Every season I forget what the transition is like. I think I block it out to be honest. You see, if I start on a regular season, like Alaska, that’s no problem – I come on board prepared to be the only one, and I slide into an easily established routine, and I’m already adjusted to the clientele I’m going to be dealing with before I even arrive. The same general thing goes for coming on board for a Grand Voyage – you’re know already what you’re getting into, and you’re already mentally prepared for it.
The transition between the two? When it happens part-way through a contract? Horrific.
Overnight, I go from having a partner (who had proved this year to be very reliable despite a few bumps along the road), to being the only librarian on duty. This may not sound like a big deal, but it means that my workdays spin out from a standard six hours to a regular ten hours overnight. The clientele goes from being a ship-full of veteran mariner cruisers who, while insanely demanding in their own way, are well ‘trained’ in the ways of the ship and in most cases know the ins and outs so well that they can tell us how to do our job – to a lot of brand new or at the very least inexperienced cruisers who are sailing at a much much lower rate and need to be taught how absolutely everything works. Also, because these guests are sailing at a lower rate, that actually makes them more demanding. I know, it doesn’t seem like it should work that way, but it does. When you pay as much for a cruise as the World Cruisers do, you tend to just expect the best and for the most part sit back and wait for it to arrive; not so with these guys. No one is quite sure why it works that way, but it always seems to.
Yesterday I spent so much time running around that I don’t even remember three quarters of my day. I’m restocking my shelves every hour, because they are checking titles out faster than I can stock them and leaving the shelves in total disarray. The bridge instructors who are currently on board are about ten times more difficult to deal with than my previous ones and I got yelled/snapped at least three times by them yesterday for things that were nowhere near my fault.
My very favourite cruise director ever is on for a few days training the new fellow, and I was in the office chatting with him this morning:
My body is just seriously not liking the jump from six hour days…
… to eleven hour days. Yeah, totally, you get that “HEY! This isn’t what I signed up for!” thing going…
Well it is, but I block it out every year
Yup, I hear ya.
Thankfully this morning things seem to have calmed down, slowly but surely we’ll get these guys trained up.
Now if I can just manage to sleep at night…