fear of flying, dying relatives and/or birthday parties, or even birthday parties for Aviophobs who were about to die.
Anyone, somehow we rolled past this through a reading and critique of the Amtrak Dining Car Menu, the importance of proper spoonware, why "Bob Evans" is the only item in Red on the breakfast menu (and it's a mean scramble, let-me-tell-you), until finally, after 1 1/2 hours, arriving at the AHA! moment of the evening -- PLATES.
Turns out that Congress, spurred on by an administration bent on spending more money on Thanksgiving meals in Baghdad, and less on -- well -- plates, has ordered Amtrak to cut, cut, cut millions from their food budget. Besides laying off the cooks, wait-staff and chefs that used to make $30/hour over-cooking barely mediocre food for diners with a combined median age around the size of the national deficit, and moving toward "pre-cooked", "reheat-ready entrees", they now want the remaining members of Amtrak (minus the engineer, of course) to serve us the rolling equivalent of a hungry meal on a plate that looks like a plate but is actually a piece of disposable plastic -- a close, very close facsimile of the real thing that you don't know is fake until you use it (slightly akin to the way I have, in the past, mistaken Paris Hilton for an actress.)
So the issue is plates, and my fellow focusers now wax on about food placement and color combinations and the size of the salad dressing packs (which look like crap, by the way), and how Uncle Fillbert used to take his teeth out to eat the chocolate ice cream onboard because it would stain). And as this symphony of noise is swirling around in my head, I'm looking at the plate of Chocolate Cake with White Chocolate sauce on top that they've put down in front of my nameplate which indicates my "focus spot," and I find myself getting sad in a way I haven't experienced in months.
It's not that Amtrak has to cut back and find other ways to do the things they've always done. Hell, they're great at that by now. It's not so much that the plates being thin plastic are now disposable and environmentally unsound, which removes the romance of train travel, It's not even that all of those people will lose their jobs and we'll get crappier food in return. No. Not those things.
It comes down to this. The people who called this group together have a problem: they need to cut the budget. So they look at numbers and pick areas and then get out to people to see how they'll feel about the change so they can craft an advertising and PR campaign around these reductions, to keep their already tenuous brand from becoming so unappealing that people stop taking the train. These "train execs" are human tourniquets put on in Amtrak's last hour arm to stop the flow of money that continues to make our country's railroads more like a dinosaur getting stuck in the mud for the last time.
No, the big sadness for me on this is the complacency. I'll admit it, I love train travel. It's easy, cheap, fun and a great way to get somewhere. Everything onboard is stuck somewhere around when the Berlin Wall came down, but it's the little things onboard that make the difference (the flower in the vase, the route guide, the free coffee dispensers). It gives it character and makes it unlike any other experience. Taking away plates is just a step closer toward making it like other modes of travel.
My motley crew of fellow yappers did not share my romantic view of things. They said, "hey, it's a train, what do you expect?"
I expect a lot more, not less. There's a saying I have: "Don't break something that isn't fixed."
posted by Lou at 8:12 PM
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