We Got Crew Status

We just got crew status. This means the amount of the ship we can see has doubled. We can now see 3 more decks where everything is beige or gray or a shade thereof. It is fascinating. There are all sorts of doors, all over the ship that say “CREW ONLY” which is a gateway to the exposed pipes and where guys walk around with a tray full of filet mignon and fist pound each other. The whole crew lives in these 3 decks.

This is where everything happens, including where 1,000 people eat and sleep and recreate, which they do with a ton of smoking and loud rap from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. Or, if you are a cook who sleeps with 5 other people in your cabin, you go and, still in your uniform, get on the internet, or get together with 15 other cooks and zone out and watch Braveheart, too tired to take off your hat (this actually happened). When I waited tables, my apron was the symbol of rage, so I always immediately took it off. No one here does that. Serving is not an international language.

A DETAIL:
There is an underground passageway called the I-95. This is the giant hallway on the 4th deck. Off of this hallway is every appropriate officeish admin-type thing. The small difference is that everyone who works there is in uniform with epaulettes, and when you walk into payroll, everyone is in white army/navy-ish uniforms that don’t really make sense when you’ve been a secretary as long as moi. Also, you go like this “uh…” to the first two people you see and they go “go see Alma” which would make sense if you’d been there before. Then you say “who is Alma,” because that makes sense because seriously, who the shit is Alma, and they say “back and to the left” and you are in an identical room with a woman in an identical uniform who takes your card and swipes it and says “all set.” So I said, “so…now this card will open my room?” And she says: “oh no.” And I say “so will reception figure that out?” And she says: “oh no, personnel.” And this is how I came to slowly, again, learn the life lesson of “no one knows what the hell is going on.” This is general and all encompassing and has only not been true in Rudy Guiliani’s investment firm, where I temped for 2 months.

We now also have name badges. They say your name, the next line says your job, and the third line says your country of origin. Next to all of that is a tiny flag from where you’re from. Now, most people have the flag from the Philippines. [According to an unidentified cast mate, there is apparently a cultural difference vis a vis nose picking insofar as it is perfectly fine for the Filipinos on board to pick their nose because they do it in the bar and also the internet cafe. This is only upsetting because most of the waiters and cooks are Filipino. I must say, I know several Filipinos really well in my normal life who I have never witnessed do that, for the record.] If you go into the crew areas, you must wear this nametag, which is attached on the back via a magnet, a magnet so strong that if you get it by your roomkey (which is like a hotel room key credit card thing), it immediately demagnetizes it and you have to go and talk to other random people in uniforms. Because of all of this information and people’s varying degrees of the command of English, you might find yourself in an elevator like I did—4 people who all stood with their backs to the wall and inspected everyone’s badge and said nothing and frowned. I am a particular curiosity because I was the only person with no uniform on, so everyone was staring at my badge. Also you must wear your badge at all times when in the crew areas.

Upstairs, everything is theme and THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOP! or THIS IS A FRENCH RESTAURANT! or THIS IS A COMFY SMALL IRISH PUB WITH SPORTS ON TV! (even though everyone on staff is Filipino). Downstairs, everything is beige or gray or somewhere in there. Sometimes there are stainless steel doors or random tinfoil covering pipes and things. The crew hallways are very tiny, a little bigger than the aisle in an airplane, unless I’m being overdramatic (possible) and the rooms are shockingly small. It’s like people live in filing cabinets, and this is partially because their names are listed on the door on little cards that slide into a metal frame. Like…a filing cabinet. Sometimes there are 6 to a room, although those are apparently very big and we are NOT supposed to feel bad about those guys (as I was told). The two dancers who share a room didn’t seem to mind it though, even though the width of the room was the width of their bed, which was a bunk bed. In my room, the lighting is always soft, yellowish, and not bright at all, to the point that it’s almost annoying and you can’t see things. The crew rooms have florescent light bulbs, so that each bed has a curtain you can pull to shut the bed to get rid of some of the light. The rooms are unreal and tiny and the dancers are relatively happy, which seems unreal and impossible. Although one dancer said to the other “why does it smell so disgusting in here” and the other one said “I don’t know” but well…the rooms are so tiny there is only really one reason.

The branding of this ship means that everything they want to tell passengers is in a breezy “hey, we don’t care, we’re so relaxed!” type font that kinda looks like handwriting if you wrote with a paintbrush and could still do lowercase. Like one warning sign says “Please don’t throw anything overboard. (we get complaints from the fish!)” Friendly, and to the point and probably incredibly hilarious for some people. Everything is always printed on the same stationery with snazzy colored corners (like pink and teal). The great thing is the difference between those signs and the signs in the crew area, which are printed on the same stationery but usually all caps and in Ariel.

Also, the passengers love to complain and compare and contrast. I.e. “well on PRINCESS” which I think is the exact reason you switch cruise lines.