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tashmitchviscom · 6 years ago

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AskReddit - Cruise Ship employee stories

“If I can fart in the passenger cabins, I do”

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“I worked a single 5-month contract as a musician about 10 years ago. I’m sure every company is different but here’s a few things that might be of interest:

There were a handful of crew-only stairwells that were designated smoking spots. They were peppered across the ship and almost constantly occupied by a handful of staff. The butt disposal method was a nasty ass bucket of water that some poor soul from housekeeping probably had to empty periodically.

Speaking of cigarettes, they were ridiculously cheap for us: duty free, and without the markup the passengers would buy them at. It was $2 a pack when I was working, regardless of brand. Alcohol was similarly inexpensive.

Different employees get vastly different treatment and privileges; that’s not that crazy sounding, but because everyone also lives on the ship, it gets a little weird. You have officers, staff, and crew. Crew are the lowest level employees; they sleep four to a room, and can only eat in the crew mess (which had the lowest quality food, but also really good Indian and Filipino food sometimes). Waiters, cooks, housekeepers, stage hands, and the people actually making the ship operate are all crew. Staff would sleep two to a room, and got their own nicer mess hall (although we could also eat in the crew mess). Musicians, dancers, photographers, spa workers, and some managers were staff. Officers got their own restaurant-style mess that others could only eat at by invitation, and all got their own studio apartment-style cabins. Management were all officers, as well as the literal ship’s officers, like the captain.”

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“Very common occurrence actually (especially considering the average age of people who go on cruses) there is a morgue on board every ship and they can actually get quite full during long voyages”

In reply to above ^ “Can confirm, we’ve had 10-15 people die on our ship. Due to the large amount of elderly folks that travel on cruise ships it's fairly common to have people die on board (natural causes, heart attacks, etc). As a result, just about every cruise ship has some sort of morgue that acts as a temporary hold for the deceased.”

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“I did this (being a cruise ship employee) for almost 5 years ending about 4 years ago. Here are the cliff notes.

Yes alot of people are hooking up. People that are married with kids at home are gay or have a wife/husband they married in another country on board. One of my contracts there was a outbreak of chlmydia. My now wife and I knew we were faithful because of neither of us caught it. Also it's common for a person to sign off and the SO be sleeping with someone else that night (or trying to at least)

yes people die. Yes some are due to old age but trageties do happen as well such as people going overboard. During my time on ships the non "old age type" deaths were two suicides and one twenty something year old who went overboard that we never found. Back to the old age deaths. We would bet on the really long cruises (due to average client age) how many emergency doctor calls over the PA system there would be.

yes there are cruise ship accidents. Another cruise liner hit our ship while docking in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. Same ship the following weekend with a new captain slammed into the pier shattering the pier. Side note this same ship was one stranded at sea a few years ago due to engine fires.

there are morgues and there are jails. The joke is that when the morgue fills up they start giving ice cream out to the crew. Unfortunately I've seen the jails used for people other than fighting or unruly drunks.

rescued refugees in the carribbean and the Mediterranean several times. It puts the world into perspective at times.

contracts depend on your position but can vary from 10 weeks to 9 months.

it's a melting pot of cultures living in a tiny bubble.

you see cool places, you don't sleep slot but you sure drink a lot. Yes the crew parties can be wild.”

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“As a Former Cruise ship employee of A ships entertainment division, these are my tidbits

-A lot of employees have “ship wives/husbands” even those with marriages on land. My manager had a ship wife who he shared a cabin with while he saw his wife and 4 kids every two weeks.

-Cruise ships are actually crazy clean. There’s different levels of cleanliness based on the amount of total sick guests on board. I’ve been pulled off shifts before to help sanitise the theatre under extreme conditions.

Sleeping or even going into guest cabins (that you’re not registered with) is a fireable offense. Security literally watches your every move if you’re allowed in guest areas

Ships, at least mine, do what ever they want in international waters. Example: They incinerate literally anything including batteries, theatrical moving lights, a literal pallet of brochures due to ONE typo. Waste, human or otherwise is sent into the ocean so long as it’s “organic”, sometimes treated.

As technical sailors, we all have emergency roles. We were learning the protocols behind suspicions package discovery one morning and all was well... until I learned what crew did in this case. We literally search for this package that more than likely would be a bomb. In my work area, this involves walking each row of a 1500 seat theatre and hoping not to step on this object and blow up.

In Emergencey situations, most guests get life boats, crew gets life rafts. Life rafts hold ~16, boats ~120 with mandatory sea sickness pills administered upon boarding. They don’t always work in high seas and the thing is, you’re literally sitting in other passengers butts and crotches the way you’re crammed s in there. If I’m ever a passenger, I’d opt for the raft.Large scale sympathetic puking is not my thing.”

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“The crew have their own bar. They are technically never allowed to have a BAC over 0.02, even off duty, so getting drunk can get you fired and kicked off the ship in whatever port you're in.

Guest areas and crew areas can be differentiated in that passenger areas have carpeting.

Every crew member has a safety role in case of emergency.

Shit is ridiculously clean, but there can still be a "Code Brown" where a virus breaks out.

Getting caught fucking a passenger (or even being in a passenger area without a good reason) will likely get you fired.

It's possible your crew member works triple shifts 6-7 days a week.”

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“ I've been working on ships for about 3 years. For the most part it's operationally not a whole lot different from a large hotel, except that it floats from country to country and the staff never leave for months at a time. A few notable things;

We drink the same drinks as you for a lot cheaper, and we drink a lot of them.

We are notified of who high profile guests as well as problem passengers each cruise so that we know who to keep and eye out for most.

If you ever hear ambiguous coded messages over the PA system, it means something has gone wrong and somebody below decks is scrambling to fix it. One interesting thing I've found is that British cruise lines don't use coded announcements, they will just announce a medical or fire emergency plainly. I'm on an American line now and people always seem perplexed when I tell them there are lines that do that.

There's usually a "black market" of crew selling or trading their department's services. Room stewards will clean your cabin once a week before inspection day, photographers will trade photo prints for a haircut in the spa, stuff like that.”

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“I worked on a cruise ship for a few months in the engine room and have sailed on other commercial ships as well. If you have any specific questions then please feel free to ask and I'll see what I can recall.

I worked in the engine room so I don't have any juicy passenger interactions of my own. If you think that you don't have much space in your room then you should see the crew's quarters. The crew is packed in like corn on a cob. Take that single person room you have, double the size, but now 6 people are sleeping and living in there. Sanitation is a big issue and as a result the crew's rooms are regularly inspected.

The crew has so much sex. There was a place in the main crew area with free (shitty) condoms but the STD rate is still through the roof. Well over 50%. It honestly amazes me how much sex everyone has when everyone is also sharing rooms. But most employees will be on the ship 8 months out of the year and all that pent up tension will get released one way or another.

I'd advise not eating the sushi.

You would be amazed at what people will flush down the toilet. Pool noodles, t-shirts, shoes...pretty much anything that people don't want to pack with them when they leave. Cruise ships primarily use vacuum flush systems. These are very efficient but very sensitive. A tampon or condom can take out the toilets for everyone above and below your room. Then somebody from the engine department has to start braking open black water pipes or ripping open pumps to find where your blood stained cotton has managed to stop a whole lot more fluid flow. Toilet paper only in the toilets.

When the ship pulls in to port they usually hook up a water hose to fill up on potable water from the municipal supply. Once the ship is underway (and away from the nasty port waters) they then take water from the sea and distill it to keep the capacity up until they reach the next port. It's probably a lot cleaner than the water you have at home.

The ship also needs to fuel up (bunkering) and sometimes passengers are on board while that is going on. No open flames are allowed outside while bunkering is ongoing and this becomes a problem with passengers who need a smoke. To get around this they smoke in their rooms which sets off the smoke detectors. There is also a regulation that bunkering must immediately stop if a fire alarm goes off until the hazard of a fire has passed. So somebody from the crew has to go to your room and make sure it isn't on fire. Then they call down to the engine room to report it's a false alarm. Then we can start the pumps again. On average, bunkering is usually interrupted 3 or 4 times due to this and it's annoying as hell.

EDIT: A few more things. At least the ship I was on would have crew parties and events that made things a lot of fun. It really sucks for the people who have to work the customer parties because you know all your crew friends are having a blast.

Excessive fraternization or sex with passengers is against the rules. Simply entering a passenger's room without a reason is a firing offense.

Speaking of firing, it was not in our contract for the company to pay for your return flight if you get fired in an area where you are a citizen. So let's say you were hired on the U.S. West Coast by some big cruise company and you get a ship on the East Coast (some people want to change it up a bit if they get tired of the same route). If you get fired on your ship them the return trip is on you. I can't really give too much info without saying exactly which ship/company I was with but those return flights could cost $600 to $900. The local McDonald's had some ex-cruise ship workers saving up money to get home.

One more edit: Cruise ships are trying to become more environmentally friendly. There are whale zones where they go slower to give whales more time to get out of the way. We install scrubbers in the exhaust stack to help remove excess sulfur and carbon. Companies are now also working on reducing NOx emissions through advanced engine timing technology and stack gas treatment. Instead of using harmful chemicals to clean sewage waste we are now using UV and biological systems to break it down. Lube oils around the shaft are being replaced with biodegradable versions. Pretty soon ballast water will even begin to get treated. These are all new and upcoming improvements to try to reduce the environmental impact these ships have. But they are also 1,000 foot long floating cities which must provide food prep and storage, heating, A/C, lighting, water and sewage, recreational areas, and power for thousands of people while also moving them around on a floating piece of steel. There will be an environmental impact no matter what.

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“I used to do wet and dry dock maintenance. Used to find quite a lot of drugs left behind. Passengers thought they found a clever hiding space in the cabin but we would take every inspection hatch off every cabin’s bathroom. There used to be a customs guy in Miami we called Dirty Harry, we just handed it to him. Cool guy. No: we did not use it ourselves.”

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“Former steward here. Finish your fucking food quick so I can go on break. If you're lounging at your table while were clearing other tables, we all hate you.

Also, housekeeping is all about time. When you have 2 hour to clean 5-6 rooms, short cuts happen.”

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“One thing is for sure, passengers ask the dumbest questions. We hated walking in guest areas because we would get asked dumb questions. Passengers were SHOCKED that we lived on board, once I was so annoyed one day I responded that I was a mermaid and actually jumped back in the ocean after my shift. The strange part is the person that asked apparently believed me. Another common question is "excuse me, do these stairs go up?" -- umm duh. They also go down. I think people turn their thinking caps off when on vacation. Which I guess is normal? My all time favorite question is, as soon as they step foot on the cruise: WHERE DA FOOD AT?? Ha! Never got old! Oh the memories.”

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“I worked on cruise ships as an engineer for 3 years and it was some of the best fun I've had in my life

I worked 10 hours per day every day for 4 months but the social life was enough to keep you going. My first trip was largely uneventful however as I spent my time focussed on work as I wanted to make a good impression but in my last month of that contract I met a cool Italian guy who was an absolute player and he took me under his wing.

I was/am an officer and this brought the benefits of a large cabin with double bed and windows (windows are rare for crew as they mostly have internal cabins) I realise I could use this to my advantage and went from the shy 20 year old to an absolute whore. I'm not bad looking either so that helped me a bit.

The travelling was fantastic and I travelled the world. My favourite part being the very north of Norway where in the summer the sun didn't set and there was sunlight all day long.

Alcohol (including spirits with my company) was very cheap and you would often find your self buying drinks for an entire room of people for very little cost.

I could, as an officer, order room service and there were even some crew cooking in there cabins and selling it to other hungry crew members.

All in all it's a hard lifestyle to maintain and sleep is limited if you're social and want to go ashore at the same time but in my opinion, totally worth it.”

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“I worked on a major cruise line out of a port in Florida.

Crew bar has cheap drinks, but you're technically never supposed to be drunk. You can find most crew there usually always smoking cigarettes, drinking beers and getting a little too drunk. (Not much else to do when the ship is at sea). Most crew members have families back home and a lot have girlfriends on board as well. That is just apart of ship life.

Crew members are super hard working and work weeks are 70 hours a week without a single day off for 6-8 months at a time. Most crew members rely on tips for their wages. My position was salaried for $58/a day, I was an officer on board working in the guest services office. Came out to roughly $1400 a month after taxes. No one else is taxed besides Americans on board.

The best way to describe no days off is, waking up to your alarm and every single day feels like a Monday morning (for those that actually have normal work weeks).

My position shared a bedroom with bunk beds and really small bathrooms. You could shit, shave your legs, and brush your teeth all at the same time. Depending upon your position on board determined if you had guest area privileges. I was allowed in guest areas, but after spending all day with the guests that's the last thing I wanted to do. You're always on duty and your supervisors have 24 hour access to you at all times by just ringing your phone and waking you up in your cabin. Sleep was very limited, so every off hour was spent trying to catch up.

Wifi was $5 a day for 24 hour access to limited social media apps or $10 for 100 minutes unrestricted. I spent way too much money on the shitty wifi.

Overall the people you live and work with is what makes your experience on board. Some days are worse than others but you somehow manage to get through it.”

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#covl

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