THEY ASK FOR IT

I got an email survey from Carnival Cruise about the cruise I recently organized. I like to be as kind as I can in these types of inquires, because people’s jobs are involved. But saying that, peoples hard earned money is also involved, and if staff is uncaring, that is arrogant and disrespectful to the customer.

Carnival hires wonderful people. They are very good at their jobs for the most part, but some early morning observations of some unsupervised help is in order.

The Lido or 9^th floor of the Carnival Glory has these large windows that surround the cafeteria like deck. One morning while having a cup of coffee, this woman has a squeegee and rag and is supposed to clean the windows. I watch as she slowly, ever so slowly goes from window to window, making me want to get up, take the darn squeegee and do it so it would get done. Moving like she was trying to sneak past a sleeping bear, she goes from window to window. With great effort she applies a solution on the windowpanes, and starts to work. She only cleans the bottom half of the window! She doesn’t even stretch a little.

Then in Spanish she calls out: “Maria” asking a question out loud, apparently Maria is working somewhere on the deck, and she continues to call out for Maria, who seems to ignore her or can’t hear her. She says some more to another woman, who comes in, in Spanish, they laugh and back to semi washing the windows.

In the survey, they ask questions like how I liked working with the sailing crew! Well Carnival Cruise Line if you must know, we didn’t sink, they never said a word to me and so I liked them.

They asked me how the quality of the food was. I guess it was excellent, but I didn’t care for the meals, as they were prepared, nothing really special except maybe the warm chocolate dessert. So what was really the question? The quality of the food was great, but there was no imagination in preparing it.

Getting on board the ship took over one and a half hours! I thought the questionnaire would allow me to vent my frustration about that, but no, they didn’t ask me about that experience, they ask about how it went when I left the boat!

Don’t get me wrong, the cruise was fine, but I hope they really read those surveys they take and adjust, because I love to cruise, I love the sea. Besides, if I get drunk, they can leave me there, I am home already!

AND ANOTHER THING, GET RID OF THESE DAMNED FRUIT FLIES!