10 Points

10 Points

20^th September 2011

It’s another turn around day and boy, was it one to remember. Today, I was on embarkation for four hours plus the setting up of the studios. Once again, we were wearing our black shirts and roating in the sun. Usually it’s hot but today, it was so windy we were trying anything to keep the backdrops strapped down!

The backdrops are a simple cloth material featuring a picture of the ship. It’s attached with Velcro to a free standing metal frame. The slightest breath of wind will create a paragliding effect and send the entire background flying. For the majority of my four hour stint I was hiding behind the background holding onto the ultra-light metal frame, so it wouldn’t fly off or fall on the guests posing for their embarkation photo. Leandro was standing behind the second backdrop looking as if he was holding on for his dear life! On a couple of occasions we thought we were going to launch off with the backdrop! 

You can't take embarkation seriously when you're holding up a ship! Every so often we'd poke our heads out from behind the backdrop to pull a face at the photographers or try to photobomb the photo! Leandro even took a photo on his iPhone to show Reuben. 

Later on, we found out that Reuben had emailed the photo Leandro took, to Image as a joke. Along with the photo was a caption similar to "We've found a better use for our photographers on embarkation". We thought the photo was hilarious... Image did not!

The fun, however, didn't stop at embarkation! Sanela and I had to go on a wild hunt across the ship, searching for the dolphin outfit she’d be wearing for Sailaway. We were both almost late for the Pax drill - instant warning. 

As soon as we finished standing around for an hour for Pax drill, point the guests towards their muster stations, we ran back towards the lab and constantly calling Leandro, the last person to wear the costume. Nothing. 

Bumping into Edi along one of the many crew corridors, I asked him if the costume was in Laundry. It wasn’t. Even he ran down to Laundry anyway to double check. It was no where to be seen and time was running out.

We had another poke around in the lab. We couldn’t find it anywhere until all of a sudden I saw something poking out from the bottom shelf in the lab storage area. It was the dolphin costume – finally! 

Sanela literally had to charge back into her cabin, strip down to her shorts and run up to Sailaway. She just about made it before the ship started moving.

Running back upstairs I was on Display with Camila. Joys! I was 1.5 hours late because of the Pax drill. Walking in, we only had 600 images to display – that was just how badly we’d done on embarkation. Camila had done absolutely nothing since I’d been gone. 

The two flower panels at the front of the gallery hadn’t been completely wiped down. So it’d taken her 1.5 hours to remove and bin the photos from two display panels? It should have taken no more than 20-30 minutes. What had she been doing? Gawd knows!

After work we had the usual meeting. Last cruise we started a points strategy for who sells the most, meets their targets etc. I was surprised to hear that I’d earned myself 10 points for meeting and/or passing all but one of my targets. The only target I didn’t hit was for Folios, Frames and Albums. My target was 53.6 and I’d sold 37. It was closer than what the others had done. The best bit of all, I’d managed to hit my targets while spending the least amount of time in the gallery, 18.5 hours. Others had been in the gallery for 20-26 hours. Sandra won hands down when it came down to selling cameras with a grand total of 12. I came in 3^rd place, selling 5 cameras, after Fabio, who sold 8, one of which was a Leica.  So all in all, I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

Now came the bad news, on embarkation we only managed to get approximately 600 images which is abysmal!! Usually we get between 900-1,000 shots so getting 3-400 less is a real disgrace. Our set up had been appalling, the strategy was terrible – no one knew what they were doing. There was no organization and the “juniors” weren’t listening to a word the “seniors” were saying. Even some of the more experienced photographers were acting dazed like they didn’t know what was going on. 

With all that on top, we had a major day of mass rejection, very few people wanted their embarkation photo taken, no matter what reason or excuse we gave them, they wouldn't budge. It was all no, no and no. Maybe if we’d have been more organized, with it and less shambolic we’d have got a much higher count?

It’s something that’s going to have to change for next cruise, we can’t have a repeat. Embarkation is a massive seller, so if we get low counts there, you can be sure that our wage slips will be too. In a way, I wish we had some of the original group back. One thing is for sure, something has to change on embarkation and I think it’s a case of going back to how we used to do things. By that I mean, attack embarkation the same way the other photographers like Stu, Luci, Jeni and Fede used to when Hernan and I first arrived at the ship. We needed strategy and we needed it fast!