Washington State Ferries never apologized, reimbursed woman whose car was vandalized

After an investigation determined a Washington State Ferry worker was responsible for smearing food all over a passenger’s car, the passenger never received an apology from the worker or Washington State Ferries.

“There’s never, ever been an apology,” Marcy Gwiazdon tells KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Gwiazdon was the passenger who found her son’s dinner, beef stroganoff and a dessert, smeared all over her car after she’d placed it behind her wheel to try to keep it safe from her dog in the backseat.

“My dog is a master at getting into any food that’s left in the car,” says Gwiazdon.

She’d even OK’ed it with a ferry worker on the deck before heading upstairs, but that didn’t stop one of the ferry worker’s associates from taking the food and smearing it all over her car.

“When I came back downstairs, I went to open my car door. I put my hand on the handle and it was covered with beef stroganoff, and that was my son’s dinner. Then on the other side, my friend went to open her door, and the dessert I bought for my son was shoved into the handle of the passenger side car handle,” says Gwiazdon.

Since then, she says the only contact she’s had from the ferry service was a request for her to send over photos of what had been done to her car. She did, but that was the last she heard from them.

“Never any kind of apology, and that we’ll make sure this never happens again, or this is the disciplinary action we took toward the worker, or any final word as to what happened to the worker,” says Gwiazdon. “Also never any kind of reimbursement; it was a dinner,” she adds, pointing out she also had to wash her car.

As a resident on Bainbridge Island, Gwiazdon says she’s heard a lot of ferry stories and while many are good, there are also a lot of bad ones, too.

“We’ve had wonderful experiences with the helpfulness of the ferry workers, but then there are some that are swearing at you, they’re yelling at you, they’re waving at you erratically like they’re all pissed off.”

Dori infers some of these problems could be from other bad workers they can’t get rid of.

“If you cannot get fired for vandalizing a citizen’s automobile, then it’s impossible to get fired from that job. The worst of the worst can stay on that job because their union ensures that they keep their job.”

Related:
Your tax dollars at work: Ferry worker reinstated after smearing food on woman’s car