A Fun Boxing Day Surprise (Data!)

[Anderson]

So, a rather "interesting" side-effect of assigned seating in Acela First is that if you drop into an unexpected seat, the crew might not be ready for you. I plopped myself at one of the quad tables on the train today, and the crew had apparently planned to use it as a "working desk". I moved after PHL (a family boarded), but out of NYP I got a pleasant surprise in the form of a

It would seem that the breakfast dishes are accounted for at about $25-44 and lunch/dinner at $34-44. Dessert gets another $10 added. One thing that stands out is that very often, there are similar items with wildly different accounted costs (e.g. the FCC breakfast sandwich options land at $25 while the Jimmy Dean sandwiches are at about $10.50).

What also stands out is that, as there are accounted prices (and the crews seem to have a price list), there is mechanically no reason they shouldn't be able to sell the items to pax "at cost". Now, don't get me wrong, being asked to fork over close to $50 for an entree, dessert, and a soda is rather steep...but it would seem that a properly-empowered crew ought to be able to generate a series of miscellaneous debits to account for those costs and make everything reconcile, even on a POS (and if there's no way to handle a miscellaneous debit...well, that's on Amtrak's head).

(I'll need to fiddle around to get the pictures of the sheets.)

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Try not to get yourself kick off the train.

Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches range from one to two dollars per unit retail.

 

[Anderson]

Oh, don't worry...I've been off the train in question for a few hours.

Edit: One "easy" catch: The Brownie that sells for $2.75 on the Regional "costs" $10 in Acela First.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Hopefully that Brownie will show up on a real plate with a cloth napkin, and a metal fork.

 

[the_traveler]

Is it 4 times bigger? Or do you get it 4 times?

 

[andytiedye]

Is this how they fudge the accounting to justify cutting everything?

 

[MARC Rider]

I presume these "costs" are fully loaded with overhead? If Amtrak actually paid $35 (or $35 less the direct wage cost of the car attendant heating up the food, serving it, and cleaning up) to the vendor for those meals, I would demand a congressional investigation (on live national TV) to determine who and under what circumstances they issued that contract. On the other hand, if this is "fully loaded," that is, including allocations for overhead, then maybe it's not so unreasonable.

I tell you, when I managed a government contract as the technical project officer, I was a bit startled at first to see engineering techs being billed at north of $100 an hour. I was maybe making $40 or $50 an hour at the time and thought maybe I shouldn't have bothered to go to college and get an advanced degree. Then I realized that the engineering techs weren't being paid north of $100 an hour, about 3/4 of the cost was overhead, which is actually considered to be fairly reasonable in that particular line of business.

What would interest me is how those "cost" numbers are used by Amtrak in their accounting. If you say they "cost" the Jimmy Dean Breakfast sandwiches $10.50, it's odd that they sell them for cash in the cafe car (which is one part of Amtrak food service that allegedly runs in the black) for $5.00.

Seems to me some Congress types need to get the CFO (with lots of staff sitting behind him ready to dig up information) on the hot seat with some questioning under oath.

 

[MARC Rider]

Try not to get yourself kick off the train.

Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches range from one to two dollars per unit retail.

Jimmy Dean Breakfast sandwiches sell in the cafe cars for $5.00. That's actually not too bad of a markup considering that they're selling to a captive audience who is buying them one at a time and also getting them heated and ready to eat.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Good to see that I' m not the only Retired Government Employee who was amazed by the Project Contracts I was involved with during my DOL/Job Corps days!

 

[Anderson]

So, some quick notes:
-In addition to the breakfast sandwiches disparity, Woodford Reserve also shows up in both places. In the Regional cafe, it sells for $9.00. In Acela First, it sells for $10.50. Jack Daniels lists as $8.00 on the National Cafe menu. Here, it lists as $9.00.
-I'm picking on these two items since it is the same item and, in the case of the Woodford, from the same commissary. There's enough fluctuation in brands, etc. that I can see a justification for different brands having different prices.
-The Mac and Cheese skillet, which I presume to be the same as in the National Cafe, sells for $6.50 there and $7.50 on this list.
-The Chocolate Chunk Cookie lists at $3.25 on the Regional Cafe but $10.00 here.

And so on and so forth.

In short, this is the first time I've found hard evidence of internal disparities in Amtrak's handling of this.

 

[neroden]

Oh, don't worry...I've been off the train in question for a few hours.

Edit: One "easy" catch: The Brownie that sells for $2.75 on the Regional "costs" $10 in Acela First.

Thanks for spotting more funny numbers out of Amtrak. A serious auditor would call it fraud.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Fraud seem strong. Got make those Acela trains look like they covering there cost.

 

[neroden]

Overhead allocation at Amtrak is simply bogus and should be outlawed. I wonder if we could get that tucked into an appropriations bill...

 

[rickycourtney]

Less of a problem, more of a chuckle that the proclaim that "Amtrak embraces sustainability" yet still prints out a six-page document for the LSA to fill out. Many of the lines show zero stocked items, which is great for our discussion but seems unnecessary otherwise. This seems like work that could and should be done on some sort of electronic "POS" system.

Also, in most truly private companies, leaving sensitive internal accounting information like this just laying out on a table (posted to a discussion board or not) would be grounds for discipline. But it's great information for holding Amtrak accountable.

 

[MARC Rider]

Wait a second, the way Amtrak is allocating overhead may be bogus, but what makes it "fraud?"

Who are they defrauding? Who's benefiting?

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

Defrauding us the taxpayers especially concerning who gets to retain their Amtrak service and who may loose it due to deliberately deceitful accounting to choose winners and losers.

 

[ScouseAndy]

Does anyone have similar data for how airlines split 1st class F&B costs. Is this standard practices? Do their auditors class this as fraud?

 

[niemi24s]

. . . deliberately deceitful accounting . . .

Deliberately deceitful? Oh, come now!

Maybe it's simply inept accounting.

 

[neroden]

Wait a second, the way Amtrak is allocating overhead may be bogus, but what makes it "fraud?"

Who are they defrauding? Who's benefiting?

They're defrauding Congress and state governments (and as a result, the voters). Amtrak repeatedly makes claims to Congress about how much different train services "cost" or how much food and beverage services "cost"; these claims are false; and these are used to push an agenda which is contrary to the agenda of Congress and the voters. The beneficiaries are those with an agenda contrary to the agenda of Congress and the voters.

I think half the management at Amtrak doesn't even understand that their numbers are pure fictions, but at least some of them do understand it, and they really need to stop using the fake numbers when talking to Congress.

 

[Ryan]

Moving the discussion here, since it has nothing to do with bedding.

Yes and no.

There's been a raging question as to whether Anderson has good data to make decisions on, and that is an issue. Arguably it's at the crux of this whole fiasco, since if Anderson is seeing Amtrak mark down $50-60 in "revenue" for a meal on the Acela versus $35-40 for a meal on the Meteor and he's catching hell for what's going on with the LD trains, it's going to create a bias in his decision-making process.

Now, whether Amtrak's internal accounting strictly follows GAAP or it is designed otherwise so as to give management an accurate picture of what's going on in the company? There are always multiple ways to account for distributing costs (and more than one valid way in many cases). But it seems entirely plausible that, in dealing with an mandate (and an insane one at that), something wonky might need to happen since I definitely get the feeling that some Congresscritters don't have a terribly realistic view on how certain things do/should work. The question is whether the cocked-up accounting is something that's being done to work around externally-induced insanity or whether it is a product of internal views and the like.

(To be clear, the inventory sheet should, in my view, be indicating either the retail cost of the item(s) in question or the cost to Amtrak of said items. Thinking this through, if Amtrak then adds a burden on them, they should do so after that. Frankly, this feels like it might be at the root of the F&B mess if Amtrak is burdening the sales twice (once at inventory and then a second time later on).)

At the end there you hint at the whole issue here - we don't know what's going on, and making assumptions based on an inventory sheet left lying about by an onboard service person is making assumptions on incomplete data. We don't know what the hell is happening behind the curtain, and therefore can't make any reasonable assessment about what is happening.

I will allow that *if* there is good data somewhere inside the black box, then playing around with overhead allocations to meet a crazy mandate *might* be a decent strategy. But part of that depends on good data in the first place on which to base good decision making. Given what we do know about the black box, I'm unconvinced that the good data exists somewhere to justify the thought that Amtrak should just pile more phony accounting numbers on the pile to solve a stupid mandate from Congress. Given the long-lived nature of Amtrak's questionable accounting, I'm unconvinced that this is some evil plan hatched by (the other) Anderson to make LD trains look worse than corridor service.

 

[Thirdrail7]

-I'm picking on these two items since it is the same item and, in the case of the Woodford, from the same commissary.

Unless something has changed, (which it might of,) they don't come from the same commissary and that may contribute to the variable.

 

[neroden]

I suspect that the 'evil plan' to fudge the accounting to make the long distance trains look artificially bad and the NEC artificially good predates Anderson. And I think Mr Anderson is a victim of it who unquestioningly believes the faked up numbers.

We heard in Sacramento from one of the architects of the 'National network' vs 'NEC' accounting split, a former Congressional aide, that he did it deliberately because he figured Congressmen from rural districts would always protect the national network and thought the NEC was at risk. There is someone with a motivation to fake the numbers up. Maybe he did it. I might even agree with his political calculation if he were right.

The problem is, he was wrong. Specifically, there is no Congressman or Senator to defend the Lake Shore Limited or Silver Star from being downgraded or cut due to phony accounting "losses" which Mr Anderson mistakenly believes.