An abomination of a company and a terrible place to work - Sales Associate Starboard Cruise Services Employee Review

Lets start with the ship itself. There is so much favouritsm onboard that if your manager dislikes you for some reason, you're guaranteed to fail. Depending on where you are in the world, the time difference between you and Head Office in Florida can be as great as 12 hours. It's impossible to make them aware of your concerns, not that they do anything to rectify them anyways. In the interview process, they severely exaggerated the benefits of working for this company. We were told that you would come back with tons of money, you would have lots of time off to explore the ports, etc. Granted, you can make a fair amount of money, but what they don't tell you is that only happens if you have competent management and sales team. The lack of communication between management to sales team was incredible, although they made sure to let us know when head office was unhappy with us, which seemed to be fairly often. Nothing we did right was ever acknowledged. If we did something well, we were told we could have done better. I don't need my employer to hold my hand and walk me through my job everyday but a little recognition for hitting sales targets, closing a good sale, taking initiative, etc. would have been nice. The fact that the only reason someone gets promoted to management is because they didn't quit after their second contract doesn't really inspire confidence. I know that they have to complete manager training, but I think sensitivity and maybe common sense training should be mandatory as well. I understand that this is contract work and that people will leave throughout the duration of your contract, but it's incredibly difficult to spend so much time building a professional relationship with one manager, and being given the opportunity to advance from sales associate, only to have them be replaced with someone who it seems, should not ever be working in a customer service industry due to their lack of common sense, people skills, time management, etc. This goes back to the favouritsm problem. There are 2 typical days while working on board; it's either a port day or a sea day. Port day: The way it's explained in the interview is if you're docked in port, you have the day off. Not so much. If you're LUCKY, your manager won't find a reason for you to come in during the day. Most of the port days were spent in the shops either cleaning, re-stocking, doing inventory counts or spent in the locker cleaning up the back stock. If it wasn't that, you were coming in for 2 hour training sessions on topics like 'how to talk to guests properly', or whatever the manager felt it was necessary to talk about. Sea day: You start at 8am and work straight through to 11pm, with a half hour lunch and 2.5 hour dinner break. After 7 sea days in a row, you start to get a bit loopy and if you're manager doesn't deem it necessary, you will not have a day off, regardless of how dead it is in the shops. Theoretically. you're supposed to be finished at 11pm, however management will probably keep you until midnight or later, cleaning and straightening up the shop. Don't expect to get out before 2am if head office is coming on board for a visit the next day. After working for 14 hours and having to get up at 8am, its inconceivable that you should want to go to bed. I was actually told 'well you should have napped on your break'. The perks of this job were awesome. I got to see places I never would have on my own, such as Bora Bora, Tahiti, New Zealand, etc, but the stress of the actual job isn't worth it. Not to mention you will bring barely anything home unless you hoard everything you earn and don't have any fun at all.