Beginning of a Final Chapter

Beginning of a Final Chapter

2^nd September 2011

It’s the beginning of my final chapter on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas. We’re on our final all European Union cruise. The previous six cruises, were seven days, the last will be only six days. Afterwards we’ll be returning to our original itinerary. The Italians will be gone along with the extortionate 20% tax. Americans, Canadians, British and South Americans dominate the scene again. For the team it’s better. Although we’ve learnt the necessary Italian, the dominators were obviously Fabio and Sandra who speak the language fluently. When we get back to the two week cruises there’ll be guests for all the team.

Sandra was on morning sale. She’d been asking Jomar to let her do morning sale for a long time. If you’re on morning sale you tend to finish at 09.00-09.30 and then you’re off until 17.00. Once she’d finished she grabbed her stuff and started the long journey to Rome. No one else in the group had been to Rome. As Civitavecchia is our home port and getting time off on embarkation day is nearly impossible - unless you’re scheduled for morning sale, of course. If you jump on the fast train to Rome it’ll take about an hour to get there. I couldn’t wait to see her photographs!

I was finally back shooting!!! Embarkation isn’t my favourite thing to shoot but at least I was back taking photographs. We had our usual three backdrop set up in the terminal and things were going well. 

I had to bash on Zoran and Fabio’s door to get them out of bed. They’d both woken up early, turned the alarm off and fell back to sleep rather than going out. Zoran was embarkation leader.

Half way through the day Alex came over and asked if we knew a particular person. It was Dorel from Miami HQ. He wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow so it was a bit of a shock seeing his embarkation photo on the pentab.

Troubles soon came our way in the form of M&R. One of the Italians working on the arrivals desk had complained about us photographers. Guests were queuing up to have their embarkation photograph taken. It wasn’t a long queue, maybe about 10 people. She told everyone to walk straight through and head to the ship. We didn’t just lose 10 photos, we lost a whole lot more, as the people who’d just cleared arrivals refused to have their picture taken. It was a mess. 

Somehow the Italian managed to get M&R’s attention. As soon as she waltzed into the terminal we knew we were in for trouble. Looking around she said there were way too many people bustling around and that the guests had no space to move. A slight over exaggeration. We had to dismantle the middle studio. 

Taking a look at Spa’s promotion table she decided it was in the way too. She moved the table into a spot where no one would see it. Going outside, Denise from Spa was fuming. She’d been standing for an hour and decided to sit down for a while. We warned her that La Bruja would be back but she either didn’t believe us or didn’t care. Not long after we’d told her, M&R came back through the terminal doors. Straight away she spotted Denise and had a moan at her for sitting down. Her table then got moved again. And then again… back to its original spot.

Alex soon came under La Bruja's fire. Apparently he was standing too far away from the backdrop with the camera and pentab. She said he didn’t need that much space to take a photograph and told him to move forward. Alex, the poor sod, didn’t know what to make of it all, he’d never met M&R before and got a royal shock when he did!

With embarkation over, I took some equipment down to the lab. None of what had been taken down beforehand had been put away. It had all been left to me. I was supposed to finish at 17.00 but by the time I’d put everything away and sorted some bits and bobs out for tomorrow’s embarkation it was closer to 18.00. I was not impressed. 

Ritesh wasn’t impressed with me either. I’d left a lot of stuff in the camera bags for tomorrow. All we’d have to do is throw in the camera, pentab and Quantum batteries. No, that wasn’t good enough. It ALL had to be put away and then repacked tonight. It didn’t make sense but biting my tongue I did as I was told… even though I knew I’d have to come back after work to pack it all again.

During the evening in the gallery Dorel came over to say hi. He said I was quiet and didn’t remember me that way. Dorel was here for two reasons. The first and main reason was to find out why our ship was doing so badly. We kick arse when it comes down to embarkation and gangway but our portrait and ressi counts are low. The most important thing about it all is that our sale percentage is down. 

Personally, I didn’t care if our counts were low as long as our sales rates were up but the office wanted both – obviously. I’ve always worked on the quality over quantity principle. Like I’ve said before, I may not be the fastest shooter in Ressi and studio but I try to make sure everything is perfect and therefore more sellable.

I finished at 23.30 but there was a meeting in the office at 00.15. Using the time wisely I had my one-to-one meeting with Dorel. We went up to the guest library on deck 7. I’d never been there before. Sitting down I was asked how my first contract was going. I was asked one question that took me by surprise. New hires had been complaining to the office that senior photographers hadn't been helping or training them. I had plenty to say on the subject, but it was the complete opposite to what other new hires had been saying.

Stuart took me under his wing and trained the living daylights out of me; smudging, “thinking outside the box that the box is in” as he put it, tipping and tossing chairs around in the studios, dealing with guests and even my cropping when I first came.

Jeni taught me a huge amount when we were at the Acropolis (Greece). I had no luck getting guests to have their photo taken. She just ran up to them telling them to move in shouting “photo, photo, photo”. Her smudging on tours taught me a lot. Let’s not forget her Ressi techniques either.

Luci got on my case so much on gangway. “Just grab them” and it worked wonders once you’d got past the initial discomfort of it all. Luci was the one who taught me how to smudge in costume along with Stu, they both used different techniques.

Lee, well, for the short time he was there he taught me a huge amount about the gallery. He also helped me a lot of studio work, cropping, set ups and getting people into the studio. Lee was also the person who took me into Ressi the first time and showed us how to approach a table. The biggest help, for me, was Lee telling me about life on ships. You go into ship life as blind as a bat! Looking back it was great to have an experienced person’s advice.

More questions were asked and the meeting went on until 00.30. Realising the time we headed back down to deck 3 and into the office where the meeting had just started. 

This would be our last meeting with Jomar. It lasted a lot, lot longer than usual, mainly because Dorel was here. Going around the room he asked each and every one of us where we thought we could improve. It was my turn and Jomar said “you’re the best seller in the team. You’ve sold the most 15 packages. Tell the others some tips on how to sell it.” It was quite hard to explain. I’ve lived and worked with people that sell houses, holiday rentals etc. so it comes relatively naturally. One thing my Dad had taught me was to focus on how much of a discount the clients/guests were getting. I suggested to everyone, before telling anyone the final price, to focus on how much they are getting in the deal and how much they are saving. For me it works. I’m not the greatest at selling GTPs but I tend to match the GTP sales (price wise) with the 15 packages (which also cost half the price). I can match it. It might be more work but I know I’m more than capable of doing so.

Sandra was asked how she sells so many DVDs – she’s the number one DVD seller. She said her one advantage is that she’s watched the DVD before and knows what’s included whereas the rest of us have only seen a couple of clips here and there. Movie night was going to be put on the agenda. We were going to set up the projector one night in the corridor and watch a copy of the DVD so we knew what we were selling. Obviously it would help a great deal!!!

By the time we were finished it was past 2am. Needless to say, we were shattered but sat around in the corridor for a while having a beer chatting before heading off to bed.