Day 16: Bar Harbor, ME (again) and QnA

Oct 26, 2011 23:05

Ok, so I've been hit up with a good chunk of questions since I started this crazy job and even more since I started writing about it. Since I didn't do much in Bar Harbor today except find a little diner off the beaten path and have some fried scallops, coffee, and killer wifi there isn't much to write about. That added to the fact that I was off at 10 tonight and don't work again tomorrow until 1makes this the perfect opportunity to answer some of the questions I've been asked but haven't gotten around to addressing on here. So here we go, round one of cruise life QnA.

"What is your role? What exactly do you do?"

I work in the Guest Services department and my official title is "Info Host". Although I'm often referred to as an "Info Hostess" because masculine and feminine job titles don't translate well. On a lot of forms where we need to put our name the header now says "Info Host/ess" with the / drawn in by me in pen. Contrary to popular believe, I am in fact not a lady.

I work at the ship's reception desk normally with a team of 3 others although we can have as many as 8 on during embarkation days. Our primary role is to answer absolutely any question that our guests come to us with.

The situations/question we get the most often are:

- My key doesn't work (I can't wait until a new technology replaces magnetic room cards)

- Where am I?

- Do you speak English?

- Where is X?

- How do I get on the internet?

- My internet isn't working, can you help me?

- Why are you so handsome and charming?

- I lost X, has it been turned in

- I want to complain X. (With X being ANYTHING you can possibly imagine, I'll make a point to mark down the more memorable ones.)

- Room service orders

- Items for rooms ie. More pillows, towels, blankets, ice etc…

- Maintenance requests

- Do you know everything there is to know about this small random town you've never been to?

- Why does it smell so bad in Saint John?

Beyond that I've been given the task of spell checking, aka fixing the english, on every single comment that gets entered into our property management system. Every. Single. One. This means I read through broken English and try my best to figure out exactly what was trying to be said and make it sound as normal and professional as possible. The Ukrainians are def the worst for this one.

"What is the ratio of English speaking passengers to non English speaking passengers?"

Despite the fact that only a tiny percentage of the staff's first language is English the vast majority of our guests speak English as a first language. Since I've been onboard I'd guess it's been 70-80%.

"Do you have to pay for your beers at the crew bar?"

Yes. Mind you they're only a dollar so they might as well be free. :)

"Is that hallway from the shinning?"

When I posted a picture of the hallway leading to my cabin my dear aunt Linda asked me this question. The answer? Yes. Yes it is.

"Is the coffee on the ship as bad as it is on all the other cruise lines I've been on?"

The coffee we get served with breakfast is the worst coffee I've ever tasted. Ever. That being said the "American coffee" (if you just ask for coffee you get an expresso in a tiny cup) we can get in the crew bar is really good. I love going in there when I have break in the late afternoon for a cup or too while I read my book. As far as the guest coffee goes I haven't tasted it but I haven't heard great things. I think it's all a ploy to get you to buy the fancy coffees the ships offer.

"What's it like living on the water? Seasickness?"

I've had zero symptoms of seasickness although a few times I've felt like my body was rocking even when I wasn't moving at all. It's a strange feeling but it passes. After a rough time at sea getting on land feels super strange. In fact I've caught myself taking a few stagger steps before regaining my proper balance. In the end though for the amount of people that are onboard we only ever see a small percentage of them at the desk asking for sea sick pills. The majority of people are perfectly fine onboard.

"What's the food like?"

Crap. Staff food is far from exciting and typically bland. On top of that it's hard to get enough of a balanced diet due to how often we're served the same or identical things. I've never eaten so many carbs in my whole life. As a result I picked up a multi vitamin, now I'm complete from A to Zinc. The only picture I'm attaching today is my favourite thing I've seen for dinner since coming on board. There's always a "Potato of the Day" which ranges from mashed to a variety of ways to fry up or boil potatoes. I think the picture speaks for itself.

So that's it for the first QnA blog post. Keep the questions coming in and when I have a block of them again I'll do another post like this. I'm also going to work on collecting some good ridiculous guest stories as well as crew stories. In a recent post you can look forward to "Anatolio and the Maple Syrup".

Other than that I just wanted to let you all know that although I may not respond to all your comments and emails they all mean a great deal to me. When I show up in a foreign town and find some hobo cafe to get my emails seeing your names in my inbox always brings a smile to my face. Every single time.

Thanks for reading, much more to come. :)

ps. Have you heard Coldplay's new album? It's killer.

pps. Craig try not to loose your new phone… again.