Hap Working The World

On my first day of work one of the crew members said to me, “welcome to hell.” Another said, “welcome to Prison Andrew.” (The cruise ship I’ve been working is the Prince Andrew) Yet another told me, “If you can work on this ship you can work on any cruise ship.”

Let me take that last comment and explain it a bit more:

• Antarctic Expedition ships are smaller. We have 132 guests and around 120 crew. The ship is roughly 110m (360ft) in length. Other cruise ships range between 500-5000 guests and are more like floating cities. The upshot is that a small ship means a smaller crew, and therefore fewer crew facilities like the crew gym pictured below, which is basically a wardrobe with a bench press in it (although we may use the passenger gym after 10pm).

   

  

  Then there’s the bar. In most cruise ships you will find a 24-hour bar. Our crew bar (pictured below) is open about three times per cruise, and also doubles as a storage area.

  

   

  Having said that, once per cruise we have an open bar and it always gets quite lively (I’m not even going to try and explain the photo below).

   

  

   

• No regular port landings. In most cruise ships passengers will regularly be in ports every couple of days. However, on an Antarctic Expedition ship for the five-month Antarctic season we have the same schedule: eleven days on board the ship; one day in Port Ushuaia where we unload passengers in the morning and embark the new passengers in the afternoon; and then leave again for another eleven day cruise.

   

   

• A floating prison. Given the above conditions you could imagine that, at times, the ship really can feel like a prison… but I’m an anomaly. I’m the crew member that gets off the boat most often, and this is because I’m here primarily to experience Antarctica, whereas my colleagues are here primarily to work and earn money— although, this comes at great sacrifice, as I have to give up valuable sleeping time. Most of the dining room team would not go outside for the entire eleven days until we get back to Ushuaia. I must add here that the expedition team is very accommodating about getting crew (like me) ashore when we have Antarctic landings. If our breaks coincide with landings, we can usually set foot onto the great white Continent.

   

  

   

• The dangerous Drake Passage. The 800km wide passage between Cape Horn, Chile, and the Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula in latitudes where there are no significant landmasses. This means that the Antarctic circumpolar currents which carry a huge volume of water (600 times greater than what’s in the Amazon River), squeezes through the narrow passage creating turbulent currents and giving it a notorious reputation as one of the roughest seas in the world.

   

• Seasickness. We spend four out of our eleven days of the cruise in the Drake Passage, where swells can get as large as fifteen to twenty metres, but so far I’ve only experienced ten-metre swells. A large majority of passengers get seasick and surprisingly a lot of the crew as well. It’s a regular occurrence on the Drake Passage to see waiters go out back, throw up, clean themselves up, slap a smile back on their face and then to go back out to continue serving. Fortunately I do not suffer from sea sickness, and quite enjoy the challenge of trying to carry plates and trays in the slow, swaying rock of the ship, as it is a novelty in the otherwise tedious routine. This is not to mention that usually half the passengers are seasick so it makes things a little less busy and stressful!

 Once you’ve lived the dream of working in Antarctica, what’s left?

The answer is: “Just another job.”

I’ve always liked the quote: “We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many who work without living.” Dean Charles R. Brown said that, about a hundred years ago.
I remember sitting in a café in Paraguay drinking terere and watching the young boys outside with their horse and cart sifting through the curb side rubbish and writing that I was craving work and routine after nearly 10 months of no real work. I should say, though, that I hadn’t just been sitting around playing my dreadlocks and being a hippy—I gained my Dive Master qualification and studied Spanish; travelled around Thailand with friends in our rented 4×4 navigating mountain paths, hired scooters in the north east of Malaysia, snowboarded in Argentina, and caught a ride on a cargo boat in Paraguay and camped out with the carnival folk in Concepcion to name a few; and “worked” full-time looking for employment in the Antarctic.

Now my life is a polar opposite (no pun intended). I’ve worked the past fifty days on the cruise ship without a day off, and every day I’ve worked over ten hours. Only a couple of times I’ve worked the more customary eight-hour day.

I don’t mind working long hours, but I’d prefer to be enjoying the long hours I work, which is not easy to manage in my current setting. This is no surprise when with fifteen people (as we have in the dining room team) working together for every waking moment, 10–12 hours a day without days off, working in tense & high-paced environment while suffering from lack of sleep… The job is not always going to be an enjoyable one. Because we’re together every waking hour, as well as getting everyone’s good moods we also get to experience and share the bad moods. I know I’ve had my days, and that’s only natural.

Don’t get me wrong— I enjoy the work itself, being an assistant waiter, and interacting with and serving the passengers. But it is the disrespect, the bad work environment, the more work/ less sleep lifestyle, the lack of any down- time, poor pay, being a foreigner on the ship, and the generally unhealthy lifestyle that I don’t like— that is, it’s the system, not so much the people. So for these reasons, I have handed in my letter of resignation; this is my final cruise. I have lived the dream, I can tick the box. I don’t want my dream to turn into a nightmare, and end up remembering it for the wrong reasons.

The cruise ship industry is one with a strong hierarchy. All industries have hierarchies, but on cruise ships it’s even more obvious. Officers have their separate mess room where they eat in privacy away from the crew, as well as separate uniforms, etc. When addressing officers you call them by their rank, or sir/madam. I have been told off in front of the dining room team at the menu briefing (where a selected team member presents the menu items each night) for saying in a friendly way to the Head Sommelier “thank you my good friend”, I was told by my superior “he is not your good friend, he is your head sommelier. “I mean… come on.

Another thing I’ve learnt during this job is what I call inward and outward respect. I’ll quote one of my higher authorities in a meeting with the assistant waiters: “I’m your boss, I demand respect”. Following this meeting I displayed outward respect, i.e. no matter what I was asked to do no matter how much I disagreed with it, I would reply “yes sir/madam, certainly.” But my response was hollow, it was like a Louis Vinton hand bag bought on the streets of Bangkok; it was fake. There was no inward respect; I was like a slave who respects his master as he holds the whip.

Sorry. I’m being very negative and general about my officers and authorities in a bad way. This is not really fair – the higher authorities who are like this are in a small minority, and I’ve only come across these strong personalities in the dining and galley environment, which always seems to attract strong personalities. We have a great bunch of officers; in fact, our Captain and staff captain and the other officers I have met are great, down-to-earth, turn up to the staff parties, and have a laugh and they talk to everyone on a friendly basis no matter what your position. For example, today I was serving at the lunch buffet and ask the Captain, “Good afternoon, Captain. How are you doing today?”
He comes close to me with a dead-straight face, and in his long Finnish accent whispers, “I want to jump overboard.” The Captain is classic; a dry sense of humour that I really quite enjoy.

The other side of this experience is that I have been spoken to in the dining room and galley as though I’m a worthless decaying penguin carcass that is infected with some kind of festering penguin disease. People say it’s part of the job, but for me there is no excuse for this kind of attitude. Just because I’m an assistant waiter it doesn’t give people the right to treat me like a penguin carcass and take advantage of my inferior position on the hierarchy.

I think the above is why 90% of the dining room team is Filipino. They have no choice but to put up with this abuse, as they are supporting families back home. And speaking of respect and money… Ummm… well, maybe I’ll leave this topic for my following post…!

To wrap up, in my opinion the only way to earn employees’ respect is to show respect to the employees from whom you wish to earn it. You also have to know your shit (6 star translation – you have to have the required knowledge); you have to know the job better than your employees, and be extremely hardworking. Employees have memories. We remember what bosses say
and there is nothing more deserving of disrespect than a boss that has the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ attitude. And, you must show the employees that their work is appreciated and reward them, with the best reward being, of course, genuine compliments.

Working the world has been a constant work place learning curve, seeing how things are done in different jobs. I’m taking away things that I think are useful, and which I can learn from and put into practice. So I just thought I’d share this little observation with you.

In the crew mess area the wide screen plasma TV shows Fox News each day. And each day it is a reminder to me that the past 7 years that I have been working the world and haven’t had a TV, I have been lucky. And it confirms my belief that life is a lot better with your head in the sand and not watching the news. Who can honestly say that they feel revived or happy to be a live after watching the 6 o’clock news; earthquakes, murders, wars, corrupt politicians.

Ok, I believe it is good to know that there is a world outside of your world and what is going on and what you can do to help. But how about some good news, are there any good people out there?

Well, as my Antarctic journey has unravelled over the past months I have come across many good people, and this also includes you guys my blog readers that have supported me and motivated me. I have had people willing to help me, people that haven’t even known me but have gone out of their way to help, for example Vicky who I met in Ushuaia, she worked at the local cell phone shop and was there when my newly purchased Ushuaian sim card wasn’t working. I would buy credit for it, but then somehow my credit would disappear without me making a call. After her boss was rather rude to me and unhelpful, she said “I know you’re honest, give me your cell number, I will sort this out in my own time and get back to you”. A couple of days later she had sorted it out and had me a new sim card – Cheers Vicky, will catch soon.

The other day I received an email from James, a fellow kiwi who returned back to New Zealand after 6 years of travel. He came across my blog and has been following my adventures/misadventures. He’s an editor for the Maori Law Review
back home, and has offered to edit my blog posts before I post them. You’re all probably thinking “helleyuya (the spelling of this word is a prime example, even Microsoft spell checker doesn’t know what I’m trying to spell), finally Hap’s verbal diareaha will make sense. James put it in a better way in his email

“…………While I enjoy reading your blog posts, I can’t help noticing there are the odd grammar, readability or spelling error. I’m a writer and an editor myself, and I was wondering if you’d like me to give your posts the once-over before you actually post them? I can do this for you for free, simply because I like your mission and stories so much. I think that, if you make improvements to style and readability, you’d have a great blog, and of course you would have the last say………….“

James offer came at a great time as I currently have about 5 posts on the go. I’m “in the zone” so to speak. I’m trying to write as much as I can while I’m in this environment and living it. So if the coming blog posts represent a formed verbal motion and all those funny symbols that are foreign to me like hyphens and commas are actually in the correct place, you know James has worked his Metamucil magic.

If you are interested go and check out the road tripping group that James has set-up based out of Wellington, a great initiative and he also has a great website for it. James also has a great blog with some great thoughts, a deep down to earth thinker; he has a recent post on Anxiety which I totally relate to after my Paraguay chapter, and the snippet below from a previous blog rather tickled my fancy. Go check it out, http://oxymoronism.wordpress.com/ .

“I once said to someone, you should be grateful you come from a privileged background. They rejoined with a statement that they came from a poor family; they weren’t privileged at all. What I didn’t explain at the time—as, while it was obvious to me what I meant, I was not properly rhetorical, and I had not thought out the actual reasons to be able to elaborate—was that:

1. If you come from a poor family in a rich country, you’re privileged.
   
2. If you come from a family where both parents are still together, you’re privileged.
   
3. If you come from a family that encouraged you academically, spiritually, and physically, you’re privileged.
   
4. If you have access to tertiary education, you’re privileged.
   
5. If you have more than two friends who will back you up, support you, listen to you, and forgive you when you mess up, you’re privileged.
   
6. If you have ever used a passport in your life, you’re privileged.
   
7. If you have a job that affords you ‘leisure-time,’ you’re privileged.
   

Most of the world does not have a life such as this. Most of the world is missing at least one of these privileges, and in many cases, all of them.

If you have any combination of these things, be grateful and have respect for that privilege”.

Ok folks, just thought I would let you know that there are people out there that should be on the 6 o’clock news but aren’t.

Nuthin but love Hap

On reflection, my first couple of weeks working were some of my toughest, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing (my fault, I put myself in this position), and anyone that has worked in a fast paced kitchen/dining environment will tell you it is not a learning environment. Everyone is busy, everyone is stressed and things need to get done, now! For example, “Mark, get me 2 decaf coffees”, my first thought, where do I get decaf coffee from, second, how do I make it?. In the rushed environment I was quickly shown where it was and told to pop the decaf cartridge in this slot and hit the switch – simple………..ummmm no. Two important pieces of information left out, you have to check if the machine is full of water and secondly, the switch I just turned on and then rushed away to get a saucer, well that switch doesn’t automatically switch off! J

Our work environment is a “don’t make a mistake” environment. Anyone that has started a new job knows that one thing is guaranteed, you are going to make mistakes, it’s only human to make mistakes – sometimes I think I’m more human than most. So when you are about to serve a table and your hands are filled with hot plates, your head is full of all the information you’re trying to take in, eg seat positions, who ordered what, what side to serve from, names of guests, do I need additional plates to serve this course etc, and as you’re heading to the table your told “don’t make a mistake”, it does not help. A friendly “you’re doing a good job, just remember to……” would go down a lot better.

Constantly you are being told to hurry up. I’ve learnt there is nothing more annoying than being told to go faster when you are already going as fast as you can. I can see it in me, as soon as someone compliments me “you’re doing a good job” you work faster and are happier and want to continue to please. When someone points out all the things you are doing wrong (and when you start a job there is no shortage of the things you are doing wrong) and telling you to hurry up, the only thing you want to do is find the nearest blunt object and inflict pain on them.

Oh, and if you’re going to tell someone to hurry up or complain about having to check out late, please don’t say it sitting down doing nothing. It’s a lot more effective is you say while pitching in and giving a hand.

If there are any managers out there, or if you work in a team environment, go and compliment your employees or co-workers right now, as you probably know it works wonders. And if you have a waste of skin working for you, still try it, try the good old sandwich technique, open with a compliment, then say in a nice way that the person is a waste of skin and needs to improve this this and this and then close with a compliment.

OK, that wraps up my Human Resources class on the work environment for today, please join me tomorrow for our class on workplace hierarchies. Class dismissed, haha looks like my I’m finally putting my $30,000 Human Resource Management piece of paper to use! Who do I think I am, some kind of HR expert or something! Happy working folks.

G’day folks,

I got the below email from friend BC in response to my post “what does 6 star mean”. BC is a man that always has his finger on the pulse when it comes to environmental and human rights issues, a man that if you want to know what bad things Starbucks and Mcdonalds are doing you turn to him, a man that if you want a good organisation to back you turn to, he doesn’t give you the Fox news view, he gives it to you how it is. He wrote me an email about a subject I have been meaning to write a post on for some time. Here’s BC’s email (BC mate I deleted some of the more emotive words, haha, love it mate)

And you can add to that the fact that such cruises are perhaps the most environmentally destructive practices imaginable. If there was any environmental justice they would be illegal. Consider this… we all know how environmentally damaging air travel is, so much so that some pundits suggest ours will be the last generation to which this transport option is available. Now consider that when the QE2 travels from Southampton to New York it uses 7.6 times as much carbon as the same journey by plane! Unfortunately people who buy tickets on cruise ships are basically either grossly ignorant or climate criminals. And the irony is that your ship cruises waters of the Antarctic – a frozen wonderland very much under threat from the same attitudes that breed rampant climate change. Oh well, at least your passengers get to see it. Who needs the ecosystem?

Apologies. And don’t work yourself to death there hap!

Big love,

BC

Yep BC has a very good point, there is no doubting that these cruise ships are floating islands of over consumption in every aspect. The other day I went up to the bridge and got the token photo by the steering wheel –at which I was very disappointed at the size of it, apparently size doesn’t matter- and was talking to the officer. Our ship like all the Antarctic cruise ship uses 10 tonnes of fuel a day! Yep that’s a lot of fuel.

That’s only one aspect, the amount of food that is consumed onboard, the left over food, the food that is thrown out is mind blowing, and to think that there are people starving and we are throwing out thousands of bread rolls each cruise. To think that some guests are paying over $20,000 for a suite and poor little happa is making $2.64 an hour for the 15-20 hours of overtime he does a week.

When we are in Ushuaia off loading the rubbish from our 11 day Antarctic trip really puts it in perspective how much is consumed. When you have 132 passengers drinking from 1.5 litre water bottles using single serve glass jars of jams for breakfast you can imagine it all starts adding up.

So are the Antarctic cruises all bad?

The Antarctic environmentalists say that the cruise ship benefits outweigh the negatives. Antarctic environmentalist Robert Swan said in his book pictured below that if passengers experience the wonder and pristine wilderness of Antarctica then go home and off set their carbon foot prints and become Antarctic ambassadors, then it helps the cause.

But how many passengers actually do anything about it when they get home, or is it all just about bragging rights?

On the positive side, the Antarctic cruise ships have expedition staff made up environmental experts and scientists that offer extremely informative lectures about the Antarctic ecosystem and climate change. And I have been impressed with my ship at the high standards they follow in keeping to the IAATO standards and policing the passengers actions when ashore.

Anyway, just some thoughts, I don’t know the answers, and I suppose I’m just another person exploiting the continent to complete my goal.

But let me share with you a little fact that I learnt in the climate change lecture I attended onboard the other day. You know those little stand by lights on your TV’s, laptops etc, those little ones that when you turn the TV off by the remote and the little red light stays on. Well apparently all those little stand by lights account for 8% of your electricity bill.