A few weeks ago there was a great article on Linked-in “Why Former Cruise Ship Employees Make the Best Employment Candidates” by Sean Sassoon with Princess Cruise lines. As a former cruise ship employee I heartily agree! He talked in generalities about attributes like team work and crisis management. I wanted to provide a couple of entertaining stories that illustrate his points. But first, let me set the stage.
Background
I worked on the Yorktown Clipper with Clipper Cruise Lines for one year as a stewardess 1990-1991. This was more of a boutique cruise line not the massive ships you’re probably imagining. We had 138 passengers and 35 crew members. The ship had no casino, disco or swimming pool. There was one dining room and a lounge for cocktails. A naturalist was on board to give lectures on the nature, culture and environment. We docked in major cities like the other larger ships but we would also anchor off an uninhabited island so the passengers could snorkel or cruise a river in Panama or Venezuela to visit tribes of indigenous people.
Stewardesses rotated into various different positions for a week at a time. We cleaned the rooms, served the meals, did the laundry and worked in the galley. We helped to load the stores (all the food and supplies) and clean the galley, dining room and lounge. A typical day was 14-16 hours of physical labor. We received one day off every set of seven days. I don’t remember any sick days.
Team work, crisis management, stress management, innovative: these are a few of the attributes mentioned in the article. Here are a few of my stories.
48 Hours of Laundry Service
One girl at a time would rotate into laundry. Our responsibilities involved washing and ironing the table linens after each meal, the towels after rooms were cleaned, the sheets on sheet-change day and the bar rags used for cleaning.
Our crisis occurred when a lazy and inept girl was assigned to the laundry and she fell so far behind there were no towels for the rooms and no breakfast linens for the next day. This was discovered one evening after dinner service. My boss assigned me and another girl (Connie) to 24-hour laundry for two days. We were each on 4-6 hour shifts. We’d work our shift and wake the other up to take the next shift until we caught up.Work. Sleep. Work. Sleep. Two days.
Connie and I were hard workers but also experts at the project management of the laundry service. The key was to keep all three machines working at the same time (iron, washer and dryer) and to pack every nook and cranny of the washer with as much as possible. Most girls would only fit 5-6 bags of laundry into the washer. If you took a few extra minutes, you could find the empty corners and fit another 2-3 bags! This was a huge time saver.
I was such a skilled project manager of the laundry that I was able to finish the morning work creating a large enough break in the afternoon to take a passenger excursion on a helicopter landing on a glacier two different times. Priceless!
And the wall came crashing down.
Two girls plus one deckhand would work in the galley to assist the chefs with some basic food preparation but our primary job was to wash all dishes. This included glass, dinner and silverware from passengers and crew as well as all pots, pans and utensils used to prepare the meals. Three of us worked the dish washing line. The first person emptied the bus tubs, the second person loaded the racks and the third person removed the clean dishes from the racks. We all helped to run the dishes back to where they were stored all over the galley. At the wall where the third person worked were shelves that held cereal bowls, side plates and casserole dishes.
Our crisis occurred one night when we were in high seas. The ship was being tossed around and half the passengers were sick in their rooms. We were getting ready for dinner service. I was in the second position so the wall of china was at the end of the line to my left. The ship listed so far to the right it felt like we might tip over. I remember this moment like it was in slow motion. As the ship listed we started moving to the right but looking to the left at the shelves…cereal bowls… crash…casserole dishes…crash…side plates…crash! The floor of our entire line was covered with broken dishes.
A few of the deckhands immediately ran and found some remnant carpet squares for us to stand on over the breakage. They started sweeping up while someone else ran to the stores to get more side plates from storage. We were serving a hot appetizer so we needed to run the plates through the dish washer so the hot food was served on a hot plate.
It was hilarious! No one complained at all. We just kept working and cleaning up and the passengers had no idea.
This was one of the most memorable years of my life. Physically the hardest work I’ve ever done in exchange for travel. In one year I traveled to more places than most people will in their life time: Alaska, Victoria, Vancouver, San Juan Islands, many towns in Washington and Oregon, San Francisco, Napa, San Diego, Mexico (Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, uncharted islands), Costa Rica, Panama, Isla Margarita, Curacao, Bonaire, Trinidad, Tobago, Venezuela up the Orinoco River. Serve from the left with the left hand, clear from the right with the right hand, and the table should be ‘crumbed’ (crumbs delicately scraped off the table) before dessert arrives. I learned about gourmet food and wine, which silverware goes with each course and I have a full library of napkin folds!
Cruise ship employees have many desirable skills and even more crazy stories!
Note: the picture was taken off the coast of one of those uninhabited Mexican islands. I am wearing the uniform from serving breakfast and lunch.
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