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Comment by landryraccoon | Hacker News Reader

> “Some people really like (the dining car) and view it as sort of a nostalgic train experience,” Wilander said. “Some people, especially our new millennial customers, don’t like it so much. They want more privacy, they don’t want to feel uncomfortable sitting next to people” they don’t know.

Is this really true? Do millenials or younger people in general have an aversion to meeting strangers in public? Perhaps teaching kids not to talk to strangers has gone too far; I fear that if society has default_distrust_strangers=True, that could be pretty harmful.

Personally I love meeting new people in real life. It's quite refreshing compared to the highly curated experience of "discovering" people online, if that's even the right word for it.

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Anecdata: I recently read a thread in /r/NYC about using the subway. A comment there really rang true that many people would rather use google to figure out which direction a station's trains are heading than simply ask the people coming out of the station. If you assume people who would be savvy enough to do this would skew younger than yes, I can see it as true.

Second anecdata: I manage a fairly large team of millenials, and to the person they generally describe themselves as highly introverted, to the point that it seems radical that when I'm in meetings with customers simple things like asking customers questions for clarification seem crazy to them.

It’s really a shame how insular people have become. Just today I had very pleasant conversation with a couple from Toronto after I helped them figure out which station the train was stopping at.

I noticed their Blue Jays jersey and asked if they had a game and we chatted about baseball, the sights in New York they’d visited, and Toronto.

I really enjoy my little conversations with strangers and find it hard to imagine a world where immediately upon stepping outside I’ve got headphones in and am totally insulated from the world around me.

No judgement, I get it, not everyone is gregarious, or in the mood for a chat with a stranger at every given moment.

But it sure is a more pleasant and fulfilling world for me when I’m interacting with other people even if it’s just for a few small moments here and there.

Hell, I spent a train ride talking to a man from Newark about all the clothes he stole from JC Penny’s that day. I don’t condone that behavior and I wouldn’t have struck up the conversation with him. But when he talked to me I listened and learned he got some of those clothes for his nephew. Even people you might judge as bad are trying to bring joy to others a lot of time and it’s certainly interesting to hear people’s perspectives. He showed me his food stamp card and told me how he was excited to help his friends have groceries, of course he was really hoping they’d make him a meal with them too!

My wife is the opposite of me in that she's never met a stranger. I like it, because I get to occasionally have these unique experiences that I'd never find myself in on my own.

So we're waiting to catch a train back to Prague and she ends up chatting with this other American who was there with her daughter. They continued talking the whole way back on the train and we ended up having dinner and romping around together for the rest of the night.

As somebody who's definitely an introvert, I feel like this is a skill worth picking up. Small talk was agony for years, but eventually with enough practice I got the knack. It has made my world a lot bigger.

To be fair, talking with customers seemed terrifying to me when I was a new developer. But eventually I realized that the job was only done really when they were happy, so the best thing to do was to learn to talk with them.

many people would rather use google to figure out which direction a station's trains are heading than simply ask the people coming out of the station

I don't think this is a Millennial quirk, I'm at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, and I do the same, I just got back from a trip to Europe and used my phone the whole time to navigate the London underground and Paris Metro.

My perception of that story was that people that are actively in need of additional assistance are taking a possibly less direct route to that information (unlocking phone, opening google, inputting query, waiting for results) simply to avoid interacting with a stranger.

A stranger is much more likely to give you incorrect information or simply not know the answer to your question. Why bother, in the most literal sense of the word?

Why do you think it's to avoid interacting with a stranger? I have fast, accurate information at my fingertips (and it literally only takes a few seconds to take out my phone, unlock with my finger, squeeze to activate Google Assistant and say "directions to Westminster Abbey").

My phone will tell me which train to take (and which destination sign to look for), how many stops to travel, the names of the stops, as well as how long until the next train.

The OP question isn't about explaining complicated directions, just literally which way the train is heading, by the people who just hopped off that same train. "Hey does this side head towards x?" "Yep." Faster than Siri.

> many people would rather use google to figure out which direction a station's trains are heading than simply ask the people coming out of the station

That's still not ok. When you get directions it tells you the end of the line it's going towards. If you aren't sure, you have to ask someone.

I'm also in this camp. While I'm waiting for the train, I'll spend the time staring at subway maps and timetables. After a few days, I can start giving directions to other tourists even though I'm not a local either.

> anecdata

I am curious as to about when this word started to be used in favor against "anecdotal data".

On a related but side note: must every phrase be shortened?

> must every phrase be shortened?

YMMV, but IMHO yes.

I find it unfortunate the apparently real prospect of having "a full and complete in-person conversation using only acronyms" a la that scene from MASH [irony realized] has moved from aware comedy to ridiculous in-person reality.

> A comment there really rang true that many people would rather use google to figure out which direction a station's trains are heading than simply ask the people coming out of the station.

Well yeah why would you bother someone else with a question you could easily answer yourself?

Sometimes you get an answer even faster when you ask for help

At the expense of the other person's concentration and time, which is selfish.

Almost everything you do is 'at the expense of the other person's concentration and time'.

This comment, for example.

Humans are a social species. These "interruptions" are close to the only thing we exist to do.

Unlike interrupting somebody on the street, your comment is only taking concentration and time from people who voluntarily choose to read the comments.

If your concentration is that important you can almost always ignore the person asking for your help.

Then my guilt for being rude would disrupt my concentration terribly.

I'm always happy to give directions to someone. It barely takes any time, and it makes me feel useful.

So am I! But I try to be considerate of others by looking things up myself rather than asking questions that could be easily Googled.

Thank you. That's exactly why I avoid bothering people. Sure I might take 5mn to find out on my own, but I don't think it's worth saving 2mn if I'm taking up 3mn of somebody else's time, the total time wasted increases and now I'm involving innocents.

I live in a very congested European capital and I actually do like to give advice to people from outside the city on which tram or bus they should take and from where exactly. Often times I give my advice even if not directly asked, i.e. when I overhear someone in my vicinity asking for directions. We are social creatures and thinking otherwise is the real selfish thing to do.

Sometimes you get stuck in long conversations; sometimes the other person doesn't even know the answer; sometimes the other person can't even understand the question.

Don't forget when someone very confidently gives you the answer that is completely wrong.

This is usually how I view things as a millennial. With the infinite amount of information that's available at ones fingertips it seems almost ignorant sometimes to not seek out information on your own terms instead of asking someone.

However I will say I have had to develop the skill of knowing when to stop searching my own and just ask someone

But go to a neighborhood bar in New York City or a tech Meetup or an arts event or anything else and you'll find plenty of millennials mingling with strangers.

In the subway, people are rushing to leave and get where they're going, lots of people have headphones on and those who don't are wary of scammers and muggers. There have been jokes about strangers not talking in the subway system for decades.

One of my favorite things about riding the New York subway was asking people for help (this was in 2011). I was completely unable to navigate using the maps in the stations so I had to ask for help. Riding the subway that way turned out to be remarkably easy.

There's still the Amtrak observation car, which is fantastic for striking up conversations.

One time I got seated on the Coast Starlight observation between two model train enthusiasts.

One had sold his business manufacturing extremely authentic model train cars and had gone to work for Dell, but when I met him had just left Dell to go work for the person he sold his train business to.

The other was a day laborer who saved up money to take train rides as vacations. I still remember what he said as he was disembarking: "People ask me why don't you ever get married, and I tell them, 'I am married! I'm married to the trains.'"

No that's a different experience. In the observation car you mostly sit facing the panoramic windows, observing the views. In the dining car four passengers sit together facing each other. That makes it much easier to get started talking to strangers just because the way you sit.

You can find plenty of articles online claiming that communal tables are a restaurant trend to attract millennials, so... different consultants claim the opposite about millennials and this is just an excuse.

This is because 'millenials' is such a broad age group now in their 20s-30s, and is now the largest population cohort in the US, so if you say something broad and vague it's probably true for a good chunk of people even if it's not all "millenials."

Meeting new people is fine. I was robbed while I slept by the person below me in a Couchette in Europe, so maybe shoving people together in uncharacteristically intimate situations isn't universally grand.

I don't want to meet friends while I'm eating. I've taken sleeper trains in the US with my wife, and we both didn't like the communal seating.

I won't speak for my entire generation, but I'm fairly introverted and wasn't thrilled with the dining car setup on Amtrak. I wouldn't say I was "uncomfortable", but it was sort of awkward.

My awkwardness has subsided somewhat by being more confident in my conversations, especially during awkward silence. I used to get anxiety from talking to strangers; not from the conversation itself, but the unknowns (how long will this last? is my story amusing enough for tnhe other person? is it polite to stop talking now? do I need to "wrap up" the conversation?) Now if I don't feel like talking anymore, I'm no longer worrying about whether I'm being rude, I just sit in silence and don't add anything else. Move on to your next thought or back to what you were doing and don't imagine the myriad ways the other person may be perceiving it. Once you don't let awkward silence occupy your mind, you'll find your conversations flow in and out much smoother and you have substantially reduced social anxiety.

I'm not quite a millennial, but typically don't enjoy chatting with random people on public transit like buses, trains, or airplanes.

Nothing against them personally, but particularly with airports or Amtrak stations, all the things that happen before the point I'm in my seat are often a little stressful and draining. As an introvert that means I need alone time to recharge.

Further, there's guidelines or social norms that may make one feel "trapped" in a conversation they don't want to be in. On an airline if it's bad enough to ask an attendant for a new seat because other ways of getting someone to stop have failed, that's an incredibly embarrassing and stressful situation to be in.

This isn't a scenario I encounter often, but I imagine there's also instances where someone is uncomfortably being hit on that would likewise upset them. And particularly traveling alone on an Amtrak at night, depending on circumstances, that could be a pretty scary situation for some.

So ultimately there's quite a few reasons I barely scratched the surface of why some may not enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to engage in conversation. As much as you may long for days when people would chat more openly, many may long for a day when that is no longer the default expectation.

I guess I consider myself "Oregon Trail Generation" , and I'm also a bit of a rail enthusiast, so I try to work it into my travel.

I don't think the privacy narrative makes sense. You're already traveling with some stranger in the next seat. You don't get significantly less privacy in a dining car. It probably fits within other cultural norms like smaller counter-service-only restaurants. If they're feeling tension in a dining car, they're going to have a full on panic attack in the coach!

What it does mean is that the value proposition for eating on board went down significantly. All you had to do to get the sale was offer reasonable food at fair prices. I don't need Michelin-star dining, but if you can match a basic chain diner (Applebee's or the like) with the convenience of "eat when you're hungry instead of waiting for your arrival and to find a place, and enjoy the scenery while doing so", you're a compelling value proposition.

I was livid about this when I rode the UK Great Western services recently; for 20 GBP extra between Swindon and Plymouth, first class was supposed to include a meal. Instead, you got a snack-box that looked suspiciously like the one you'd spend 7.99 USD for on Frontier Airlines. Needless to say, I packed my own meals for the rest of the trip.

On UK rail most of what you’re paying for by upgrading to first class is a guaranteed seat. I’ve never seen the first class carriages full, but I have regularly sat in luggage racks or on the floor in standard.

Is it super cheap and will save the company a lot of money but is a terrible experience? Claim millennials will love it. That's the best way to sell it shareholders and the media. If you look closely, you'll see this pattern over and over.

My company are doing this right now with a hot desk only policy. It never seems to occur to people that maybe millennials just want to be given choices, rather than have some old man telling them what they want.

Millennials love old men telling them what they want.

Yes, this is definitely what's happening with Amtrak in the article, and it's a damn shame.

The stereotype is that Americans are more prone to talking to strangers in public. Not sure if you're from the US, but in some parts of Europe starting a conversation with a random person in public would be considered at least weird.

Deutsche Bahn hasn't ordered cabin-style train wagons (little compartments for six) for the new ICE, only open floor train wagons.

(I'm sure there is correct terminology for those types, I just don't know the terms).

But will the new trains have dining cars? I remember a public backlash when they last talked about getting rid of them due to being not profitable, and am guessing things haven't changed for the better. Eg you pay 29 EUR minimum for a Hamburg-Berlin ride, compared to 9? for a bus.

I frequently commuted on the ICE (on the Netherlands end of the line) for a couple of years. Always rode in the dining car. Many times was quite empty - just me and the 1 or 2 server(s) dedicated to the dining car. I loved it but always wondered how it worked out for them financially. I often had my own 4-person dinner table with breakfast, tea and laptop spread across the table. Made for a luxurious, quiet and productive commute!

I must also say that the service, friendliness and humor of the staff on the ICE was almost always exceptional!

It's clearly not financially efficient.

They still have dining cars. They aren't profitable but seen as a value proposition of trains (no food in the bus). You also don't get randomly seated there, it's where you go to eat.

>Eg you pay 29 EUR minimum for a Hamburg-Berlin ride, compared to 9? for a bus.

Long distance bus are much cheaper, but also much less comfortable and less reliable. DB gets a lot of flak for one hour delays on the first snow, my bus was delayed 3 hours at the start of winter. In general delays seem much more frequent with the bus. The concept of connecting to a different bus also doesn't exist (probably because of unreliable travel times), meanwhile with the train I can travel from anywhere to anywhere.

I would love cheaper trains, but they are already cheaper than traveling long distance by car and much more enjoyable and reliable than long distance bus. They lose badly to cheap flights though.

> The concept of connecting to a different bus also doesn't exist (probably because of unreliable travel times), meanwhile with the train I can travel from anywhere to anywhere

Flixbus will offer you connections with multiple legs, but the transfer time will always be 3-4 hours minimum. They're well aware that usage of public highway leads to random delays due to congestion.

I have met people on the train when I used to take one from Orlando to Hollywood to visit my spouse when we were dating for different holidays. I had no idea there was even a food cart till somebody mentioned it and even then I didnt want to leave my belongings unattended. I was carrying everything I needed for the weekend.

This is just my personal experience, but as a younger-than-Millenial college student, I really enjoyed meeting strangers in the dining car. Being on a train by yourself for three days gets lonely.

As a millenial I don't feel this way at all. Reads more like an ad hoc justification than anything

You disagree that millennials and younger are much more screen focused and much less face-to-face comfortable than previous generations?

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/WkHHpZ1

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