Thursday, December 1, 2011

Rock N' Roll


Ay! I can’t believe how long it has been. There are not enough minutes in the day, and if there were I would probably spend all of them sleeping anyway. It’s so hard to balance all of the things I have to do. I need to sleep but I need to have fun and I need to have fun but I need to do my laundry and I need to do my laundry but I’m in Jamaica/Cozumel/Belize/Ft. Lauderdale right now and need to get off the ship.

So far I’ve managed to get off the ship twice, once in Ft. Lauderdale and then this week in Cococay, Royal Caribbean’s private island. I’m working breakfast this week so I should be able to get off in the Bahamas! The travel aspect hasn’t been that great, so really the best part of this experience has been meeting so many different people, including passengers and crew members. I served the Dodgers coach one night! And all of the guests are really interested in talking to me and giving me advice. I had some guests last week teach me how to open wine.

So this cruise is a little different. The whole ship has been chartered for ZZ Top and other bands. So we have a really interesting crowd right now. Everything else is different, too. Normally we have two scheduled seatings at 6:00 and 8:30 and it is assigned seating. For this cruise we have two seatings but they are at 5:30 and 7:00 and there is no assigned seating. So we have a different section, waiter, and passengers every night. The plus side is that every passenger prepaid their tips so we are guaranteed money!  The thing is, we all automatically get paid according to our capacity of passengers we can have in our section which is based on our rating. At the end of every cruise the passengers fill out an evaluation rating you from Poor- Excellent. My ratings have all been excellent so I was getting more guests, but then I had a bad week. I got assigned to a waiter that is old and cranky. He was rude to the passengers and didn’t even try to talk to them. He was also rude to me in front of the guests and they didn’t appreciate that. I made sure to talk to the guests, because that’s how you get your money. Sure enough, end of the cruise 6 of the guests paid me and not my waiter. It felt pretty good. However,  I wasn’t aware until this week that you and your waiter get the same rating. So I got two Poors and one Fair. Just in time for the prepay cruise. Ay.

I’ve been working on my Spanish a lot! I have a guy from Peru who has been helping me.

Alright, I want to write more but I need to go to sleep and I want to get this posted tonight. Thank you all for reading! I appreciate any comments and if you have any questions or anything you would like me to write about, let me know. I know I tend to talk about things like ratings and prepay and stuff like that like everyone knows what it is! So you can leave comments here on the blog or if you are reading it through Facebook you can comment there and I will make sure to read them. Give me some ideas to talk about so I don’t just ramble on. 

5 comments:

  1. Hey Cassie! I love your blog! Whatever you do, don't stop. I went through a somewhat similar process myself and am joinoing the Granduer of the Seas in the first week of January. Any posts you could do on 'ship life' would be great. Difference between crew, staff, and officers, if there is one? dDifferent dining rooms for different levels? How many levels of stripes are there and what do they mean? Who can do what in the guest areas? Stuff like that. Thanks!

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  2. You blog is very interesting...although I am sure ship life is not as glamorous as we think it is.

    I love to cruise and having crew onboard that enjoy what they do makes the overall experience even better

    Which ship are you on?
    How many hours a day do you work?
    What is a typical day, week for you?

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  3. Hi Cassie. I was on your first cruise. Rosa, Pumpkin and yur first dining room shift. love your blog. Write about the crew.

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  4. I was guest on the ZZ Top cruise, it was a great cruise and I really loved it.

    Can you please go over how the ratings affect your pay once again? I didn't quite understand that. Was it your pay is based on how many guests you have, and that is based on your passenger ratings?

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  5. Very entertaining I am considering a job with Carnival as chief Engineer so to get an nsight to the lives of some fo the other crew is very intereting Thankyou Cassie

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My name is Cassie. This is my blog. It is about working on a cruise ship. You can read it if you want.