Behind the scenes of working on a cruise ship, Part 2

Last week I started this 3-part series on what it’s really like to work on cruise ships. Check out part 1 here.  Since everyone assumes there is nothing but great things to this kind of job, I started off with the things to love about working on ships.

 This week, though, I am going to go through the things to Hate about working on cruise ships. This will surely remove those rose coloured glasses and show you this job is not #glamorous, as most “dream jobs” aren’t. Every job has good and bad parts so you need to decide what makes doing the work worth it for you.

Things to HATE about working on cruise ships:

The commute to work

· Yes, as fantastic as it is, the downside is that you are always AT work and can be located when needed in your off time.

Management

·I know this is true for most jobs, but good lord, managers on ships seem to have an unusually high percentage of crappy managers. They work their way up from the bottom, then with no management training become managers. It seems all the crap their managers gave them when they were on the bottom working up, they now feel the need to repeat that pattern to make sure everyone feels that pain they did, and the cycle continues. I did have a few good managers, but few and far between.

The hours

· This is not like any other job you will ever have. For most positions you sign a 6-month contract. Even though all positions are different, they all have one thing in common…you work A LOT. As a photographer, there was only one ship I worked on that I had one day a week where I only worked 6 hours. Depending on the day, on average though I worked anywhere from 8-18 hours a day. And no, there is NO overtime. The last thing you want to do is work out how much you are working to how much you are making…it will make you cry. Not only are you working long hours, but you work 7 days a week, there are no days off.

· You don’t always have time off while in ports. Depending on your job you may rarely have time off in ports, plus each department has “in-port manning”. This is where a certain number of crew members have to be on the ship in case an emergency happens. You will get put on the rotation of your department, and if you are the low man, you will be put on it during the “good” ports.

The Pay

· So as you can imagine, you are not going to be rich working on cruise ships, until you get into higher specific positions, but you won’t usually get these without putting in years of working at the low wages. It just depends on what you are wanting out of this.

· Budgeting your money is something that you should know how to do to get you through (I was not very good at this! LOL)

The head office

· Now, I have had wonderful experiences with people who work in the land offices, but when they are bad, they are very bad. Since they pretty much determine your life for 6 month chunks, they have a lot of “power”. I’ve dealt with ones who have god complexes who do not take into consideration your situation or what it is like to work on a cruise ship and just ‘play” with your life without any consequences.

Romantic relationships

· As much as this was a love list thing, it is also on the hate list because when you contract ends, getting on the same ship together again is often extremely difficult, which then results in a long distance relationship, if it survives that. I have also found that most ship relationships often don’t pan out “on land”.

Accommodations

· Unless you are an officer higher up on the food chain, you will be sharing a room with someone else. You don’t get to choose who this is but it will be within your department or similar, and will be the same sex rooming together. If they snore or you don’t get on, you are mostly out of luck unless you can convince someone to change rooms with you.

· You will also be in a small cabin with a bunk bed (this never bothered me as we were rarely in our rooms). Lower bunks are coveted and will usually only be available when your existing roommate’s contract ends and you can claim the bottom bunk before your new roommate arrives.

Uniforms

· As much as it’s great not having to worry about what to wear to work, they are usually not comfortable, they never fit right and are not very flattering. Depending on the ship and your manager, you could wear some of your own clothes, which does make things a lot better.

· You don’t always get a say in what you wear though. I worked on one ship where the head purser (hotel director) decided that no women working on that ship would be allowed to wear pants, only skirts. Well the amount of money the women had to spend of our own money to buy nylons ALL THE TIME, since you know how long they last, was completely unfair. Bare legs were not allowed.

Drills

· Every embarkation day and then various crew drills during certain cruises and then coast guard drills on occasions, makes you happy for the end of your contract so you don’t have to do them for awhile. I understand and am happy to know what to do in an emergency, it just becomes tedious at times.

The food

· People who don’t work on ships think we eat like a person taking a cruise. Well, we usually don’t. We have messes in the crew areas where we eat that are only open at specific times for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is not great food, you usually have to read what it is before you eat it…I stuck to french fries and the basics when eating here. Depending on the status of your position, you are able to eat in some passenger areas, like the 24 hr. buffet, pizza parlours, hamburger bars etc.

The thing that most people don’t realize is that the all the food is the same every single week in passenger areas. The menus do not change cruise to cruise since the people change so it gets terribly monotonous. Yes, I did live on pizza for a lot of my time on ships, and was totally fine with that. 😉 In main ports though, you will usually see crew members heading to the grocery stores to have a stock of snacks and basic foods for their cabin (even though we were technically not allowed food in our cabins).

Although there are more things on my list to hate than to love, I still worked on cruise ships for 4 years. The good things really were great and it is just so easy to be able to come back for another contract. I still know people who have worked on ships for 20+ years and they still love it (mostly 😉 )

In the final instalment of this series next week, I will go through what you need to know before you sign up to work on a cruise ship. Since you will be uprooting your life, you need to know what you are getting into and tricks to surviving.