re: Cruise Line Employees compared to Locals

Depends on what you do. I know some ladies who handle shore excursions on board, it's a pretty sweet career for them

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these employees also get free room and board

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Not really though. Free room and board is a permanent place to live or at least semi permanent. Free room and board is what like the National Park and State Park employees get, they have a long term residence to live in. If you have to maintain a residence outside of the ship that's far from what I'd call free room and board.

I've never been on a cruise, but why are they working 10 hour shifts? They work all 3 meals?

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I've never been on a cruise, but why are they working 10 hour shifts? They work all 3 meals?

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Generally, they work 20/21 meals a week. Usually one day a week they get lunch off, which will coincide with a port visit. Gives them a few hours to get off the boat, go do/buy something, etc.

One of the waiters we had (we were on my time dining so they were different each night) told me he worked every breakfast and dinner in the dining room, and 6 lunches a week there. He said his assistant waiter worked every morning in the buffet doing various things, every dinner in the dining room, and for her 6 lunch periods a day would split between helping in buffet and helping in main dining room.

The room stewards will often work a split shift, say 7 - noon and 4-9 pm, with them rotating covering the mid day break and the overnight. So you might get, on a 5 day cruise, one mid-shirt, and one half of an overnight shift.

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Very true. He mentioned the art dealer on board had it made. The life of a server seemed very miserable.

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The art dealers and some of the other positions (I think spa, shops, maybe a few others) actually work for other companies under contract to the cruise lines. Same with the comedians and some of the musicians. So they tend to be in more regular accomodations.

Among the crew employed directly, yeah, there is absolutely a caste system. They all work hard and work every day, but the cruise director staff, entertainment staff, guest services, etc, seem to have decent arrangements. The dining and housekeeping staff work hard in not great conditions. and then you have the people who wash dishes and linens.

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I've never been on a cruise, but why are they working 10 hour shifts? They work all 3 meals?

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There was some rotation, but mostly all F&B people worked 3 meals plus a late night buffet. Could be as much as 16 hours sometimes.

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On a 30 day month, that's 300 hours a month, which works out to about $5 an hour. In addition to their pay, of course, they get free room and board.

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You know it has to be a 24/7 frickfest as well.

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I find that very hard to believe. Granted these are international companies that rarely hire Americans for most positions. I worked on an American owned cruise ship for a brief time in the 1990’s. I would say the average dining room server made about $1500 per week. You work about six weeks on and had 2 weeks off.

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It's exactly opposite of everything you posted, when it comes to these foreign-flagged ships. The contracts are 9 months for many of the crew and the cruise line ain't paying for them to fly back and forth more often than that.