Unofficial Public Relations Guidelines of Amtrak

(Not for public dissemination)

1. Lateless: Like Chicago voters, Amtrak intends to be late early and to be late often.
2. Multi-level Customer Relations
   1. Inform passengers that they should be seen and not heard.
   2. Unlistening or unlearning passengers should be told that they are de facto slaves on a new Middle Passage and they should conduct themselves accordingly or else.
   3. When a passenger is removed in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, inform your most annoying passengers that they could be next. Remind them that the Patriotic Act allows any transportation employee to classify a passenger as a threat to national security.
3. Discourage Passengers with 24-7 Gardens of Edens
   1. Encourage passengers to purchase spicy food to eat in the coaches. Don't encourage them to wrap and seal. Don't encourage them to dispose of in sealed bags in the trash cans.
   2. When a stool-filled toilet does not flush, do not cover it with a newspaper under the lid to contain the smell. Remember, the rail car ventilation not only immediately blows the toilet air up into the car but any other smell whether excessive cologne or stench.
   3. Do not tell mothers about the changing tables in the toilets. Encourage mothers to change diapers in the coaches, lounges and cafes. Hide all plastic bags so the mothers cannot contain the smell.
4. Coach Cars
   1. Don't have a morning cleanup call whereat you request passengers to cleanup around their seats.
   2. Allow people to play loud music so that some passengers will be discourage from being future passengers.
   3. Allow passengers to talk loudly after lights out for the same reason as above.
   4. Keep as many coaches as empty as possible. Pack passengers in as few cars as possible so that they are inconvenienced by closeness and noise. If you are lucky with increased packing, they will stop up the toilet so as to stink up the car sooner.
5. Cafe cars
   1. Block stairwells to downstair cafe areas.
   2. Lock the cafe bathroom so you can have your own personal bathroom--no passengers with which to hassle.
   3. Do not place supplies in lockers or closets. Use the tables and seats. The more boxes, full or empty, you place on the seats, the less time you will have to clean up after messy passengers. If you don't have enough box use the expandable cardboard trash boxes.
   4. Purchase your own candies, pops, and foodstuffs to sell in the cafe. Amtrak doesn't need the money. At the end of the run, you have the cash and Amtrak has the unsold items. Arguing like Martha Stewart, you didn't steal a single penny from Amtrak and, yet, your billfold over-floweth. Show Martha Stewart that Wall Street does not have a monopoloy on manipulating the free market with insider sales.
   5. Tape off all electrical outlets so that customers can't avoid boredom on trains. Buy stock in Rail Media which has a free market monopoly founded by Amtrak employees.
6. Ignore foul-mouth passengers who might discourage passengers from riding again. If freedom of speech will reduce future passenger loads then let freedom ring.
7. Discourage talk of global warming. If people get worried, the politicians might subsidizes Amtrak which will increase passenger loads.
8. New employees with a high level of enthusiasm should be shunned as well as encouraged to get a job elsewhere.

If we all do our part to discourage passengers, we can ride the rails without passenger hassles while playing cards, iPods, DVDs and laptops.