Tag: books

Working With The Public

               During my time working on the cruise ships, there was a story I heard many times that involved somebody asking a crew member ‘do the crew stay on board or go home at night?’. Obviously not a well thought out question considering we are usually thousands of miles from land. Anyway, the story goes that the crew member answered that ‘we get a helicopter home every evening’. Then the next day the passenger complained that the noise of the helicopters kept them awake all night.

               I am not sure if this story is true or just cruise ship folklore (along with ‘how do I know which photo is mine’ ‘it’s the one with you in it’), but it is true that we had some extraordinary guest interactions. Deaths onboard are incredibly rare, as people need travel insurance to sail so anyone ‘uninsurable’ doesn’t travel but every single cruise there is a rumour that 12 or 15 people have died. When it is pointed out that is untrue, we are always met with ‘well, you would say that wouldn’t you?’ which then fuels the gossip of a cover up further.

               A particularly fraught time is embarkation day. People have travelled since early morning and are highly stressed and exhausted. This combination led to complaints of seasickness before the ship had sailed and somebody screaming that they booked a sea view room and all they could see was the car park. Then there was a man who couldn’t work the balcony door mechanism and got stuck outside. Rather than shouting or knocking, he phoned the coastguard leading to a 90 minute delay of departure.

               One of our more useless tasks was manning the library. We had a barcode reader that was used to scan the books into a computer database. We then asked for names and cabin numbers. Trouble was, that vast numbers of the books were not in the database and the database was not linked to anything (it wasn’t even on the network) so there would have been no way to check if books were returned or stolen. It was a total charade. Anyway while playing along, we had a lot of time to fill so in 2008, my colleagues started a list of the odder guest interactions they had.

               There were a surprizing number of people who wanted a specific book but didn’t know what the book was. ‘I think it might have a red cover, or maybe blue’, ‘the one that woman was talking about on TV last week’ or ‘my husband thought it was about a family a bit like ours, do you know what he meant’. There were also very specific requests ‘I heard a story on the news about the foot sizes of the ancient Egyptians, where is your section about this’? I bet even Amazon doesn’t even have a whole section on this obscure topic.

               I am glad my colleagues kept the list, I would have forgotten these gems:

  • “Can I ask why the number 13 has only been called in bingo three times this cruise?”
  • “So you are from England, My sister in law went there once, is it possible you have met her?”
  • “Does a banana skin count as paper or plastic?”
  • “Why is it Sunday when we arrive in Victoria?”
  • “Do you have a dictionary? I don’t want to use it, just wanted to see if you have one”
  • “Will the port side and the starboard side both go under the bridge?”
  • “Why didn’t this book mention Sarah Palin?”

Of course, the vast majority of people are lovely, funny and polite but it is the others that we remember.

Next Please

               Recruitment at the semi-finished hotel has been particularly thrilling. The sheer number of odd balls that have come out of the woodwork is something to behold. Highlights include…

  • A man who sent a picture of himself posing by a flowerbed outside a terraced house as an answer to the question ‘what makes you suitable for the role’.
  • A lady describing herself as an influencer who only wanted the job if she could ‘create content’ during work time.
  • The man who answered ‘what does customer service mean to you’ with ‘I spent the last sixteen years arguing with my ex-wife, so I am used to putting people in their place’
  • The woman who ‘doesn’t use computers’ so will work for a lower wage as she ‘won’t do the computer work’.
  • Someone who started their cover letter with the phrase ‘since my most recent conviction for attacking a police officer’.

While these were the highlights, a huge number of candidates presented CVs that were badly written, incomplete or contained spelling mistakes. There were also a couple that seemed like they were entirely created by AI, people who admitted not having the right to work in the UK and others who had been fired from the company on previous occasions (in one case for stealing money from the till). The bin became very full, very quickly.

Then I invited people to interview, easily half of them didn’t respond and a load more did book an interview but didn’t actually show up, wasting hours of my time. Actually, getting to interview anyone at all felt like a rare event. Sadly, many of the interviews that happened were not too inspirational either.

  • The candidate who opened with the line ‘I will need a lot of time off as the doctor won’t let me have my gastric band until my hernia has cleared’.
  • A man who when asked ‘can you tell me a time you have made a difference’ replied with ‘no, I don’t really ever make a difference’.
  • Someone who left their last job because they were not allowed to take the entire school summer holiday as annual leave.
  • A lady who spent the last eight years doing product campaigns for a supermarket, I asked her to tell me about one of them, she said she couldn’t remember any.
  • A man who arrived with a lot of make up and as he began to sweat, a huge tattoo across his entire face was revealed, including a revolver and skulls.

Our recruitment tactics evolved into going to other hotels and giving business cards to anyone who seemed able to carry a tray without dropping it or bursting into tears when a customer asks where the toilets are, so we gradually started to put a team together. Now we just need a functioning hotel for them to work in…