Home Away From Home

I'm standing on stage under the bright lights of the Hollywood Theater with a small army of assistant waiters decked out in our mustard yellow uniforms. Hundreds of cruisers in the crowd applaud our efforts for the week. They clap for us--for all the miles we walked from the galley to their table, for all the coffees we've refilled, for all of the questions we've answered time after time. Everyone is clapping rhythmically, even the captain.

I clap along so that I don't appear anymore out of place than I already feel. I'm not a dancer or a singer, so why am I here, slapping my sweaty palms together? I'd prefer to stop because my skin has become so dried and cracked due to excessive handwashing.

The cruise director wears a purple lei and holds a microphone. She introduces each department so the cruisers understand why these non-performers momentarily share the spotlight with the metrosexual entertainers with their gelled hair and sculpted bodies.

"Give it up for your restaurant department!" the cruise director beams.

This little charade is called Home Away from Home, and it happens every Friday, the last night of the cruise. The singers perform sentimental numbers and hop around like members of an overzealous boy band. The songs are designed to flood the cruisers with overwhelmingly positive emotions. The performers give the illusion that this week's cruisers are our family members, and they'll always have a home away from home. 

We say that to everyone, but these staterooms are not a second home. Yet the singers bray, "Wherever you go, you'll find a home inside our memories." 

This sappy goodbye has an extremely capitalist undertone. If you listen to the words closely enough, you'll hear the message:  Come spend your money here again! 

I stare out at the crowd and wonder if the cruisers really know the truth behind all these performances. They're applauding us for all our hard work to provide them with the vacation of a lifetime, but do they know what goes on behind the scenes? Do they understand all the scavenger hunts we must embark upon to find the necessary supplies so that the cruisers can simply sit down on a crumbless chair and read a menu with options that correlate with the food being cooked? I wonder.

On a Friday evening like any other, a few hours before I went onstage, I found myself in Skyline Restaurant serving strangers who were staring out the windows and gazing at the Napoli Coast of Kaua'i. The seas are especially turbulent in this area, and the ship is frequently jostled by the rough swells. The floor leans unexpectedly, and the occasional bump disorients my sense of balance and leaves me with a queasy stomach and an aching head. The threat of vomiting was quite persistent that day.

As I refilled waters and dropped desserts, I imagined the embarassment that would ensue should my body choose at this most inconvenient moment to regurgitate my own dinner onto the dining room floor. Or even worse should my roaring projectile land onto this gentle octogenarian enjoying his cheesecake. 

Everyone would stop and stare at me, at which point I would have no choice but to apologize profusely. The disturbance would likely make me extremely anxious, which would reignite another violent spew. Then, like an innocent toddler who has peed the bed in the middle of the night, I would explain to my superior that I simply lost control of my bodily functions. My manager would shake her head in disgust, as if to say "What is wrong with you?" for which I could provide no explanation that could make this problem disappear. Before the clean-up crew arrived, I would say goodbye to all of my friends, and then I would promptly run away, hide in my room, and never emerge except to inform HR of my immediate resignation.

Visions of this debacle caused me to ask my manager if I could change out the menus. This request led me to a cramped, two by four closet with no windows and poor ventilation. Changing out the menus is a tedious and rather time-consuming task, but when work is slow I always volunteer for this job because of the privacy and the opportunity to smuggle in spring rolls.

I sit down on a chair pilfered from the dining room and remove the left insert from each menu cover. On this sheet of paper, Friday's special appetizers and entrees are listed. I place that into the bin labeled Friday and then insert Saturday's sheet into each menu. I repeated this process roughly 100 times until I realized that the bile rising in my throat was not going to subside.

I took a few deep breaths as a last attempt to fight the insurgence, but I knew my efforts were futile, so I sprang out of the miniature closet and raced downstairs to the nearest crew bathroom. I locked the door and opened the stall. I got down on my knees on that filthy floor and hurled my guts into a dirty toilet. 

After an encore outburst through my esophagus, I washed my face in the sink and calmly left the bathroom as though nothing unordinarily painful just occurred. A friend stopped me in the hallway and during our brief conversation the subject of unburdening my intestines was never mentioned. I tried to keep my mouth shut so that no foul odor would escape. My friend walked away, and I went to my bedroom to brush my teeth.

Upon determining that my breath smelled of mint rather than stomach acid, I promptly returned to my voluntary exile in the menu closet. After two more hours of switching around pages with different words on them, I finished the task. Now the new cruisers boarding on Saturday will be able to deliberate between various dining options. 

On that stage in the Hollywood Theater, the memory of my seasickness was still ripe. Nonetheless, I wore a neutral expression and clapped along with the audience, but I clapped for different reasons. As the liaison with the general public, we workers give the impression we cater to people's needs because we genuinely care about them, but this is rarely the case. I don't believe anyone flat out hates the guests, but we certainly didn't apply for this job so that we could selflessly pamper retirees and newlyweds. This is not something people volunteer for wholeheartedly.  

When a guest sits down at my table, I'm not really curious about what kind of day they have been having. These introductory questions are mere formalities, and the words that fill the silence give the impression that I care. I'm not apathetic about these people.  More specifically, their life outside the dinner service is completely detached from mine, and I will likely never see them again after dessert. 

Nonetheless, I inquire about their current state of being, since this practice has become so solidified throughout history as to be considered polite behavior. My ancestors before me established the etiquette for human interaction; I merely follow the rules they've created. 

So I ask these strangers about their day in hope that their previous hours sucking oxygen on this green planet have been pleasant. If the guests are in high spirits, this makes my life easier because I won't have to try as hard to please them. 

Happy people are more likely than angry people to give away their money. The guest's mood is directly correlated to my well-being. Therefore, I give good service so I can rest fully at night, buy food to prevent my organs from failing, and to avoid painful episodes such as the one which occurred in a certain crew bathroom on a particular Friday night. When I serve with a smile, I'm not flattering anyone. I'm not being nice. I am staying out of trouble. I am surviving.

We are finished on the stage now, so we proceed to a red-carpeted hallway with walls painted with photographers snapping pictures with the flash on. The Hollywood theme is designed to make cruisers feel like they're celebrities. In this luxurious corridor, assistant waiters, executive sous chefs, entertainers, hostesses, and guest service attendants line up along the walls. 

All of us cheer on the cruisers as they exit the theater. My coworkers clap wildly, and many of them yell out, "Thank you for being here." The cruisers file between us like foreign diplomats being sent off in a royal parade.

"Na na na na," someone chants spontaneously until the mob catches on. "Hey hey hey... Goodbye."

Mostly the guests smile, and some of them tear up while they hug staff members with whom they've become attached during this brief encounter. I stand there with the corners of my lips turned slightly upward to hide my impatience. 

The truth is:  I'm here because my manager tells me I need more hours. In other words, my coworkers have more overtime than me, so my labor is cheaper. My front waiter makes $11 an hour, and I only make $8.50. I am

a body filling up space and making background noise with my palms. I am the anonymous man who changes out the menus.

Sometimes I am flattered when a guest thanks me for working so hard, but I never say you're welcome. Instead I fall prey to the American habit saying, "Thank you," when someone thanks me. I realize that my paycheck is dependent upon the guest's spending habits, but like so many transactions in this country money is rarely discussed out in the open. Instead, we put on a show to conceal our hustle. 

Cash is stuffed in envelopes or check presenters. Waiters hide while guests fill out their credit card slips, and the total is rarely revealed until the customer has left the building. As soon as the guests pass me in the hallway, their concerns are no longer mine. Our paths that have briefly crossed are disconnected once more. Now I can eat my midnight snack and go to bed to dream my own dreams.

Exceptional Days: Drill!

"Attention all crew. Attention all crew," says a man over the loud speaker. "This is a drill. This is a drill. This is a drill."

The sound of his voice generally means that it's Tuesday somewhere between nine and ten o'clock in the morning when we practice general emergencies and report to our abandon ship stations.

"Code Bravo for exercise. Deck one, zone one," the voice rings out.

Like the military, cruise ships have their own lingo for such hindrances as a leak in the hull or an explosion in the engine room. Rather than screaming, "Fire!" and causing the guests to panic, we speak in code. 

After the announcement, the fire team stops what they're doing. Drill is usually planned when the majority of meal service is over so the eggs are not abandoned on the griddle. They dash toward their lockers to don their protective gear and to wield their hoses and then report to the designated zone. 

With the exception of commanders, the fire team is composed of volunteer shipmates. We've all been trained how to operate multiple extinguishers on all types of fires. Captains often prefer to use an onboard team over a band of professionals on shore because the shipmates can better navigate the vessel's labyrinthine corridors. The same goes for the medical team, who receive in-house training and respond mostly to fallen senior citizens.

As for me, I wait for the general emergency alarm:  six short blasts and one long. Generally there is about a ten to fifteen minute lag between the initial message and the alarm, but that is not always the case. If I'm at work when I hear the first announcement, I continue working, but I try not to begin any time-consuming task because the bell could ring at any moment. I could wait five minutes or an hour. 

If I'm in my room at the time, I slip into my blue jumpsuit, tie my shoes, and stash my sunglasses in my shirt pocket. Then I read at my desk until the deafening beeps interrupt the silence. I make my way to the mid-ship staircases where I find my lazy shipmates waiting for the elevator. We're supposed to be practicing for the unlikely event of an emergency, but not everyone takes this seriously. 

Since when did this attitude become accepted as cool? I never seem able to adopt the popular mindset at the same time as my peers. I would much rather goof off during the dinner service, which, perversely enough, my shipmates conduct themselves more seriously than they do while training for a crisis.

I climb up to deck six and cross a fancy wine bar to reach the promenade track that encircles the ship. Once outside, I head toward my locker room. Bulbous, orange lifeboats are parked above my head. Workers in blue jumpsuits climb ladders to reach them on the upper deck. 

I pass by a herd of newcomers standing stiffly at the assembly station. Their necks are squeezed by puffy life vests. I remember what it was like to stand there in silence mere weeks ago. My only responsibility was to yell out my safety number when the team leader read it from her sheet. I watched everyone zip by me with their automatic, Tuesday-ingrained movements to their preordained spots. I was a confused baby lamb corralled in a cramped pen. If the ship were to start sinking, someone would come to rescue me.

But now I walk past them with my own mechanized movements to perform my duty that is designed to prevent the newbies from drowning. I put on my harness like a hiker's backpack and fasten the straps around each of my thighs. I approach a large crane and open the gate nearby and hook my carabiner around a vertical pole. Behind me there is no railing to separate me from the sea six stories below. The first time I found myself near the precipice I hoped I would get to rappel down the side of the ship, but the harness was not designed for enjoyment. Its purpose is to prevent me from falling overboard.

My partner files into our tiny pocket and latches himself to the other side of the fence.  My partner is a broadcast technician responsible for filming material and maintaining the network channeled into crew TVs. He's been a journalist in the States and has worked on another cruise ship in the Caribbean. Even though his job is much cooler than mine, drill unifies us all. Life-threatening situations have a tendency to reduce even the most technologically savvy individuals to bare limbs and muscles capable of the simple dexterity and strength to get out of harm's way.

Between my partner and me lies a cylindrical container with a hard plastic shell. Inside lies a shriveled-up life raft capable of expanding to hold 35 people. Ten more of these shells stand behind my partner, and there are several of these stations on deck each equipped with their own crane.

A stout man named Hector is the team leader who operates the crane and yells out the instructions. He wears Ray Ban shades and lifting gloves to protect his hands from the grease on the lever. He told me he wants to go on vacation in Thailand to get shredded. At first I was intimidated by his size and by the tone of his voice. He would ask me questions about the life raft as though he were giving me a pop quiz.

"What does the container line do?"

"How long is the painter line?"

"What is the secondary means of inflation?"

I was new, and I had never seen this monster unleashed from its cage. During drill we simulate inflating the raft by hoisting a giant dumbbell overboard, and I pretend to inflate the metallic object by pulling on an invisible line. So far, drill was all about pretending. The painter line was however long I imagined it to be. As I stared out at the snow-tipped peak of Mauna Loa from the port of Hilo, I tried to envision myself amidst a violent storm, smothered in salty spray, swathed in darkness as I squinted in the moonlight to read the instructions and corresponding pictograms on how to inflate the life raft. The task seemed similar to assembling a complicated IKEA futon while skydiving. 

I didn't have a complete understanding of my duty until the Coast Guard came onboard for an inspection. The safety officer, let's call him Paul, arranged a training for all the life raft teams in preparation for Coast Guard's arrival. 

Paul's head is shaved and his cheeks are coated with a thick beard. Usually he walks around the ship in a white jumpsuit and a pair of Nike running shoes. Each time he passes me, he mumbles, "What's up?" in such a dry tone that gives me the impression that he generally despises most people but has accepted the fact he must interact with them. His casual use of profanity combined with his neon-tipped footwear often makes me forget that he is a three-striped officer.

Assistant managers have one stripe; GMs have two. Department directors and the captain have three stripes on their epaulettes. It is a strange phenomenon to witness how symbolic shoulder decorations can alter a person's psychology. All the striped officers wear white shirts and white pants, a vivid outfit that clearly distinguishes them from the laborers. When I see stripes I often double check that I'm not breaking any rules, and I do my best to appear innocent and obedient. 

The white uniforms have a Pavlovian effect on me that makes me slightly tense and more alert. I begin to associate officers and managers with their uniforms as though they are tattoos unable to be removed. I have difficulty imagining these people in civilian clothes, living ordinary lives, shopping for deodorant, taking out the trash, or eating at a restaurant they don't manage. When I chance upon a casually dressed manager, I often do not recognize him. 

Whoever created this uniform system understood the division of labor and its subsequent mental side effects. However, when I see Paul in the hallways I often try to envision his personal life, and I wonder how he got here. He is very friendly with many of my coworkers in a mocking way. He strikes me as a former frat boy who half-jokingly bullied guys with inferior practical skills associated with masculinity such as leaning under the hood of a car and vaguely pointing to indistinguishable parts of an engine and giving highly unspecific directions about what to do to get the motor running. 

When Paul is in his element, however, he knows how to run the show, and he demands respect. He is a man you do not want to see angry, especially if you are the source of his anger.

During the drill, Paul gives the go-ahead to Hector who stands ready at the crane with his gloved hands and his dreams of bulking up in Southeast Asia.

"Prepare the raft," Hector yells.

I'm not involved in the deployment of the real raft since I'm new. An experienced team is performing the real procedure. The man in my position hands a shackle to his partner who aligns the ring into the crevice of the hook. Using two small rods that look like lipstick cases, the two men attach the pieces together, and now the shell is connected to the crane.

Hector raises the shell by rotating a lever. At this point, Paul playfully undermines Hector's strength and mocks all those protein shakes and daily lunches of quinoa. This mocking is typical of hyper masculine men who harbor deep fears of revealing their feminine qualities, so they make sure to emphasize these exact qualities in other equally hyper masculine men.

Because of the jokes, Hector pumps the lever faster so as to convince his audience of his beastly fortitude. Then he slews the raft outward as the other men hold the left and right lines to stabilize the shell. Once the shell is completely off the deck, the man in my position hands the left line to Hector and pulls on the painter line. One hundred feet of cord gradually emerges from a tiny crevice in the container. 

The man gives the line a final tug, the shell bursts open like an air bag in a car crash and dangles below a tangled ball of orange and black. Compressed air canisters hiss. The life raft inflates as it hangs suspended above the water and level with the ship.  The bottom of the raft is thick and black, and an orange roof sits atop the base like a tipi. The lip of the raft is only a step away from the ship's edge.

I wanted to board the raft and then get in the water. I wondered if there were saltine crackers stashed inside a pouch somewhere. I tried to imagine drifting out to sea in this tiny float. What if I encountered a real emergency? What would I bring with me? How would I handle surviving at sea with people I barely know? 

As soon as I asked myself these questions, I realized this pretend scenario is not so different from surviving on a cruise ship that isn't sinking. Oftentimes there are no instructions of how to act in any given situation. You merely react instinctively to escape pain and and flee toward comfort. 

This is what we are all trying to accomplish in life, but in the real world away from the ship we do not practice fleeing in such mechanized ways. On the ship, we prepare ourselves to elude death, while telling ourselves an accident will never happen to us. We prepare to abandon our jobs, our routines, our possessions. We practice how to move on with this life and seek temporary relief. In this manner, every day is a drill for the next.

Exceptional Days: Provisions

Each day of the week has a distinct feel. I only know life on Maui on Sundays and Mondays. On Wednesdays the ship floats in the bay, and tender boats shuttle guests and crew to shore and back.  Most of the crew rides the early tender boat to have lunch in the tourist friendly Kona, so I take advantage of their absence by doing my laundry, a chore that requires me to handle the undergarments of strangers as I transfer their soggy load into the dryer to free up the washer for my soiled accoutrements. A dry batch of pleasant smelling clothes with no missing socks is a cause for celebration.

I look forward to Thursdays like the rest of the world anticipates the weekend. The majority of guests attend the luau and the accompanying feast of local cuisine on Kauai. A lucky few get the night off while the rest of us show up to an empty-ish restaurant in our flower-patterned Hawaiian shirts. Wearing short sleeves makes me feel lighter as though customers expect less of me as less of my body is covered. 

Although a fair portion of my coworkers often gripe about enduring the same shit on a different day, not every day is an exact replica of the one before. There are days of exception, days in which I feel more like a sailor rather than a regular guy who happens to work in a restaurant that happens to be floating on the sea.

On Saturdays we dock in Honolulu, where we dump off passengers and refill with a new batch of pot-bellied senior citizens prone to possessing zero self-awareness amidst high traffic areas as well as a dangerously apathetic stance toward their diet. In addition to amassing another small town population, we get most of our provisions delivered on Saturday.

The provisions department is the epitome of manual labor. In order to secure a job in this field, one does not need to possess impressive cognitive abilities. Sharp minds are in short supply, and so are bodies. Thus, restaurant workers are required, every now and then, to lend our hands.

I slip into my blue jumpsuit that looks like a cross between kiddie pajamas and a mechanic's uniform. I don a pair of gloves and proceed to the second deck. A grimy elevator delivers a pallet stacked high with boxes filled with an assortment of food and beverages. JoAnne, a middle-aged black woman with sculpted forearms and a permanent scowl, operates the fork lift and drives the pallet into the refrigerated cavern called the fruit box. Here I stand with a thirty-ish Korean-American named James who possesses a penchant for mumbling and a strong desire to avoid teamwork.

JoAnne drops off the load as James and I stare at the massive pile of boxes before us. Each box contains six watermelons that accumulatively weigh sixty pounds. As the assistant storekeeper, it is James' responsibility to organize the giant cooler into neat columns of fruit. The old produce is to remain accessible so they can be used first, and the new stock is pushed to the back. 

The fruit box is probably fifteen by thirty feet. The floor is silver and has those crisscross marks you find in the bed of a pick-up truck that transports a lot of heavy machinery. Shelves on one side of the room house Granny Smith apples and grapes of both colors. Boxes of Dole pineapple are stacked next to the papaya. This job is like playing Tetris in real life as we attempt to fit a week's worth of essential nutrients into a tiny chamber.

The task is simple:  I lift the heavy watermelons onto a steel platform and then proceed to stack five more boxes on top. You may be wondering where the challenge arises, and superior minds would realize there is none, but superior minds do not often work in provisions, so problems frequently ensue. We finish with the watermelon, then James is stumped with the arrival of honeydew.

"Shit," James says, "Where am I gonna put this?"

I recall from an earlier conversation that James has worked here for two years and has expressed a lack of interest in performing the same actions over and over again for two round-trips around the sun.

"Don't you arrange the fruit the same way  each week?" I ask.

"The shipments are different each week," he says, and I begin to wonder how much variation one can find inside such a cramped refrigerator. James freezes, lost in deliberation. I try to imagine the inner workings of his mind as he calculates the benefits of his limited possibilities.

"Fuck it," he says, "We'll get another pallet and put the honeydew next to the watermelon." A brilliant idea, I assure him, as that particular location is better than leaving the fruit to rot in the  hallways that already smell faintly of overly ripe bananas.

After solving the honeydew puzzle, I am needed in the dry goods store, where many of my fellow waiters stand around a bag of Lays Ruffles and a jar of herb cheese dip freshly pilfered from cardboard boxes. Managers are rarely around, so the workers often steal a few incoming treats:  a grape here, a sleeve of Oreos there.  The greatest benefit of working in provisions, however, is that one gets to escape the guests for one shift.  For roughly five hours, I don't have to wait on impatient, short-haired women with calves that resemble a series of marshmallows impaled on a stick.

I approach my coworkers, take off my gloves and grab a handful of chips. A skinny Puerto Rican fellow says that his muscles are growing. A dainty Filipino laughs at this while a tall Romanian guy takes his break away from this eclectic duo. A corn-rowed black woman with tattooed forearms and thick biceps walks past the door and into the bread storage.

Everyone is required to wear a name tag that also includes the city from which we were hired. Minor research has led me to conclude that the company recruits inner city workers from areas with weak economies. Many dishwashers are from suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and a vast majority of waiters come from Florida, the state that played a huge role in the 2008 economic collapse. Tent cities were popping up everywhere in the Sunshine State because of all the foreclosures of cookie-cutter neighborhoods built and then sold overnight to attract a new flock of snowbirds and recent retirees with poor credit histories.

Since the company is based out of Miami, it is easy for them to suck up all the Floridians desperate for jobs. I searched for two months and found nothing in St. Petersburg before I landed an interview at the Hilton in downtown Tampa. Now here I am lifting heavy boxes like a stevedore for a wage just above minimum alongside immigrants from poorer nations and the young American working class from areas of little economic promise.

When I look around in provisions, I often find that I am the only white American around. It is difficult to avoid treading in racist waters when I realize that members of my particular pigmentation are not often employed in these environs. Rather, almost all the department heads, major officers, and corporate hotshots are white; they are not the ones straining under the weight of sixty pounds of watermelon. 

I don't want to feel like I shouldn't be here as though I am merely visiting and can come and go whenever I please. It is true:  I am fortunate that I do not absolutely need this job unlike many of the international employees who have few choices but to stay here because this job is more reliable than the available options at home. I have observed the popular sentiment that certain individuals feel they are above such a line of work, but I find dignity in the type of labor that results in sweat stains under my arms.

JoAnne delivers another pallet consisting of strawberry preserves, corn starch, and various shapes of pasta. The waiters finish their chips and put their gloves back on. We dismantle another pallet in what seems like an endless series. We ask where each box should go, and JoAnne points a gloved finger and says, "Over there," until eventually we know exactly where everything belongs.