Winner!

Winner!

1^st September 2011

September has arrived! Hernan and I have approximately six weeks left. It seems quite remarkable. I can still remember the day we arrived on the ship. The time has flown by and comparing to where we were, we’ve both come along way. Hernan is now one of the fastest shooters while I’m one of the best sellers. I still need to speed up in my ressi and studio work but having said that, looking through my photos, the quality is far better than most. I take my time to make sure everything is  perfect while the others shoot more for the counts. Now I just need to perfect speed with quality. I have a feeling my counts will go up once we get into the two week cruises where there are more English and Spanish speaking guests.

Knowing we’ll be leaving soon is proving to be quite hard to get our heads around. Mine especially. I’ve made some great friends here and it’ll be sad leaving, especially as I know I won’t be returning to the Royal Caribbean any time soon. David, for example, won’t be coming back for a third contract so who knows if, or when, we’ll see him again. I’ve spent a long time with Hernan, from training to our first contract and possibly we’ll be together at Disney training but it’s going to feel strange not having my Hermanastro around. Whitney’s asking me to try and get an extension as most of her friends are leaving in October (Hernan, Fabio, me and David out of the photographers).

Back to today. It’s the sea day before the guests disembark in Civitavecchia. Getting up at 10 with a God awful back ache I made my way up to Back Deck for an hour to type up some blog entries. It wasn’t long until the Laundry guys came up for their break and joined me. 

I was due in the gallery at one. Leaving them I ran upstairs to the staff mess for something to eat and boy, was the food crap today. Most people were having sandwiches, desserts or salads for lunch. It’s a good diet I guess! Whitney, Ashleigh and Eve from Spa came over to join me. 

Running back downstairs I quickly changed into my uniform and slapped some eye shadow and mascara on before charging up the stairs to the gallery.

Checking the sales report, Zoran was in the lead and just selling another GTP. The GTPs are slow going this cruise simply because of the price going up and 20% tax. He’d sold three, Fabio and Sandra one. I had a lot of catching up to do. Selling GTPs really wasn’t my strong point. I constantly set the guests up for an upgrade though. My strongest package is The 15. Guests nearly always have more than 15 they want to take home, so it's easy to upgrade them to the GTP. Next cruise I’m going to start going straight in for the GTP package and see how it goes.

Before I knew it, I’d sold three of The 15 packages. One family of 7 took forever to close! While talking to the family of seven, I sold one lady two folio packages costing a grand total of $239.80 – nearly a 15 package. Later on, the family of seven came back and bought another 15 package from me. Goal!! 

Checking the sales reports again I was in the lead but Fabio was doing his best to catch up and he wasn’t far behind.

Towards the end of the night, I went over to Fabio who was stacking images. The gallery was quite. Putting my arm around him, I let Fabio know I was firmly in the lead… for once. He was not amused. We have competitions and bets every week. There are always little jibes but it’s all in good nature. The last thing I expect was for Fabio to bite my head off saying it was unfair. Fabio told me he’d sold the family of seven their 15 package but I’d charged it. Bullshit! I spent ages talking to the family, helping them find their photos and closing the sale. As they’d dealt with me the first time they came back to me for the second 15 package. All Fabio did was sort out a reprint for them. How did that could as selling anything to them? When I asked Fabio that, he simply replied “because it does. I sold it to them”. He was really pissed off. 

Walking away, leaving him still telling me it was all unfair, I went and stood behind the desk. Sandra was doing a digital search. I told her what Fabio had said and she shook her head coming to the same conclusion I had. If he’s winning, it’s all good and he can poke as much fun as he likes. We all take it with a smile and next time we try to do better. Now the tables have turned, he doesn’t like being the loser.

My shift finished at 22.30 and checking the sales report once more I was $1,300 in the lead. The gallery was dead. Checking up the next day and I was still firmly in the lead. Let’s see if I can keep it up for next week! For this week... I am, officially, the winner!