When we had our regular start of cruise department meeting this week, there were two conspicuous empty chairs: we have no ‘Cats vocalist…nor do we have a drummer. They resigned, mid-contract, the night before a turn-around port…walked off the ship the next morning.
We won’t get replacements until the next port in Mexico.
I think I may still be in some kind of odd shock that someone would do such a thing. Would just drop their team, without a single thought to how it would affect anyone else.
I have said many times before that professionalism is not a paycheque, it’s an attitude. You can have the highest-paying gig in the world, and while I will do my best to respect you, it doesn’t automatically mean that I will consider you a professional.
Out here, actions don’t just speak louder than words, they yell over the din of the day to day. There is never a circumstance in which your actions do not affect others in your life, but when you’re working ship-side your actions don’t just achieve a ripple effect; they are intricately connected to your co-workers. Out here we are all co-dependent. That’s one of the reasons we are required to be so respectful of hierarchy out here, it – to a certain extent – can stop the damage of the butterfly effect. But that’s not the point here.
We have to be able to trust each other, at least as far as work goes. We may not always get along on a personal level (though luckily on this ship most of do), but being able to trust each other in a work environment is absolutely essential when you work in a place like this. You have to know that when you walk onto that floor, or onto the stage, that the band, the team, the cast, whoever, has your back. You have to know that your crewmates are going to be there. In ever y sense.
When someone breaks that trust, the entire department is effected, we all get struck by the hurricane caused by the butterfly wing and as a result we’re somewhat left flying blind. Something like this hits all of us, and it hits hard. It means we start the cruise slightly on the wrong foot, and we start two team members down. It’s not what they did – I’m sure they had their reasons and I’m sure those reasons were valid if only to them – it’s how they did it. 9:30pm the night before a new cruise is not the time to announce you’re leaving the next day. They didn’t even have the common courtesy to tell Amras first, they jumped I don’t know how many links in the chain of command then acted shocked when there was ugly fallout.
We’ll get through it of course, we’ll get a new pair of musos in the next port (we hope), and in the meantime everyone else pulls in and picks up the slack. Amras can drum if he has to, and there is no shortage of female vocalists onboard who can step in and cover a set if we’re asked (though I will admit, I’m a little nervous about the prospect, it’s one thing to know the book inside out – quite another to actually perform it).
But as I said once before a few seasons ago, you can have played the stages of London and sung in Carnegie Hall, you can have a resume as long as the ship and that doesn’t make you a professional; or you could be dancing for pennies and times to a violin on the street corner and be the most professional person in the world.
Sometimes things happen that just really really drive home that difference.