As you probably know, I recently began a job on a river cruise in southern Alaska for American Cruise Lines, and after I've had an opportunity to upload all the photos to my computer, I'll be sharing them here. But today, I'd like to talk about how I lasted a week onboard before the unremitting schedule and working conditions forced me to jump ship.
I had been told in the past by former employees of the company that it was an unpleasant place to work and that the company was not very professional. I tend to ignore things like that when making my choices for new employment as oftentimes, those opinions can be chalked up to bitterness. So, back to the beginning. I worked for Norwegian Cruise Lines, working out of Hawaii for the better part of two years before a family emergency forced me to postpone returning, which the company didn't take kindly to and forbid me from returning. As a result, I began looking for other work, including multiple cruise lines and a deployment to a research facility in Antarctica, which financial difficulties prevented me from being able to take. One of the cruise lines I applied for was ACL, in the beginning of June, and was contacted about scheduling an interview in the beginning of July.
The interview went well and I was offered the position the next day, so I put in my two week notice and began making preparations to ship out. Things started becoming slightly suspicious for me when it took the company until three days before I was scheduled to start to tell me what ship I would be going to: the American Spirit in Juneau, Alaska. The days passed by until the day before I was scheduled to fly out, I received my ticket information, which I later found out was due to the company only having one employee in their travel department.
Still, despite my suspicions starting to rise, I was excited to finally be getting back on board a ship (if you've never lived and worked on the water, it's impossible to describe just how much it becomes part of who you are and draws you back to it every time you get on land), and start my first position as a sous chef in nearly a decade of restaurant work. The pay wasn't fantastic, but with no bills or food expenses, it would give me the opportunity to save up about 3 to 4 grand during my six week rotation.
I arrived in Juneau on the night of Friday, July 21 and was put up in a hotel for the night before going to the ship on the morning of Saturday, July 22. And that's when things started to fall apart. The ship was hideous, and the crew 'cabins' had no doors, only curtains between the 'rooms' and the communal hallway. And as soon as I walked on board, with no introduction or orientation at all, I was immediately thrown to work because they were two chefs short as the entire cooking team had quit the previous week.
And it only got worse from there. That first day, I worked straight through until 2030 in the evening, which I was willing to chalk up to first day, short staff, so I wrote it off and expected the breaks and meals to start on day two. As it had been nearly a year since I had worked full time in a restaurant and had been working a part time call center job, my feet and legs were in agony the next day. But, again, this had happened before and I expected that the pain would begin to subside in the next day or so. This wasn't to be as on neither day two nor day three was I given a break or even a meal opportunity. As I wasn't getting any opportunity for my feet to heal, the pain in them just continued to grow day by day, alongside massive swelling in my ankles and rashes on both feet (things I have never had happen to me before), and there was no doctor on board the ship, there was only a medic.
On my fifth day working on board the ship, I took my only actual break of my entire week, when I lied about going to sit down for 20 minutes and didn't go back to work for 45 minutes. And while I don't want to misrepresent the head chef's position, I was told that when I finished my prep work for the day, I would get to take a break, but as I was still learning the menu and was given crew dinner to prepare every night, my prep was never finished early enough before dinner to take a break. And so, I soldiered on through the growing pain, occasionally going to dry storage to sit down for 5 to 10 minutes, or taking a bathroom break and sitting in my room for a couple minutes.
I really did intend to stick it out for the entire six weeks, but by the following Saturday, July 29, I had had enough and while they were having us move rooms, I simply took the opportunity while I had all my bags packed and with me to simply walk off the ship, book a flight that day and fly home, to arrive on Sunday, July 30. Upon arriving home, I found that in that one week period, I lost six pounds due to lack of food and was suffering from major headaches and pains due to dehydration, caused by lack of easy access to adequate liquids while working.
Now, after nearly a week back home, my body has begun to heal and I've started planning my next steps, which will involve filing a labor complaint against the company and potentially filing a lawsuit against them as well, depending on whether a lawyer determines if I have a viable case or not. And so ends literally my shortest job ever, and thank heavens for that because it truly was an American Nightmare working for American Cruise Lines, and I will use every breath to ensure that no one that I know ever makes the same mistake I did.