As the first of April rolls around, nobody is immune to the onslaught of cleverly crafted pranks, including fake advertisements and fabricated news stories. This year, the cruise industry is taking center stage with some of the best April Fools' pranks of 2023.

Carnival Cruise Line enters the airline business

One of crew members' most challenging tasks while working on cruise ships is keeping all guests happy. Different guest requirements, needs, and expectations are always hard to please. Crew members on board the ship are trained and experienced to anticipate customer expectations. Yet, no matter how hard we try- some people will always be unhappy. Regardless of the crew member's efforts, some guests are just focused on finding mistakes and something to complain about.

I never accepted becoming part of the poor and biased management system on board the ship. I met only a few great managers during my long career in the bar department. Those people are a real rarity; they are gems in the management system on cruise ships.

The maritime network Crew Pages, dedicated to creating equal employment opportunities in the industry, announced a new platform connecting the job-seeking and recruitment process and making it much easier than it has ever been.

There are several policies and safety protocols to follow when you work on a cruise ship. One of those is called in port manning. 

When you work on a cruise ship, time off is very important to maintain a healthy mindset and productivity. Most crew members use every single minute to get off the ship, even a short stroll at the cruise ship Terminal. To be completely honest, working in the bar department as a bar waiter and bartender gave me a lot of time off. Whenever the ship docks in the Port, most guests go outside, meaning few bartenders and bar servers are required to be on duty.

The officer position on a cruise ship is one of the best jobs in the world. Of course, as any other iceberg, we can only see the beautiful side of it. Underneath that iceberg is huge sacrifice, commitment, years of challenging tests in nautical school, and many other things. But when everything gets perfectly in balance, and when hard work pays off, the reward is fabulous.

On a cruise ship, there are many places with a significant risk of injury. Most companies are spending a lot of money on adequate training to raise awareness about proper behavior and conduct to reduce the number of accidents. Still, there are thousands of injuries on cruise ships worldwide every day. Whenever the crew member steps on board the ship, there is much information about maintaining the safety level on an acceptable scale. 

In the company where I have spent nearly a decade, the bar steward position was one of the toughest jobs. There were two primary ways in which people got that kind of job on the cruise ship. Number one was by getting a job on the land through the agency. I don't know how much clarity and credibility the agency information provided to the candidates on the land for the bar steward job. However, the second way of getting the bar steward job was internally from the cruise ship company.

People come to work on cruise ships for many different reasons. Some to feed their adventurous spirit, others only for money, and some people join the cruise ships because they want something different in their lives. Others join the cruise ship because they need the challenge, career progression opportunity, or something else.