One word. Tired. As I sit in Starbucks typing this, my body is aching. It's screaming "Help me!" My nose sniffles with the horrible cold I've caught, letting me know it's not a fan of Hawaii right now. As I try to keep my eyes awake, I wonder how I got myself here. I'm working on a cruise ship, taking pictures, and running around in a parrot costume. This past week, I've gotten maybe six hours of sleep a night, and been working on and off since six or seven in the morning. Any free time I have, I can hang out in my freezing ice cold room, sit in the smelly mass hall, or lay out up on the top deck where you can sweat your butt off.
The above is a post I started to write about three or four weeks ago, when I had some free time. Since then, not much has changed, except I'm trying to keep a positive attitude (although I often find myself failing when I'm off duty). You may be wondering why I made this blog private-well, I had many requests to write about how life is really like-and I want to. However, if I make the blog public, I could get fired for writing about situations with guests. Therefore-you are now going to get the uncensored Kristine-ha ha.
What is life truly like on a cruise ship? Well, it's kind of like High School-you have rules you have to follow, and people you always, always have to be nice to. For example, the "officers" would be the teachers in a typical school situation. The crew is divided, with those who have special privileges (me) and those who don't (my friends). Those with privileges would be like seniors in High School, who sometimes could leave school early or come late and the others would be freshmen, who can't do as much. Your job determines your privileges, and everyone thinks that our job is the "golden job". They may think so, but most guests don't really like us. They seem to think that shoving a camera in their face is the cruelest, meanest thing you could ever do. While I understand that some people don't like themselves and therefore don't want to ever see pictures of themselves, getting mad at us is not going to change who they are or what they look like!
Story time! One of our jobs is to walk around the restaurants taking pictures of people while eating. These actually sell really well, but people don't like you very much while you do it. Anyway, I went up to this one couple and started on my typical talk: "Aloha! How are you guys doing tonight?" -wait for answer "Great! Well, my name is Kristine and I'm going to be your photographer tonight. I'm just going to take a couple quick photos." -now is when they either smile or they get angry, but in this case, the lady cut me off after my name and said rudely "I never want to remember this cruise EVER again. I don't want any proof of this and I can't believe you'd even try to get my picture!" then she started on another rant, but I quickly said sorry and tried to run away. That was my first week, and I'll never forget how rude that angry lady was.
Another week, I had a couple come up and try to weasel something free out of us. I understand that they paid a lot for the cruise, but just because you have a big mouth and like to complain doesn't mean that you should always get something for free! "I really think you have to give me that picture," he said, pointing to one, "because I don't like it enough to buy it." What? Explain that logic to me again-because you don't like the picture, I have to give it to you for free? Oh my, oh my…
Doing laundry here is awful. You don't have enough time on your free time to do it, because washers are often full (there are only three in a room, and that's for about fifty to a hundred people to share) so you do it right before you go to work. When you come back, people have usually dumped your clothes. If you do it on your free time and wait for that hour, you can still come back to find that halfway through your load, some jerk dumped your wet clothes on the floor to put theirs in. Annoying!
On the other hand, I know a lot of the crew now, since I run all over the ship. Everyone seems to know me, which is really cool. I have some people I hang out with a lot, and others when I can. We all have different schedules, so sometimes you might see someone only once a week, which is really sad. My schedule changes almost everyday, but I have a friend who is a Junior Waiter (you deliver the food that the head waiter gets from their order) and she works insane hours. Any free time she has, I'm usually working then. It really stinks. But we usually all have time at night to hang out, so we stay up late just to talk.
I have to go but I will write some more later.
The above is a post I started to write about three or four weeks ago, when I had some free time. Since then, not much has changed, except I'm trying to keep a positive attitude (although I often find myself failing when I'm off duty). You may be wondering why I made this blog private-well, I had many requests to write about how life is really like-and I want to. However, if I make the blog public, I could get fired for writing about situations with guests. Therefore-you are now going to get the uncensored Kristine-ha ha.
What is life truly like on a cruise ship? Well, it's kind of like High School-you have rules you have to follow, and people you always, always have to be nice to. For example, the "officers" would be the teachers in a typical school situation. The crew is divided, with those who have special privileges (me) and those who don't (my friends). Those with privileges would be like seniors in High School, who sometimes could leave school early or come late and the others would be freshmen, who can't do as much. Your job determines your privileges, and everyone thinks that our job is the "golden job". They may think so, but most guests don't really like us. They seem to think that shoving a camera in their face is the cruelest, meanest thing you could ever do. While I understand that some people don't like themselves and therefore don't want to ever see pictures of themselves, getting mad at us is not going to change who they are or what they look like!
Story time! One of our jobs is to walk around the restaurants taking pictures of people while eating. These actually sell really well, but people don't like you very much while you do it. Anyway, I went up to this one couple and started on my typical talk: "Aloha! How are you guys doing tonight?" -wait for answer "Great! Well, my name is Kristine and I'm going to be your photographer tonight. I'm just going to take a couple quick photos." -now is when they either smile or they get angry, but in this case, the lady cut me off after my name and said rudely "I never want to remember this cruise EVER again. I don't want any proof of this and I can't believe you'd even try to get my picture!" then she started on another rant, but I quickly said sorry and tried to run away. That was my first week, and I'll never forget how rude that angry lady was.
Another week, I had a couple come up and try to weasel something free out of us. I understand that they paid a lot for the cruise, but just because you have a big mouth and like to complain doesn't mean that you should always get something for free! "I really think you have to give me that picture," he said, pointing to one, "because I don't like it enough to buy it." What? Explain that logic to me again-because you don't like the picture, I have to give it to you for free? Oh my, oh my…
Doing laundry here is awful. You don't have enough time on your free time to do it, because washers are often full (there are only three in a room, and that's for about fifty to a hundred people to share) so you do it right before you go to work. When you come back, people have usually dumped your clothes. If you do it on your free time and wait for that hour, you can still come back to find that halfway through your load, some jerk dumped your wet clothes on the floor to put theirs in. Annoying!
On the other hand, I know a lot of the crew now, since I run all over the ship. Everyone seems to know me, which is really cool. I have some people I hang out with a lot, and others when I can. We all have different schedules, so sometimes you might see someone only once a week, which is really sad. My schedule changes almost everyday, but I have a friend who is a Junior Waiter (you deliver the food that the head waiter gets from their order) and she works insane hours. Any free time she has, I'm usually working then. It really stinks. But we usually all have time at night to hang out, so we stay up late just to talk.
I have to go but I will write some more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave me a message! :)