So you have packed your bags, left your life at home behind, what should you expect?! Hopefully you already have an idea of what happens from the interview process, but that will have a lot of the marketing teams input. Here is my personal experience.
First Day
Unlike you, reading this, I had no idea what to expect. I had my bags packed and on the way to the Birmingham (UK) airport, heading towards Miami (USA). You get to select your “home airport” before you join, so pick the closest one to you. This is the airport you fly in and out from. After a very long flight I landed, immigration US side was a breeze with my newly issued C1D visa. From there I made my way to the hotel Royal Caribbean had assigned to me. The start is early, like 0630hrs early so I opted to have a beer and get my head down for the night.
You fly economy, with up to two checked bags. So don’t expect to be flown business!
In the morning, I would recommend wearing smart jeans and a shirt or polo. To be honest, you can be a little bit more casual. But this was my first day and I didn’t want to look out of place. Most other people were wearing their uniform and some were in shorts / T-shirts. It really was a bit of a mix. Everyone met in the lobby of the hotel, it was easy to identify your group of people, and waited for a minibus to pick us up. You are left to pretty much figure this all out by yourself as I was given very little instructions of what to expect! For most people this wasn’t their first contract so either knew people or had a pretty good idea what was going on. Be confident, and start talkin with people!
After the minibus drops you off at the Ports Terminal, you will be around hundreds of people! A mixture of staff who work at the port, cruise ship workers and guests. You will be pointed to line up outside a building where you will be stood for what feels like hours. Once you get inside, you will be issued your ID card and allowed to enter the ship.
Well done! You are now officially onboard; now this is where the fun really starts!
Once you enter the ship, you will first meet security who will scan you in, tag your bags and they will then call someone from your department who will come meet you. You leave your bags at security and they get delivered to your room. My whole team knew they were expecting a new hire and were likely dreading me being on the team. New hires are very much a mixed bag, as no one knows how good they are, will need to be shown everything and may not last the week out. Luckily the IT Team was pretty small (6 Techs, 1 IT Officer, 1 Assistant Manager and 1 Manager) so someone came down within a few minutes to collect me.
My new IT buddy took me to my room and then took me to the IT Office. From here I got to meet the rest of the team and the IT Manager took me to his office for an introduction. Now, I must mention here that a British person working at the lowest IT level was rather rare, I didn’t know this at the time but it did make for a very interesting chat with my new manager. Essentially he asked me a few questions about my technical skills and education. He was a nice enough guy, and left me with the message “Your biggest problem onboard is going to be your ego”. At the time I had no idea what he meant, I thought I made a good impression. It took a barely a few weeks, but he turned out to be right.
From here my IT “buddy” helped me log in and showed me around the systems. Think about your typical service desk systems but there was three to look after:
- HotSOS – Where 95% of basic requests went to (think “Room 1234’s TV isn’t working). These requests normally incredibly basic and I hated doing them as I spent more time walking just to replace a HDMI cable. These tickets were normally low priority
- iSupport – This was like your traditional Support Desk, internal IT problems were logged here.
- GuestLog – Highest priority guest issues went here which were raised by Guest services. The tickets were the same as HotSOS tickets but were reported on by the powers, and needed to be resolved within the hour.
After that quick tour, I went on another trip go go and get a uniform. I was taken down a series of corridors and staircases, some passageways were blocked off due to the weekly safety checks, we had to find an alternative route. At this point, I had absolutely no idea how I would find my way around the ship my by myself. We eventually got to the crew dress shop. There was no niceties here, it was one poor guy trying to make adjustments to uniforms and dealing with the new hires trying to get some clothing. I was told to come back in a few hours, so we left.
Back in the IT Office, I wasn’t really much help, I was trying to learn what to do, but it was turn around day (the day where guests leave, and new ones come onboard) were really busy, and no one wanted to really look after me. So I was told to go to my room for a little bit as I didn’t have a uniform.
Now, I have absolutely no idea how to get back to my room, these ships are massive, filled full of small corridors, staircases and doors which look like you shouldn’t be going through them. I made my way back to the i95, which is the “road” which goes from the back to the front of the ship. It’s crew only, so you may not know it even exists if you are a passenger! On this road, there is a noticeboard showing all the room numbers and where they are located. After being stood there for about five minutes, trying to decipher the layout, someone I met while queuing for my ID asked how I was doing! He found my room within a few seconds, showed me how to get there and then said have you eaten? At this point, I was starving, and didn’t even know where to get food from, so I took him up on the offer!
From there, he took me through to the crew canteen, and we got some food. I will make another post about the food onboard as I expect many questions about it! Long story short, it’s OK. We then went to the crew smoking / bar area. Now I knew the most important things: where to sleep, eat and grab a beer! Things were starting to look up. As I was still in normal clothing my new friend gave me the single best piece of advice of the day, take your name badge off and be a guest for a few hours. No one knows who you are, go have fun. And that’s exactly what I did, I walked into the guest areas, removed my tag and walked around! You have to remember, I had never stepped foot on a cruise ship before so everything was new!
After an hour of walking around the ship, I headed back to pick up my uniform (which involved asking far too many people for directions!) and then back to my room to get changed. It is now about 1700hrs, and the ship is just about to leave dock. I find the IT office, and await further instructions. Those instructions were too attend mandatory training (not IT but general ship training) in the morning and to go over the IT Rota to understand where when I was expected to work. That was it, my first day!
I went back to my room to get changed (I wasn’t yet climatised to the Caribbean from England yet!) to put some shorts / t-shirt back on. I headed back over to the crew mess, to get some food, which was much busier now, found an empty seat and ate by myself. It was loud, busy and pretty overwhelming to be honest, everything and everyone was new. I was certainly outside my comfort zone here, and was the first time I felt rather alone while a board. I quickly finished my food and headed to the bar, for a beer and smoke. This place was also rather empty, with a few people sat by themselves. Most people looked tired, and I didn’t want to bother them, there was one person, who looked a little happier so I walked over and introduced myself with the ruse of asking for a lighter, so I could bail easily if things went south. This girl looked up, and said “New hire?” in which I replied “Yep, how do you know?” her reply was “You look like a lost little puppy, do feel free to take a seat”. From here we started talking and she offered to take me around the ship and go see one of the shows! I was rather nervous, mainly because I was told not to roam around guest area’s without my formal uniform on, but she convinced me I would be fine.
After this ship wide tour, I was feeling much more comfortable and we headed back to the bar. She mentioned that her partner was coming to to join us along with a few friends. A few more beers later and I had a new group of friends, about 2300hrs, I left them to it, I didn’t want to be too hung over the next day!
Things learnt on Day 1
- There will be a lot of waiting around.
- You will have no idea where you should be going
- You will feel very overwhelmed
- You need to make friends with fellow crew members
- Beers cost $2 and a pack of smokes were $4.
- Finding your room and your office is the hardest part of day 1.
