My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Throughout this contract, I thought about updating this blog, but day to day it didn’t feel like there was anything worth writing about. I’d work and work and work, get a day off and prowl about different towns with my friends looking for food and cocktails, stopping in shops to look around, and it didn’t seem like we were doing anything adventurous enough to write about. Now that I’ve written about the adventures, looking back, if I only write about the adventures, the best parts get left out. So here are those parts.
First of all, on this class of ship I get the best cabin I will ever get as an Assistant Cruise Director – a double bed with port holes! The Cruise Director’s cabin is the same as mine!
On other ships I get my own cabin, but I have single bed bunk beds with the top bunk folded up. I loved this cabin (even more when I decorated it and made it my own).
This is Kevin, from Canada. He was my first Cruise Director on this ship. One day my friend Jill dared Kevin and Madi, the Entertainment Director, also from Canada, to do a life jacket demonstration, but Kevin had to use Madi’s arms.
It was hilarious.
Drill
One day I got my schedule for the next day (a port day) and in the morning it said Open Deck. Kevin also had Open Deck on his schedule, and Georgie and Rob were also needed for this task. I was intrigued. I asked Kevin what this was about and he wouldn’t tell me- he just said I needed to show up. I asked if I needed to wear anything special or wear makeup – was I going to be filmed? He told me to just wear my uniform. This wasn’t going to be filmed. I tried to figure out the puzzle. Rob didn’t know what it was for. Georgie supposedly knew but was under strict orders not to tell me. I decided if it was on the open deck, a helicopter must be involved. I was incorrect.
The next morning I found myself alone on the open deck. I found Georgie who was messaging Kevin. We were actually supposed to go to the crew smoking area on deck 8. We relocated. Then I found out what we were doing. We were part of a medical drill! The medical team didn’t even know about it! Kevin told me that I was to be cruise staff and I was to pretend to be hosting a ping pong tournament. Kevin was a guest and Georgie was his young son. Kevin collapsed and Georgie freaked out. Rob hadn’t shown up so Andy, the Senior Production Manager started doing pretend CPR on Kevin. I assessed the situation and called 911. I told them that a guest had collapsed on Deck 8 forward. I told them who I was. They were a bit confused as to why a guest was in a crew area, but they transferred me to medical. I explained what happened again. The Senior Doctor stood back, observing, with a timer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other hand. Rhea, the other Doctor, ran in and started doing triage. He took over doing CPR for Andy. At one point Kevin broke character to tell him to lighten up- this was for exercise. More of the medical team showed up before we heard the announcement from the bridge calling for medical response. I was fascinated by the whole process (Kevin knew I would be so into this, which is why he put me on it), especially how serious it was even though everyone participating knew that it was for exercise. The medical team questioned Georgie about his dad. When Georgie had calmed down a bit, the Senior Doc nudged Georgie to freak out some more. The Guest Services Director came up and took Georgie away from the scene. More crew members showed up for their smoke breaks and most of them didn’t know that this was an exercise. They ended up attempting to save Kevin’s life for about 40 minutes. The did everything they could. They had a shock machine and pretended to shock him, the Senior Doctor told them what the results would have been if they had actually been doing it. In the end, Kevin didn’t make it. Rumors started to spread that the Cruise Director had died from a heart attack. For an unrelated reason, Joseph and I hosted the Princess theater that night, which perpetuated the rumors. I loved it. I love practicing all of the safety and emergency stuff because the more you know, the more you can be prepared with solutions if there were an actual emergency. I loved being able to see the process up close. My role was to call 911 and after that, I was pretty much able to hang out and watch. In a real situation, I would have done crowd control, but the Senior Doc told me I didn’t need to do that- I should leave it up to the people responding to take care of those obstacles. It was so interesting to see how quickly everyone responded to the alarms, and what happened step by step after that. Kevin said that I could be the victim in the next medical drill, but they didn’t have another one after that.
Jack
These two were with me my whole contract. I’ll get back to Joseph. Out of the three of us, Jack had been with Princess the longest. He is from Taiwan and he started out as a Magician’s Assistant and Interpreter. He then moved to working on the Cruise Director’s staff. Before the pandemic, he only worked in Asia where he didn’t need to use very much English. When ships started coming back he worked for another cruise line that went bankrupt pretty quickly, so he decided to return to Princess. This contract was his first back with Princess since the pandemic and it was his first contract in an English-speaking region. He was very nervous. Jack loved learning English phrases like ‘Genius!’ and when it was appropriate to call someone ‘buddy’. Kevin tried to teach Jack about throwing someone under the bus. A couple of days later he claimed that I had put him ‘under the track.’ We delighted in watching Jack discover the western world – he was absolutely shocked to discover that Asian people who spoke his language lived in Australia. The thing I loved about Jack was that he knew his limitations (we would have to host more events if he wasn’t able to do them) and he did absolutely everything he could to make up for them. If we needed someone to pick something up, he would be there as soon as he could. He took charge of checking on the sports equipment (which I did not want to do). As the months went by, Jack’s English improved and he hosted more and more events. Toward the end of the contract, I pulled out my “You Be the Judge” adaptation from Enchanted and told Jack that I would be interviewing him as a character. He was great- he made up a whole back story and the event was a success. He never would have been able to do that in the beginning. I was so proud of him!
George Jetson was born!
Bri found this on the internet, and I added it to my afternoon trivia – Which cartoon character is born tomorrow? It’s crazy to think that a date someone picked so far into the future was happening now. I guess in about 40 or so years, we’ll have flying cars and robot maids!
My mom came to visit 🙂
My mom always makes me feel like home and I love when she comes to follow me around on ships. On my last contract, she came for (what was supposed to be) my last two cruises, so I was able to show her everything I had developed that contract. This time she came about a month into being in service, which was closer to the beginning. For both of these contracts she came at just the right time – a time when I was struggling a bit and having my mom onboard definitely gave me a boost. This time, she had broken her leg in Mexico very badly a couple of months before the trip. We all were so pleased that she was able to heal enough to travel to the other side of the world to see me. She came onboard in a wheelchair, and by the time she left she was doing a lot of walking on her own. Because of her injury, she didn’t get off the ship in port, but that was okay- she travelled across the world more to see me than to see Australia. Ron Voyage would wheel her to my events and then I would take her to my next event, or home, depending on how much time we had. By the end, she was able to get around more and more on her own. The week that I was in quarantine, we had more time to talk to each other, even if it was on the phone. At least we were in the same time zone! Plus we were reading the same books, so we had a mini book club.
My mom and Ron Voyage were 2nd and 3rd most travelled (depending on the cruise) so they were pretty famous in their own right in addition to being ‘Kelly’s mom.’ My mom was even famous on the Coral Princess after she left. During our 28 day cruise around Australia, Joseph did a progressive trivia that was the most consistently attended event we had on the Entertainment schedule. He would do a bonus question for each quiz that involved the guests tracking one of us down to get some personal answers. His first question was “How does Kelly describe her proficiency with the Italian language?” or something like that. He didn’t tell me ahead of time, but after the first three guests had asked me various versions of this question, I had figured it out. ‘Cave Man Italian’ is my answer – I can speak Italian as well as a cave man – where food good? The next week I had mentioned to Joseph that my mom was cruising on the Regal Princess. The next thing I knew, the guests were asking me which ship my mom was on. When the cruise on the Regal ended, she started a cruise on the Sky Princess a couple of days later. Joseph tried to trick the guests by asking the same question, but this time there would be a different answer. They figured it out and I was bombarded with questions once again.
Guest Drummers
On my mom’s last cruise on the Coral, it was strongly suggested that I go watch On the Bayou, one of the production shows. There was going to be a surprise that I wouldn’t want to miss.
It was a callback to a great prank that was played. At first we couldn’t keep a drummer to save our lives. There were issues with getting Australian visas for the musicians, and we had a different drummer almost every cruise. At one point we might have even hired a guest to play the drums. One day Kevin and my friend Jill (who has a very important job that is very difficult to describe) were talking with Emily, the Business and Brand Director. They joked that Emily might need to go onstage and pretend to play the drums for one of the production shows. A few moments passed and Kevin and Jill realized that Emily thought they were serious. They took advantage of the opportunity and spent about an hour preparing Emily for her performance. They got her some black clothes, got her all the way back stage, she was handed one plastic glove for safety. When she was handed chopsticks to use as drumsticks, she figured out it was a prank. I love this story.
More fun safety stuff!
One day there was an email saying that they were going to set up the Marine Evacuation System and if anyone wanted to go down, they could. If there is an emergency and the Captain decides that the best thing to do is abandon ship, most of the guests will go into lifeboats, while most of the Crew will go down the MES (Marine Evacuation System) into life rafts. My muster station is unique, in that if the ship is at absolutely full capacity, there is a chance that up to 100 guests would go into the life rafts as well. If possible, the guests are most likely to get on the lifeboats from deck 7 and then be lowered into the water. The crew, however, fall down a chute and land in the life rafts from deck 7 to water level. On this day, I had the chance to go down the chute. In my four and a half years with Princess, this was the first opportunity I had to do this. I figured, if I’m ever in a real emergency, I’m probably going to be terrified. I wanted to do it first when there wasn’t an emergency, so if I ever had to do it in an emergency I’d have done it before and it would be one less unknown, one less thing to be scared of.
When I arrived, most of the people were there because they were required to be. We were all wearing our life jackets and warm clothing. Someone else had to go first to make sure it was set up properly. I watched as the Safety Officer threw his shoes down ahead of this guy (Joseph said that he or someone else from another ship had gone down with their shoes on and almost broke their leg – or did break their leg). The guy sat down on the edge, grabbed the bar and dropped. They asked who wanted to go next. I volunteered. I wanted to go before I got more scared watching other people, plus I had to go teach zumba. The Safety Officer told me about 3 times that I didn’t have to do this if I didn’t want to. I wanted to. They threw my shoes down, I sat on the edge and grabbed the bar. I was given the cue to go, so I swung down and released my hands.
I swished down and landed on the mattresses a couple of decks down. There are cloth-like shelves on the way down to break the fall, so I didn’t fall straight down. It was scary for about 3 seconds, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I was so glad I did it. I stuck around and watched some other people come down. Shoes, then swishing, then plop. Some people landed head first, but they didn’t seem to be hurt. I sure hope there’s something like those mattresses on the bottom if there’s ever a real emergency!
The other side of the world
One day I was in Sydney and had some time to call home (it was a lot harder to find the times when everyone was awake and available at the same time in Australia!). While we were talking this bird walked by:
I took the picture and sent it to them – this bird is right next to me! We don’t have any birds that look like that in California!
To the Rescue!
One of my favorite things about working on ships is that it’s like a small town community. A few of us were hanging out in my cabin, and we tried to open a bottle of wine, when this happened:
The cork screw broke mid cork!
What were we going to do?!
I sent out a message to our group chat: who can help with this situation?! I messaged Dusan, who had once woken me up in the middle of the night to retrieve a corkscrew that he had left in my cabin. We needed that corkscrew! This was an emergency! He said he would be right over but after about 10 minutes, we realized this promise had been a slight exaggeration. It was getting closer and closer to the time that some of us would have to go back to work! Luckily, Dan showed up with pliers.
Dan
Dan Arnett, who we called “Darnett” – (I mean, how could you not?) showed up in our lives in the most delightful way. I first met him in a crew elevator. I believe it was too early in the morning for my kindness to eclipse my dry humor, and I believe I snarkily pointed out some subtle faux pas he had made when he introduced himself. I remember him being fresh and friendly like people are when they first arrive, and I was being grumpy and I unnecessarily embarrassed him. Then after months of crew gatherings being forbidden, we had a cruise with very few guests, so they closed the Universe lounge and opened it for the crew. I joined Dan for some emoji trivia, and our team won! Later, I got covid, and by the time I was out again, Dan was in the very exclusive group chat and had befriended my favorite people. As a cadet, this was rare. I absolutely love befriending people from other departments, but it becomes very difficult when the opportunities to socialize outside of one’s cohort is limited by health and safety codes.
Bri
Bri Bagley Fortuna 4507 (as she’s saved in my phone) arrived on a day between the test cruise and our official return to service. I was so exhausted that I had planned to take as long of a nap as I possibly could, but as the person designated to stay on the ship, I was called to the office. The new ‘live character’ girl was arriving and someone needed to pick her up, take her to her cabin, made sure she went to her trainings and knew where to eat. She’d never worked on a ship before so she needed some extra coddling – she needed a friend. And, they told me, she’s kind of a huge bitch. Okay, so that’s why you’re giving her to me, I said. Don’t worry, I’ll handle her. I figured there was a 50/50 chance that they were messing with me, but I was too tired to play. I curled up on my bed with my pager, closed my eyes and waited for the call from the gangway. Instead there was a knock on my door. Kevin the Cruise Director had picked her up and dropped her at my door. The first tip I gave her about working on ships was that if you have friends, this is the best job in the world, if you don’t (which I didn’t at the time), it’s the worst (and, at that time, it kind of was for me). Little did I know that Bri would become one of my ship best friends and would be the transition from the latter to the former.
Bri became not only the girlfriend that I needed on a team of boys, but the person I most wanted to hang out with when I had some free time. This was convenient because she didn’t have safety duties (because of her role) so she could get off the ship on every port. Bri would check in with me with the friendship maintenance of asking how my day was when I was too busy to keep that on my radar. She is fun and easy and so funny that she once made Georgie throw up from laughing so hard.
Bri was my soft place to fall. She was there to help me figure out which earrings went with my dress, she listened when I needed to vent, she was the best buddy to help me flesh out my Liar’s Club stories, and she was the first person I’d call when it was time to play. She’s definitely one I’m going to keep around!
Georgie
Georgie ended up being another best friend. At our first Entertainment Department meeting, we went around the room and everyone introduced themselves. Georgie stood up and said something like, My name is Georgie, my pronouns are she or they, I’m a cast singer and I’m from the UK. I was intrigued. Georgie was cast as a male singer but is in transition to being female. I have so much admiration and respect for people who, in order to be their truest selves, have to challenge the status quo. I had a feeling that Georgie would be one of my people. One evening early on, Joseph and I joined Georgie and Vicky (another singer) for dinner and Georgie made me crack up. She has such a sharp sense of humor that calls people out on their qualities in a way that could embarrass the source of the joke, but is said with such affection that one can’t help but laugh at themselves. I so treasure having had the opportunity to watch Georgie win the hearts of so many people on the ship who initially judged her as some weird ‘other.’ I had the most respect for the people who uncomfortably asked her questions to try to figure out how to fit her into the world as they knew it, and instead ended up expanding their world to include more people.
Georgie’s birthday landed in the middle of our long crossing of the Pacific ocean, when we docked in Papeete. I tagged along with Joseph who tagged along with the cast, which was an adventure that had been planned by Georgie. We climbed through a jungle as we were chased by mosquitos in search of a waterfall. It was so uncomfortable and hard and awesome that I now compare almost every walk through nature to this first trip. Georgie tried to warn the group of the difficulty of the hike. Some people returned to the ship early. She tried to defend herself, saying, this is what I like to do when I travel, you don’t have to come along if you don’t want to. I was in. Georgie also didn’t have safety duties, so whenever I had free time during an interesting port, I relied on her to do the research – I knew she’d look for something off the beaten path. For the rest of the contract, Georgie became the one I went to when I had a day off, no plans, and no idea what to do to get the most out of that port. Not only did we end up climbing through a jungle together, we also jumped out of a plane, climbed a volcano and went in search of penguins, crocodiles and more waterfalls. When I was planning my vacation I was looking for a place near Germany and England to spend Christmas, and after some hinting, Georgie invited me home. That adventure will be covered in future blog posts.
Rob & Dusan
These two were also my buddies.
Rob Cast Manager (as he was saved in my phone) was part of the girls group. When we first started getting Deck Privileges back, Bri asked if I wanted to go to dinner with her and have a girls night. I said yes. A little bit later, she asked if Rob and Georgie could join us. I said absolutely, as long as it was still called our girls night out. We created a group chat in order to communicate our schedules for this dinner (this was on Facebook Messenger). At one point I was in Bri’s room and someone asked a question. I responded from Bri’s account on her laptop, and then said ‘I’m Kelly’. Before I knew it, everyone was saying they were Kelly, then someone changed everyone’s nickname to Kelly, so I’d get notifications saying ‘Kelly responded to Kelly…’ This group chat was such a delight that it made me giggle out loud at least once a day if not more. We expanded the chat to include some of our other favorite people, all of whom were invited to a trip we devised in Edinburgh, but the four original members were the only ones who actually made it (along with Bri’s boyfriend).
Anyway, Rob is so lovely and likable, that from the moment I met him, I wished that I could spend more time with him. He is funny and fun and just makes the day better whenever he is around.
As I’ve mentioned before, I met Dusan on the Caribbean Princess. We had friends in common, but weren’t in the same circle. One of my favorite people in the world is Jill, so when Jill said Dusan was family, I let him copy my homework for a course we both had to take. When I saw him on the elevator on one of the first days on the Coral, I was so happy to see a familiar face. I was elated when I found out that he was part of the ship’s crew rather than part of the more temporary team onboard to get the ship on its feet. The last time I saw him, Dusan worked in the Princess Theater, and I vaguely knew that he was very good at his job- I mean, he had to be in order to be on Jill’s short list. On the Coral, he would be in charge of the Explorers Lounge, the midship lounge, where we as the cruise staff would do a lot of our stuff. Having someone who knows what they’re doing makes such a difference to us. Having someone who, skill-wise, should be about two levels higher, is even better. On this old ship, everything kept breaking and Dusan could figure out how to fix most of it. He’s the kind of person who could hook up two audio lines if I needed it, figure out a way to mic eight people, when the lounge only had four microphones, and would play thematic background music before our event without being asked. When we asked for technical things which may or may not be possible, he made it happen, and then he anticipated three other things that would subtly make the event better that I didn’t even realize we needed. He was so good, that I was sure he would be snatched up and trans-shipped at any moment, which eventually, he was. So professionally, I adored him. And then personally, he is the kindest, most generous, scary looking guy I know. He wants everyone around him to feel included and to have fun. One day at lunch he told us stories about growing up in Serbia. He lived in a small village where different families would trade services rather than going to a big supermarket. He talked about butchering animals and using all of the parts. He talked about the violence that was everywhere. It was just about the opposite of life on a cruise ship that you could find. We found out he would be trans-shipped two days before it happened. My only consolation was that he was going to the ship where I had already planned on going on vacation with my family, so I’d get to see him a couple of months later. Needless to say, when he left, everything fell apart (as it often did) and it was a lot harder to put things back together without him.
Joseph
Ah, Joseph, my partner in crime. I first met Joseph in the airport where I spotted him as cruise staff due to his demeanor with strangers. From the moment we met, Joseph had my back. Joseph was a huge help as I navigated my role as the most senior member of the team while we didn’t have a Cruise Director: I tried to be both a leader and a team mate. He forgave me for interrupting all the time and he shushed me when I was out of patience and was about to say things I’d regret. We had both previously been the most administratively-apt person on our teams, so we were able to share those responsibilities. Joseph made sure that I was off for all of the ports that I requested. I absolutely love working with someone where I feel like I can’t do enough to pay back all the favors they do for me, especially when that feeling is mutual. The other thing I love about Joseph is that it was so easy to make fun of his eccentricities and he laughed right along with us. Joseph could also get caught up in the details, insist on being more correct about facts that no one else cared about, and tell stupid jokes. I’ve never met someone so irritating who I adored so much. I would love to work with him again, except I hope he gets what he wants and is able to work in places that are not high on my priority list. And once again, Joseph, I apologize for all of the times I didn’t follow the rules and created chaos in your game shows. Thank you for everything.
Vicky
Vicky was a ball of joy. I absolutely didn’t get enough time with her. Vicky is a singer from China and she is responsible for the Safari Princess (more about that below). Another one of my favorite quotes from her is when Bri asked if anyone had a luggage scale. Vicky said that she can’t explain it but her right arm knows if a bag is overweight. I said I have a luggage scale, but Vicky insisted that her right arm would probably be more accurate. Throughout this contract, when we weren’t quite sure how Jack was doing, or if he understood us, we would ask Vicky to have a chat with him in their common language. It was a huge help. The world is absolutely a better place with Vicky’s incessant happiness.
Daiana
Daiana, from Argentina, was our Senior Production Manager for the first couple of months including the Return to Service. Bringing a ship back into service is hard in itself, but this was also Dai’s first contract in this position, which is always especially hard. I loved watching this girl keep her integrity as she maneuvered managing a team, negotiating with the other managers and trying to keep everything working on a 20 year old ship that hadn’t been used very much for the last two years. I adore her and I hope I get to sail with her again.
Sophie
Although this is one of my favorite photo’s of Sophie:
She often looks better in real life.
Sophie’s silliness infused the ship with laughter and debauchery. Her social networking skills brought together so many people from different departments who wouldn’t usually cross paths. Sophie always made me laugh and I loved how she included so many cool people in whatever the day’s adventure brought us.
Napkin Man
This is Kelvin, the Entertainment Director from the UK. Luckily the crossover when he was ED and Kevin was the Cruise Director was only a couple of weeks. With me being Kelly and Karen being the new Cruise Director, there were a lot of K’s. I’d worked with Kelvin on the Golden Princess for the last couple of months before everything shut down. It was great to see Kelvin telling the same jokes he had 2 years ago. My favorites were Napkin Man (pictured above), and whenever someone said they did something, he would say, I once knew someone who [fill in the blank of whatever that person said], next day, Dead. It could be anything from I knew someone who did laundry once (next day, dead) to I knew someone who went Skydiving once (next day, dead). Before he knew it, everyone was saying it.
This is Conflict Island:
We went there a lot. It was scenic cruising, which meant it was basically a sea day, but we passed by this island. They tried to make it seem like a cool place to visit, but I’m pretty sure we went there because it is considered to be international waters, so we were able to sell liquor duty free for that cruise.
William, who you may remember from previous posts was promoted and trans-shipped. When this was first announced, I’m told, in the dressing room before a show, Vicky, who is one of my favorite people announced very confidently that Will was being trans-shipped to the Safari Princess. Where? She was asked. The Safari Princess! We hadn’t heard of the Safari Princess. Do you mean the Sapphire Princess? She turned red. But it was the best thing we had ever heard. From that point forward, the Sapphire Princess was always called the Safari Princess (on the Coral anyway). One day I was stopped in the Crew Bar by one of the Communications guys. He said he had a question for me. On the Wake Show, did I say Safari Princess instead of Sapphire? Yes I did. When guests tell me about their experiences on the Sapphire Princess, I casually correct them – we pronounce it Safari. When the Safari Princess returned to service, they posted pictures and videos on Facebook and Instagram. Our group posted comments of safari emojis with no explanation. Someone from corporate reached out to Kevin asking for an explanation – were they being heckled by the Coral Princess? Vicky’s name in our group chat is the Safari Princess. Georgie’s next contract is on the Safari Princess and I really hope she can get the name officially changed.
The day that I heard the story of the Safari Princess, I declared that I would be dressing as the Safari Princess for Halloween.
Halloween is not really celebrated in Australia. There were a couple of guests who wanted to see how the ship celebrated (as we tend to celebrate anything we are aware of), but most of the guests didn’t care. They DID care about the Melbourne Cup (which was the next day). Holidays are always overwhelming for me because we have to come up with stuff to do to celebrate, but because we only do it once a year, we never have enough time to make it good. Well this time, Joseph came to the rescue. He had been working on an event created for Halloween (that could possibly turn into a scary game show that could be used anytime, but that hadn’t happened yet). We would have what looked like a normal Halloween trivia, but it would be hijacked by someone who started out really scary:
But would turn out to be not so scary in the end. It was brilliant, and despite some overlooked details which can only be seen in hindsight for such a big project, it was one of the most well-produced, full team projects that we did. It was too bad that the costume contest had been scheduled for 45 minutes, but only lasted a couple of minutes because only a couple of people showed up in costume.
Bri hired someone to break into Joseph’s room so she could dress as an uncaffeinated Joseph on a port day.
Thanksgiving
Finally, Thanksgiving. When I saw that my contract ended on November 28, it appeared that instead of celebrating Thanksgiving at home with my family, I would just miss it, and instead I would be in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Well there were a couple of Americans onboard, and Karen didn’t want any complaints that we didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving, so she put in a Thanksgiving get together and a Thanksgiving trivia. As the only American on the Cruise staff, those would be hosted by me. I told her that Thanksgiving was about getting together with friends and family, eating a giant meal and counting our blessings. How it came about is a controversial story, and trivia didn’t seem like the best way to honor the Americans. Sure enough, no one came to the get together, and I was the only American at the trivia. The room was full. I tried to make it fun anyway – I warned the guests that they probably wouldn’t know any of the answers, but I also didn’t know most of this stuff (nor did I care). Thankfully I had a few guests come up at the end and tell me they had a great time and they learned some things.
What I’ve learned
On the Golden Princess I learned that while I got this job so that I could travel, my happiness is much more dependent on the people I live and work with, rather than the itinerary. This contract I noticed that the contracts where I have the most bliss are also the ones where I’ve struggled the most to find happiness. My first contract I was crying in the shower after the first month, sure that I’d made a huge mistake, but after I figured out that my job was to be entertaining more than it was to get everything right, and once I made friends, it was THE BEST. This time, I was in an awkward position for the first month where we had no direct supervisor. We worked so hard every day to impress someone who wasn’t there and to reassure the supervisors around them that we weren’t just lazing about without someone making sure that we did what we needed to do. There wasn’t anyone above us to say, hey, you guys have done enough today, go ahead and rest. Then we went into short cruises, which I’ve now learned, are SO HARD. We had fewer port days to rest and play and recuperate than I have ever had. I don’t think I was mentally prepared for that. I also had a boss who thrived by making things up on the spot. As a person who likes to prepare, I often felt like I was being set up for failure because I wasn’t given the resources I needed to put on a good show. I was expected to throw events together with content I was unfamiliar with (which not only takes up more of my personal time, but I also didn’t have the funny stuff honed from practice so it didn’t feel like I was doing a good job) while I had lots of things that I had practiced that were good events which were not being used. I was often scolded for things that I didn’t think was fair while the juniors, who weren’t doing nearly as much as I was, were being praised for small projects.
For the first couple of months in service we weren’t allowed to gather socially. So for the first half of my contract I was working all the time with very little rest or opportunity to make friends socially while professionally, my skills were not being fully utilized and I felt like I was being prevented from doing so many things that I am good at, meanwhile I was randomly being scolded for stupid things that were out of my control. I remembered that I used to love my job but I had no idea how to get back there. My mom came just when I really needed something that felt good onboard. When I met up with Clara in Sydney for the first time, she introduced me as someone who was so infectiously happy that I was always a joy to be around. I remembered that person, but that definitely wasn’t how I felt. I was a person who was frustrated, who complained and cried all the time.
A few days later I tested positive for covid. I was so relieved. I slept for a week. I read books and talked to my mom on the phone. When I came out, the seven day cruise was lasting longer and longer because we couldn’t get back into Brisbane (because of weather). The team was exhausted and I was fresh(er). I jumped back in with enthusiasm. After that we had longer cruises with more port days. I could socialize off the ship and rest more. As the number of positive cases went down, we could socialize even more on board. I had friends. And the more we were able to spend time together, I realized I had really good friends. I noticed that my boss wasn’t biting my head off anymore. More of my events that hadn’t been used were being put on the schedule. I also let go of my ideas of what would be best, and threw together events with the resources I had. It really helped that I wasn’t being scolded for stupid stuff, but that wasn’t really in my control. What was in my control was how I reacted to things. I practiced improvising more. I threw things together in the easiest way that took the least amount of effort, since that seemed like what I was expected to do. It sounds lazy and a little sad to say I learned to not work so hard and not expect so much of myself, but I think there is a benefit to finding a balance. In this world on ships I have a different boss every four months, which means that I have at least two (and sometimes more) different bosses with different expectations every contract. Only one of them (each contract) writes my appraisal. The expectations are always changing. With that, I set my own expectations of myself. When I was forced out of the parameters of excellence that I set for myself, I discovered other things I was good at, and I learned where I maybe didn’t need to try so hard.
I learned that my greatest asset is actually me- my banter, my ability to think on my feet, my in-the-moment adaptations as I read the room and figure out what the people in the room are up for. Does it help to have enough time to know what I’m doing? Sure. Will I choose being as prepared as I can be when that is an option? Absolutely. Will I worry about it when it isn’t? Not anymore. Well. I’ll try.
I am also going to make it a higher priority to find my friends and cultivate those friendships rather than letting them happen more naturally, or letting work completely take over my time. When I live and work in the same place 24/7 for at least six months at a time, I need to take care of myself. That means getting enough rest, finding really good friends who make me laugh, finding as much possible fun in my work, adapting to changing expectations with as little stress as possible, and being amazing at my job without sacrificing my wellbeing.
Before I let you go I want to tell you about another phenomenon that happened on this ship that rocked my world. I grew up in a family that talked more around people than to each other directly when there was negativity. The habit that I developed was to be nice to everyone, but if I had a problem with someone, I would talk about it with someone else, mostly so that I could speak freely and vent, and see if I still felt the same way after saying things out loud. I still think this is a good practice to avoid hurting people’s feelings. If the issue is big, I will (after rewriting several drafts) try to come up with the most kind, tactful, effective way of voicing my discomfort. The point is, I am very much out of the habit of unnecessarily insulting the people that I really like. This group of friends that I had on the Coral Princess adored each other and yet, took every opportunity to roast one another incessantly. I couldn’t believe the things that were said directly to their faces! The best part was that each ‘fault’ was laughed at and treasured like a delightful quirk. We are each annoying in our own way, and it felt so free to be able to talk about those things without any shame involved. I hope I can experience another group like this in the future.
About the title of this post: for the entertainment event listings we use a very old computer system that can be difficult to manipulate. You can’t just type in the event of the title the way you want it, you have to add words to something that is already set up. So we have Music Trivia: [fill in the blank] or [fill in the blank] Trivia with your Cruise Director’s Staff or [Fill in the blank] Challenge. Something could be a trivia or a Challenge, but only certain things could be called a gameshow. The person inputing these events sometimes didn’t know exactly what the event would entail, so they might put one of my events in as a trivia, and I’d be like, well, it’s not exactly a trivia. When Karen took over as Cruise Director, she began inputting the events and everything became a trivia challenge. That seemed redundant to me and Joseph so we started calling everything a trivia challenge and adding even more excessive descriptive words as often as possible.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. I think this is the longest post I’ve written.