I should mention that the end of this particular cruise – not this contract just this cruise – marks the end of an era. It really and truly does.
Head Office is rolling out a major change in the way we as a fleet deal with customer feedback, or rather in how we receive it. Whereas until now we have handed out paper copies of the surveys that guests can fill out with their ratings and comments (you have heard me talk about these many times though you may not know you have) they will now be electronic. While the concept of the e-GSS does not affect me personally (I suspect my ratings will, as always, be lumped in with the coffee shop and the internet manager despite my continued begging to separate them) – it does mean one drastic change in final day operations for everyone.
The end of this cruise will be the last Crew Farewell ever.
There is part of me that breathes a sigh of relief at this honestly, because the ‘Dog and Pony Show’ (as I have always called it) does take a huge chunk of time out of my very busiest day, time that would be much better used processing returns and actually getting the last of my work done for the next cruise. But there’s another part of me that kind of is sad to see it go. Yeah, it’s cheesy, it’s ridiculous and in some ways it’s…a little bit false (no one is that cheerful! 😉 ) but it’s also – at its heart- a pretty good message. I mean it’s true really, if we can manage to hold together in this little petri dish of an environment there really is no reason why we can’t do it elsewhere.
I argue that if we took all the leaders of the world and put them on a seven day cruise the world would be a better place because one of two things would happen: they’d either learn to get along, or they’d sink the ship…
Well I did say it was cheesy.
But either way, whatever you may think of it, it’s gone. Victim to the age of computers and technology and the hope that people will want to fill out an electronic survey when they return home from their cruise and finish unpacking.
So today was the last one. Unless they decide to keep it for the World Cruise of course, which wouldn’t particularly surprise me, but for now today was my last time up on that stage waving goodbye. Strange thing, being present for the end of an era.