CRUISE LINE EMPLOYMENT – A FEW THOUGHTS

There was a time when I researched employment on cruise ships in order to find further information about working on cruise ships. I remember coming across a web site, courtesy of Google, where the owner was prepared to, at a price, sell information describing the fun and wonderful lifestyle of working on cruise ships. So much for the free web, but I carried on looking and discovered another site where there were a lot of testimonials and other little snippets about how great it is to live and work on cruise ships. Having read these fragments and after listening to friends who had friends who knew of friends that worked on cruise ships and how their fantastic and hedonistic lifestyles were described in graphic detail, I decided to give cruise ships a skip. Anyway, it is now 2008 and for one reason and another I find myself now working on a cruise ship.

Everyone asks and comments about how great it must be to work on a cruise ship, to see the world, meet new people and so on and so forth…but working on a cruise ship is not as glamorous as it sounds, unless I am just working for the wrong cruise line. Let me make one thing very, very, very clear; if you are not in the “right” job on a cruise ship, then you will work like a slave for your entire contract.

Contracts

Let us start off with this; contracts vary in length and according to profession. Basically, contracts range from three months to 9 months with 3 to 6 weeks vacations. Casino staff, restaurant, hotel and other menial/service positions generally have 9 month contracts. The officers – such as navigators, safety managers, fire fighters, in other words, the professionals – have three months on and three months off. Certain specialised departments, such as surveillance, dancers, etc have 6 month contracts. Contracts can be extended, either voluntarily or due to business requirements (staff shortages).

Vacations range from 3 to 6 weeks or if you are an officer, three months. Once again, you can request an extension to your vacation or a shorter vacation. The company does not look too favourably on you if you keep extending your vacation unless you have a very valid reason, such as getting married or being there for your new born baby, etc.

The company will provide you with paid up flight tickets for both getting home and returning as well as a contract indicating that you have employment on your return. Officers get paid an allowance while on vacation but apart from their allowance, no one is paid for their vacation. So, it is important to budget for your vacation.

Types of Jobs

The biggest employers on a cruise ship are the hotel and restaurant department. Remember, the cruise line industry is intensively customer service orientated and included in this is the constant supply of food. Cruise ships provide a seemingly endless amount of food for the guests’ pleasure and subsequently, a legion or two of restaurant staff are needed to deliver this food. On the hotel side, staff are needed to clean passenger cabins, to wash clothes, to clean, sweep and polish on a hourly basis. Yes! An hourly basis! Guests make mess wherever they go. Food is dropped, drinks spilt, sand dragged off the “tropical beaches”, water dripped from people coming in from the pool deck…you get the idea…and yes, we even have “vomit teams”, rapid response teams, dedicated to cleaning up other peoples puke. So, the ship needs to be cleaned constantly. The reason for this will be explained later on.

There are other departments; casino, photographers, cruise hosts, shore excursions, finance, engine and deck, security, bar, Food and Beverage, chefs, surveillance, port and cruise and IT.

The concessionaires and other members are; musicians, entertainers, spa, fitness instructors, dancers, gift shop, Internet

manager, tattoo artist, art auctioneers and enrichment.

Concessionaires are not hired directly by the cruise line, they are provided through various organisations which are contracted to provide services, an example would be Steiner, Steiner provide our cruise ships with staff for the spa, gift shop and fitness areas. So the beauticians working onboard, are not direct hires from the cruise line but provided by Steiner in order to fulfil contract obligations.

In my next post/entry, I will discuss onboard living and looking at working conditions...

Across the Atlantic in 7 Days

It is a bit hard to keep up a blog when working two weeks of graveyards...mind you, not having an internet card also compounds the problem somewhat. Anyway, we completed our crossing and reached our final port in Barcelona, Spain. We had a few stops on the way, Corsica, Azores, Villefranche, Civitavecchia and Livorno...it is so good to be back in Europe after the USA/Caribean run.

The down side is that the Euro is much stronger than the US$, this means, for us the crew, that we spend a lot less than what we would usually do in the States. That is the biggest benefit about working out of a USA port; Walmart, Best Buy, Noble & Barnes, GNC and a whole lot of other stores where you can get about anything you want cheap. Europe is a little different in this regard. Basic items such as toiletries are expensive compared to the States or anywhere else for that matter. Accessibility is also a problem There are no Walmarts or other such convenience stores. When you need something you have to go and look for it.

But! The best about Europe is that it is not the States! The villages, countryside and regions are rich in history, tradition, architecture and beauty. It is no wonder that Europe has such an advanced tourism industry and tourism mindset. The tourism market and infrastructure here is advanced, well established and dynamic. This is the problem which the Caribean and Central American countries face as they do not have much to offer apart from sunny skies, sandy beaches and blue, clear water. They do not have too much else to offer. Even the archeological ruins and excavaction sites in Central America/Mexico are not well presented. In this, I speak about the Mayan ruins at Belize and Guatamala, I have not yet had an opportunity to visit the ruins in Mexico.

But anyway, enough of the serious talk...we are heading on our way to Valleta, Malta, to embark passengers and from there we will make our leisurely way to Naples.

Hand in Hand with Linux and the Feisty Fawn

The big step was taken! Let me lay my cards on the table, I am not in any way a techno geek…yes, I occasionally aspire to be one but if this was an RPG game like Oblivion or Baldur’s Gate, then I would be a dual class character – barbarian/cleric or mage – but as this is real life, I am more of a dual class Jock/Techno Geek…but my experience points, skill and attribute points on the geek side are dismally low…but you get the point! So, onward we stumble!
I purchased, from the wonderful Barnes & Noble, a book by Rickford Grant, called “Ubuntu for Non – Geeks 2nd Edition”. The book came with the Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) distribution disc. I read the book through several times and the more I read, the more confident I felt about trying out the Ubuntu Linux version. I had given a lot of thought over the past two years to migrating to Linux but I never had the courage or confidence to try it until now (yes this is all part of my self - enrichment program while working on the slave galleys), the real seller for me was that the disc had the option whereby you could run Ubuntu off the hard drive or off the CD. So, that was the route that I took, I placed the CD in my trusty Gateway note book and booted up Linux Ubuntu from the CD. This was the best because I was able to straight away see the GNOME, fiddle with the layout, run through various applications and other little titbits that were on offer. After restarting into Windows mode, everything was working correctly and nothing appeared to have vanished while I was having a brief affair with Linux.
And so, from dangling my toes at the river’s edge, I decided to go the next logical step and that was to install Ubuntu on a partitioned drive. I made backup copies of everything, especially my pictures, software can always be replaced but pictures can never be replaced. From here I placed the Ubuntu CD into the drive and re-started in Linux mode and I learnt my first lesson…don’t try and install software right after you have come off nightshift and always read the installing instructions in the accompanying book thoroughly. Okay…read the instructions again, word for word and rebooted the system again…this time around, getting to the installation process was the easiest thing. The hardest thing for me was the partitioning drive section, why? Well, I have had a previous traumatic experience with disk partitioning and ended up losing 80 Gigs of mp3s. So with great trepidation and prayers, I partitioned the drive accordingly and after been told that everything is fine and dandy, continued with the installation…cue 20 minutes later…Ubuntu is installed and working!!
And my poor Windows side is still working and everything is still where I left it. Yes, I am still attached to Windows, especially Office 2007, but for now, Windows is basically my safety net in case I screw up Ubuntu royally. But they say Ubuntu is idiot proof…let’s put it to the test.

Broadening the mind at sea?

And so we have set off across the great blue Atlantic to make our way to Europe. Yes, I did not write yesterday as I have started night shifts.

But today, in an ongoing vague attempt to improve myself and to keep my mind functioning in this mind numbing industry that they call the cruise line industry, I have decided to upgrade(?) my laptop to a linux operating system. I have decided to use the Ubuntu distribution as it seems simpler to install and use. I am a wannabe geek but I just lack the patience or is it possibly the intellect? Well, lets leave that question up to the philosphers. Anyhow, for those who are vaguely interested, I will keep you updated on my happy adventures into Linux land.

The great thing about sailing to Europe is that our whole clientele changes. The majority of our guests are elderly, educated and a lot more sophisticated than the general Caribean visiting mob we get. Unfortunately, the casino takes a big hit , because not everyone is here to gamble. The Europeans, in general, do not gamble as much as the Americans. So we are in for a quiet crossing and at some stage in our sea voyage we will lose transmission of Fox News Network!! What a glorious day that will be!

Blogging and Sea sickness

That is the one thing about blogging, while you are an aspiring blogger, you have to write on a daily basis but once you are rich and famous then you can cut back on the blogging because by that stage you would be able to hire a ghost writer, or all you do is just recycle hate mail and comment on that. Well, from the look of it most bloggers write to themselves and hope in vain that someone out there will take pity on them and read their thoughts.
I have done some further research and it is highly recommended that a blogger watch what they write in case something they wrote aeons back rears its ugly head and bites them in the ass (Poor donkey). The USA laws are pretty strict about a lot of things and there have been cases where bloggers have lost their jobs, etc due to some small reference they made on their blog to their company. So, I think I will steer clear of bad mouthing my company for awhile. I will say one thing though, that our company could make a lot more money if the clowns from Miami got their act together; not only that but the crews would be much happier too and with a happier crew, so too will the guests have a much more enjoyable time.
Where are we today? Well, we are approximately 16 hours from New York. The sea is trying to scare us but by now the guests are either too tired or too drunk to care. Last night was really rough and the vomit cleaning team (yes, we have those teams) had a lot on their hands…or should I say, on the carpets, the floors, the tiles…I do sympathise with the sea sick guests, because in my navy days, it was part of the job description that you had to be seasick every fifteen minutes…and for those of you who have had the honour and privilege of serving on Warrior class Strike Craft off the South African coast line, well, you know what I am talking about.
But on cruise ships, with stabilisers and the general size of these floating hotels…there should be no real need for being ill, however, for a lot of people, motion sickness is a common thing and all those funny little anti sea sickness products out there…nope! On a cruise ship, they might offer the vague assurance that a teddy bear offers in the middle of the night, but when it comes to the real seas and working in a tight battle group formation, they don’t. Andrenaline is a good alternative.

A sailing we will go!

So! Here we are once again in fantastic Freeport! But never mind, we are shortly on our way to New York and from there we will disembark our happy tourists and send them all home, tanned, fatter, more tired and drunker than when they first came on board. In essence the cruise line industry can be considered a business of excess. On our ships you will find free food in abundance, plenty of alcohol, lots of sun and time to lie around and do nothing but, for New Yorkers…well…they don’t know how to relax and so, every waking moment for them is an epic struggle and fight in their little lives.

An example of this would be at the lunch time buffet line, here there is plenty of food, enough to feed a small, hungry country but the guest’s battle and push and shove and fight each other just to get a meal. You would think that this was their last meal on earth! Come on people! This is a buffet line, you take, you eat and you come back for more, ad nauseam…but no, they have to stack their plates high with all kinds of food and then rush off to find a table not occupied by a European guest, quietly supping his esspresso while reading, and then to rush back again for more plates of food. Quick! Quick! Winter is almost upon us! We need to stock up on our food supplies!

I have seen guests, make their way down to the casino midnight snacks table and empty the large platters into handbags, hats, etc…really folks! Have you not heard of room service? Room service is the best! No matter what time of day or night it is, you can order up food from the Bell Box and it is delivered faster than any pizza delivery…except of course during spring break or on a rough sea when everyone orders from Room Service and the poor waiters have to run up and down a heaving ship serving food to seasick or drunk guests.

I make no apologies, the American tourist is really not my favourite, but hey! I get paid in the almighty dollar…well, not so almighty now…but in some third world countries, the dollar is still king. So I have no cause to complain that much.

As for the European guests…well, there is a different kettle of fish! But more of that the closer we get to Europe.

A mouse farting into the wind

Well, as the title describes this, this is another attempt at a blogging in the seemingly endless sea of bloggers. So I have no real great expectations for this but to see where it takes me.

Right now, we are leaving Nassau, Bahamas and are on our way to the port of Freeport...yes, we are in pirate country but we missed it by a few centuries...thank goodness for that, but it seems as though time has not caught up with parts of the west and east African coast where piracy is still a good days work.

Yes, we are sailing in a huge floating palace called the Norwegian GEM...one of the newest cruise ships around...and instead of parading her where she belongs, we are roaming the small islands of the Caribean. The islands, well, "exotic destinations"...for someone from afield as Europe or somewhere in States, then yes, this could be labelled, at a stretch of the imagination as "exotic". Now, don't get me wrong, some of these islands are incredibly beautiful in terms of beaches, jungles, blue waters and reefs...but for all the beauty there is also the downside.

But enough of that, it is 01h50 in the morning and I am still trying to download some software from our incredibly reliable MTN internet connection. This company is really going all out to bleed the crew dry but that is a story for another day.