ship life

Promotion finally. Got my jacket with long sleeves. no more vest. I have been here for almost a year and it feels good to be recognized for all the feet killing hours I have put in. When I first came here with high hopes only to have them crushed, I was sure I wouldnt last one contract. Turns out I like it here on the Pride of America. Oh sure, there are things about the life that drive you buggy, but that is the same as any job, right? I mean, unless petting puppies and playing video games is your job, something about your job drives you crazy every once in a while. Think back to High School, this place is kinda like that. The social structure is pretty much the same. You have the pretty people, the jocks, the nerds, the misfits. It is so "The Breakfast Club". I fall into none of the groups. I sit back, do my job, and observe. It is rather amusing watching the antics of the crew. I would need a "Lost" type encyclopedia to keep track of all the storylines. Who is sleeping with whom, who is getting promotion for all the wrong reasons, watching people come and go and seeing what happens when someone leaves, and how they do back in the "real" world. I know a few of those through Facebook, and it is interesting how people who really hated it here react to being back in the world.

So I want to tell the story of my time here. I will change names to protect the guilty, but most everyone will recognize the type of people I deal with everyday. From the vapid meathead who all the new girls swoon over, to the ditzy hostesses who sleep with the vapid meatheads, the Filipino mafia, the normally quiet bartender who turns into a loudmouth, raging douch after a couple of beers, and last but certainately not the least, the passengers who make every day, every week, an adventure in itself. I am also going to attempt to use voice recognition to dictate alot of this so if there is alot of missed spelling and crazy grammar, I apologize. I will try to proofread as much as possible, but I am sure to miss something. I have always been better at talking than typing.

They say it is always best to start at the beginning.

In the spring of 2007 I was a mess. I was getting out of terrible marriage, a raging alcholic, and ready to take the easy way out. I would have done it if not for my kids. Then out of the blue, I see and ad in my local paper. "Live and work in Hawaii. All expenses paid". If I believed in a god, I might have thought he put it there and made sure I saw it. So I go to a downtown hotel and attend a job fair where about 6 people show up. I find out later that in major markets, job fairs pull in around 200-250 applicants, of which a fraction acually get hired. So far as I know, I am the only one who got hired at the Omaha job fair. But it turns out the recruiter who was at the job fair was a flake, and never turned in my application to the corporate office in Miami. When I attempted to call Miami about the status of my application, I am told they dont have one. Fuck. So they tell me to go to another job fair in Kansas City and re-apply. So I do. It is now July 2007. The new recruiter in KC listens to my story and sets me up with new hire paperwork for a waiter. I have to fill out pages and pages of paper. One set of pages is an application for a Merchant Mariner Document. This is an ID that is issued by the Coast Guard. To receive one of these MMD's you must go to a Coast Guard Regional Exam Center and submit your application. The app is 12 pages long, and you must be fingerprinted and consent to an FBI background check. For this the company flies me to Toledo Ohio. I was worried about motion sickness before, but after flying from Omaha, to Chicago, to Toledo, to Cincinatti, and back to Omaha in 20 hours, I wasnt worried anymore. Oh, and you never want to spend 4 hours in the Toledo airport, ever. I also had to go to the Sheriffs Office and get a criminal backgound printout, and to the DMV for my driving record.

Now by the time I had jumped through all those hoops it was Sept 2007. I was told my application was complete and I was just waiting for a position to open up. By December I hadnt heard anything and was starting to worry that my application had been lost again when I recieved a letter with the NCL logo on it. Thinking it was finally my call to duty, I tore open the letter. Now, there used to be three NCL ships here in Hawaii. The letter I recieved was notification that two of the ships that were here were being reassigned to the Carribean. The company was combining the crew from all three ships onto one. This one. The letter went on to inform me that I was going on "active hold". I was hired, and approved, and ready for duty, but they had no position open. I almost forgot, I also had a complete physical, including and vision and hearing test. This comes into play later.

At this time I was working at the worst white trash bar and grill, ever. I was very unhappy with my job, and was divorced and paying so much child support that I couldnt afford to live. This letter crushed me. I was so looking forward to telling my boss to fuck off and that I was going to Hawaii. Fortunately for me a new job opened up and I was able to get out of the white trash bar and grill. Things got a little better, I was happier in my job, but not so much life in general.

Flash forward to Oct 2008. I am reletively content in my work, making enough money to get by, but I still would occasionally check the status of my application and not getting much of a response. Finally in late October, around Holloween if memory serves, I call and am told that the hiring freeze is over, and that those on active hold are the first to be brought over. Oh, wait, that physical you took last year, it has expired. You need to have another. So I go, again. And guess what? In the year and a half since my last physical, I have developed high blood pressure. And I dont mean run of the mill HBP. I was clocking in at 190/120. No wonder I felt like shit most of the time. I am told that I need to have normal BP reading over a span of six weeks to be cleared for duty. I go all out. quit drinking so much, eat right, take walks with my girls. In those six weeks, I drop 6 pounds and bring the BP to 140/90. still not good enough. So I go on BP medication which brings me down to the 120/80 that the company wants. It is now Jan 2009, and I get my travel documents.

Oh wait, back up. In one of my conversations with NCL, I am told that there are no positions for waiters and was I willing to come on board as a back waiter? Absolutely, anything to get me out of here.

Feburary 13, 2009. Friday the 13th. The day my life changed. To be continued...