You never know...

As I mentioned in the last blog, I worked on a cruise ship, before that I was in childcare and before that I was in retail customer service. Working on the cruise ship was a direct combination of both. On the ship we had to sell our product, the activities, to the children and the parents. The parents were always the harder sell.

The children generally loved what was going on and if they didn’t they had the option to find something they did like. As long as it wasn’t destroying the ship or killing another child we were fine with it. They were on vacation not at school so we figured they earned a little down time.

Now I am not saying that our programs were for every child, but even on a 3 day cruise that had about 1000 children between the ages of 3 to 18, there was something that they found interesting and fun. We ran from 8am to 1 am through out the cruise. Some of the kids would spend all day in care and that was by their own choice, some would be there all day and that was their parent’s choice. Some of the children were better off in our care then in their parents.

Anyways back to the selling part. To ensure that every child would be properly taken care of and, of course, for safety reasons we would divide them up into age groups and allocate different areas of the ship for the age groups. We staggered lunch and dining times as well as the activities to make sure the groups didn’t clash. For the most part it worked really well. Of course we had some challenges along they way, but one way or another, the job got done and the children were happy. We were trained childcare specialists, Early Childhood Educators, grade school Teachers, recreational leaders, people with college and university certifications and degrees. People who made a conscious choice to work with children as a profession, and to make sure that they do it properly they invested time and money into learning how.

Now here’s the Rub…


They parents of these kids, some working class Joe’s and some professionals, that figured if they have enough brains to figure out how to fuck then they obviously know how to deal with children. We these idiots would pay obscene amounts of money to come on this cruise and come Hell or high water their children were going to enjoy it or die trying. We are talking families of all sizes, some with 1 child and some with 5. All sizes, ages and mental capacities. Along with that came the various demands…

“I want my 3 year old to be with his brother in 10-12’s”

“My 13 month old daughter has to be with her sister in the 5-7’s”

“My gifted 4 year old can only be with 8-9’s”

The last one was my favourite. Just because your child figured out how to wipe his/her own ass before you did does not make the gifted. And for the love of God when we are telling a child about a program don’t tell them that they are going to hate it before they even try it. Right there you just blew the trip for them, thanks for the negativity jerk. We understand that you know your children really well; we realize that you have known them their whole life! But we have seen and cared for hundreds of thousands of children, not as parents but as caregivers. Your kids know what is going to work on you. They also feed of f your trust and attitude. If you tell them something is bad or wrong they trust that you know what you’re talking about and will avoid it like the plague. There goes their chance to experience it for themselves. Good job! That’s some great skills you got there ace. Maybe you should go lead a moral workshop for suicide candidates.

I realized very early in my childcare career that it was harder dealing with upset customers (parents) then in any other field. For example if you worked in the car repair business and your customer pissed you off you could just sabotage the car. I have seen people do some horrendous things to get back at the ones that piss them off. In Childcare it is against our nature to take it out on the child. I mean yeah we could teach them songs that drive the parent’s nuts or tell them a corny joke so they repeat it over and over again on the ride home. But in the end it is the child that ends up paying for it.

On the cruise ship though we were able to find that outlet, the guests would fail to realize what a close, tight knit group the crew were. It was good to have friends in housekeeping, dining, bar and lounge staff. So every once in while when little Billy or Little Susie’s parents decided to take strip of me because their gifted child pissed themselves, after the had been left in our care for over 8 hours, and they were going to make sure that I would be fired and left to die in some God forsaken port. I would wait until they finished their braying; casually walk over to the facilities computer to research the room number, dining rotation, spa appointments, and shore excursions of the offending parent. Maybe just maybe they might notice the glass in their room had been washed in the toilet they use. Or that the many desserts they received, because they were the servers’ favourite table and he really liked them, have actually been sneezed on and handled by urine soaked utensils. Or that their spa appointment was not accidentally double booked and had to be cancelled. Or that the shore excursion they were on the waiting list for did have an opening but because they were such tremendous assholes nobody wanted them around.

Be careful how you treat people. We are not as disconnected as you might think.

Later!