Letter from a Crew Member

The restaurant is hard work, but once you get used to it can be lots of fun. Perhaps the "rush" that is every night, maybe because I got the tricks or perhaps the chance to relate to passengers. Maybe it's all combined. What I know is that, like everything in life, practice makes perfect. So I would like to illustrate some difficult parts of waiters job on a cruise ship.

We begin with the tray, this is your very first challenge if you're an assistant waiter. At first the tray is very heavy and is difficult to understand how to handle it (you need three points of support: one hand in front, one under the center and shoulder). You can place maximum of 10 dishes at a time so you prevent accidents or damage your back. When we are not in Brata this limit is respected and everything is nice and calm as a beautiful sunny morning in spring. You can even dance with a tray on your shoulder.

Now, some waiters pile up 12-15 dishes. For me it is difficult to stack 15 plates, because along with my 1.90 m height are the last catch plates on their doorposts, so I have to crouch a little to pass. If the tray with 10 plates was level 1, take 15 plates firmly and surely no accident leaves you at level 5! Now imagine doing the same thing with the ship rocking back and forth (forward and backward, left and right), having to walk about 50 meters from the center of the galley (kitchen) to the station, dodging chairs, children and passengers, squatting here and there, in the end still kneeling and bending down to get the tray on the station. All this in order not to delay the race for food from anyone!. With a daily running contests  no wonder I lost about 4 numbers in waist. Do not even want to see my weight so not to scare myself.

Also dishes that are heated to maintain the temperature of the food and cooks find it fun to warn us that are semi-incandescent after they got them in hand. God give me patience, because if you give me strength I kill one.: )

The worst challenge we've been on the ship (perhaps in life) was to do all this with a fever of 40 degrees, my ... If I  survivive this, I will survivive any stoppage in life! At this point you can handle all the physical aspects of work, time to learn to pull money from passengers and smiles.
 
I say start smiling because at the end of each cruise they receive a questionnaire to evaluate the services provided throughout the ship (restaurant would not be different). They can choose bad, good, very good or excellent, and my commission (incentive) is based on it. Happy passengers mean more money, as well as more chances to win bigger and better tips.

This cruise was bad, the new year was worse, but the last two tucked in my pocket and everyone had one of the best ratings. In the latter still took a fine tip. All this in full "crisis" of the company and more specifically this ship, where we had thirty fewer claims for bad service.