Sep 2 (edited) • General discussion
Side jobs
Hello again y'all ! In today's chapter of "What's going on Luis's ship" I bring you the story of "The Mardi Gras All Crew Party" to which I didn't go hahaha. Forget it! I just needed a way to start the topic of today's post which is really about what are called "Side Jobs", although you should know that the HHRR (Human Resources) department onboard is in charge of putting together different sorts of activities for the crew's amusement and entertainment, oriented to make everyone's experience onboard for their months long contract more enjoyable and relaxing from what can get to be some stressful periods dealing with whatever problems or challenges you might encounter in your job onboard plus the fact that we spend months at a time missing our family and friends back home right?.So, these activities go from things like "Independence day" celebrations for the several nationalities onboard featuring special menus at the "Crew Mess" and party time at the "Crew Bar" (Yes! There's a bar onboard where crew can get alcoholic beverages at cheaper prices than the guests can) of course there's a set of guidelines regarding alcohol consumption for the crew, but believe me there's quite a lot of it going on onboard! Other activities include raffles, bingo sessions, sports classes or tournaments, movie screenings, and of course the infamous "All Crew Parties" which are pretty self explanatorly, parties where the whole ship's crew is invited to attend so they are usually held in large venues like the ship's discotheque for instance. Anyway....last night there was a thematic all crew party "Mardi Gras" style, you could wear masks and things like that and I suppose it was an great fun time for everyone but I decided to sit (or rather sleep) that one out as I have to be up at 5 AM to work at my "Side Job" with the art department.
So, after you have completed your first 90 days onboard which is considered your probationary period, you can apply for an extra job onboard helping other departments with certain tasks and this way you can make some extra money! There's different kinds of tasks you could perform depending on the department you decide to offer your help to, for example, you can become a part time "kind of" a security guard for the "Security Department" where you walk around the ship for a couple hours usualy at night time, just keeping an eye on things around areas where alcohol is served, ready to "blow the whistle" if some kind of problematic situation arises, so the "real" security guards come and take care of the situation. You could also help the " Port and shopping" department with easy tasks such as handing out flyers to the guests at the gangway while they get off the ship at the ports, advertising shops and places of interest, or you could help the art department like I do on my ship currenlty. What we do for them is help set up the art work at the venue where an "Art Auction" would be held, we do this very early in the morning, and then we come back in the afternoon and breakdown the auction set up after it's finished and bring all the artwork back to the lockers and/or the Art Gallery.
Side jobs pay different rates depending on the department you decide to work for, usually around $10 to $15 US an hour, in other cases, like my current side job they pay you per shift, for instance I'm getting $40 US for the set up shift and another $40 for the break down shift and there's at least two auctions a week so...you do the math 😉. On Royal Caribbean, the company I work for, we are only allowed to work a side job for 10 hours a week. I find it very much worth it as it makes a real difference in the amount of money I earn onboard and considering the fact that us artists and entertainers on board are blessed with quite a light workload on our schedules, and are also the only crew members onboard that get one "day off", I write "day off" between quotes because as I said in my last post, there's safety duties that you would have to perform if necessary even on your day off your regular job, but yes, the rest of the crew including the officers, work every single day of their contract, not us, we have quite a lot of free time on our hands and getting a side job is a good way to stay busy and make some extra money onboard. So, there you have it...Carry on. See you on the next post!
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Side jobs
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