Adjusting to 'real life' and being messed around by head office

After my 2nd very mixed contract on the Sun as was the standard I felt completely burnt out and had no idea of when, where or if I was coming back for a third contract. Many crew members liken the countdown to the end of a contract like inmates counting the days down till release, yet the irony is within a few weeks of getting home you are already counting the days till your next sentence!

I had made the carnal mistake of drinking heavily on my last night (and not my 2nd last night!) and the journey home was brutal as I was stumbling through the airport in Sydney with my 6 months of luggage. From Sydney to somewhere in Asia for a 6 hour lay over before finally getting on the plane back to London. I hadn't slept in almost two days and yet I was still in polite ship mode as I made my way through Heathrow, 'excuse me maam' I politely asked as I tried to get by, this woman turned looked at me with disgust and then turned her head the other way. After 6 months of being overly polite to almost everyone you see I was about to snap, a little bit more firmly 'I need to get past' Again nothing...this time I took my suitcase and ran over her foot, that made her move. She turned round 'ahhh thats my foot' she screamed at me, 'we'll if you'd moved out of the way when I asked you politely instead of fucking ignoring me twice' I yelled back! Amazing what a little melt down can do to clear a path through the airport, I guess no one wanted to be near the smelly dishelleved looking guy who's shouting!

I finally got home after around 36 hours travel and as standard slept for the best part of the week, decompressing only by playing video games and watching TV. After a week of cocooning myself in my house, I ventured out to my friend Phils for a by now tradtional FIFA session on the xbox and its weird as you feel like your on a vacaction just doing the regular things you were bored to death doing pre-ships.

Little things like not having to set an alarm every morning, not being fired from your job if you get drunk or are late home and not having to be overly polite to every person you meet.

I think its an unproven scientifc fact that it takes the average crew member 2 weeks to get bored once they get home and it was my in third week back of a scheduled 8 week holiday that head office from Southampton contacted me asking if I was available to join the Sea Princess in the Carribean the next week, I told them i'd need a day or so to think about it and what would my position be onboard? As I was expecting junior level 3 at the least and was there an opportunity for me to take over as acting senior on that contract? As always with the office they agreed to everything but I still told them I'd need a few days.

Luckily my good buddy Amanda from the Coral & Sun was on the Sea at the moment so I fired an email off to her asking what it was like onboard. She said they were doing a 2 week run through the Caribbean which we've already established is one of the worst runs for a videographer though it was not as bad as a 7 day Caribbean cruise. It was good onboard but she said the video guys were out almost everyday filming and it was really busy for them, she said the new senior Roelouf had jsut arrived which meant if the office had even asked I at best would get a few weeks as acting senior at the end of my contract.

I'd recovered from my 6 months on the Sun and offically although you are not allowed to turn down a contract (as that means you have technically resigned and would go back to the bottom of the rotations and pay scale) you can turn down a contract if it is offered in your official vacation time which is what I did. If it had been somewhere I hadn't crusied before I would have considered it but after 3 weeks off I was in no rush to get back to the Caribbean. I politely declined and said I still holiday plans upto the new year, the office was fine and told me they'd contact me about my next posting in the new year.

January came and went and I had still heard nothing, I fired some emails to Southampton and they told me they were waiting to hear back from head office LA about where I was going next...Another month passed and I was quickly approaching 4 months off at home.

I contacted Mick my last manager from the Sun and he basicaly said head office were fucking useless as there was this massive disconnect between my manning office in Southampton and Photo/Video head office in LA and it took days to get a response to an email. Finally I got a contract through for the Emerald Princess which was currently in the Caribbean but then would be heading over to do the Baltic run in Europe, also I knew from Facebook that the current senior there was a French Canadian guy called JP who was one of best videogs the company had at the moment.

There was just the small problem when my contract came through that it still had me down for a junior level 2 position and not 3, despite how much we'd killed it on the world cruise. I was eventually told that there was some performance issues that had been raised when head office spoke to my last senior and that I needed to 'knuckle down and work harder' to get that next promotion. To say I was pissed off was an understatement and it felt like a subtle 'fuck you' and too me it was a slight embarrassment as the expected progression was 1-2-3 then onto the senior position. It is hard to explain but when you tell people you are on your 3rd contract but only you are only a level 2, the subtext is that you must have fucked up somewhere.

In later years I would find out that instead of the official channels one of the reasons I had to wait for so long for my next contract was that my last senior was our head office video guys junior when he was still on ships and an informal conversation about me had pushed me down the pecking order.

Still I was getting low on money and the itinary was great and I would be working with another great Canadian videographer so I signed my junior 2 contract and waitied to join the Emerald on March 10th, 2009.

But plot twist... 2 weeks before I was due to leave on my Baltic odyssey another contract comes throgh that has me leave a week earlier to join the Sapphire Princess which was currently down in Mexico for another 7 weeks before heading back to the dreaded Alaska again. I contacted Southampton and asked them if this was a mistake as with the Alaska rules I couldn't film ashore like I could in the Baltic and I'm paraphrasing slightly but wasn't it a waste of someone like me's talent? They may have disagreed and the best I got was a speculative 'well they'll probaly tranship you' but 'its an emergency as the current Senior Richard is all by himself'.

So after almost 6 months at home and two differnt ships I was now headed to Mexico (a lowly level 2 on my 3rd contract, which was sure to come up in conversation) with a murky promise of salvation from another Alaska season!

On the next cruise diaries - Viva Mexico!