Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship Read online

  My Life on a Cruise Ship

  by Micha Berman

  Copyright © 2007 by Micha Berman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning, or any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Geoff Wagner

  Book design/layout by Media Solutions, San Francisco

  ISBN 978-1-4357-0618-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  To My Parents - More loving guides I could not have asked for.

  To Charol - my wife and love of my life.

  (Honey, please don't read the fifth chapter.)

  Author's Note

  This book is about my personal journey. It is not a book about the cruise line industry, Carnival Cruise Lines, Pekingese dogs, how to find love, or one million ways to make a billion dollars before you turn fifteen. My life on the cruise ship took place in the early 1990's. The world has changed since then, and that includes cruise ships. They are bigger, better, more beautiful and now have these strange things called internet cafes. I love the cruise line industry and all the people I worked with; well, maybe most of them. My story is not meant to harm, hurt, disable, or make anyone cry. Again this is my personal journey; it may be uncouth, politically incorrect, wacky, perverted, illogical, whimsical and disgusting, but I am not sure if I mentioned it already--this is my personal journey. Enjoy and get some diapers on.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 Project Random

  Chapter 2 Love at First Sight

  Chapter 3 Man on the Mike

  Chapter 4 Separate Lives

  Chapter 5 Is There Love on the Love Boat?

  Chapter 6 Ports, Ports, and More Ports

  Photo Section

  Chapter 7 Temptations of the Sea

  Chapter 8 Moments of Crisis

  Chapter 9 Honeymoon Blues

  Chapter 10 Is There Life After Cruising?

  Ten Commandments of Cruise Life

  Addendum: Materials from the Job Search

  Chapter 1 Project Random

  I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up; my biggest dilemma was--I was grown up! Like many college students in their senior year I had imagined a thousand different opportunities for myself ranging from law school to medical school; I even considered the pre-packaged backpacking tour across Europe. I had frequent panic attacks when I realized in several months I would be wearing a black cap and gown, marching among a wave of young ambitious faces. An even stranger vision was seeing myself in a white T-shirt with the words, "I'M LOST" emblazoned on it while running through the crowd indiscriminately firing a machine gun. Time was ticking and I had an idea. I would do something radical; this was no time for ordinary measures. I would lock myself up in my room for seven days with Richard Nelson Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute and conduct my own brainstorming session.

  College had been relatively easy up to this point. I had always received good grades and was your typical student,a member of a fraternity, involved in student government and of course a fan of David Letterman. As my friends headed off to Florida and to ski resorts for winter vacation I remained to read my bible. The silence on campus created a perfect setting for my meditation. One of the first exercises in Bolles' book was to write your own autobiography, something I had hoped someone else would do when I was long dead. I realized through this writing that ever since I was a child I had been entertaining groups of people. I was the ubiquitous jester, the one responsible for entertaining when the teachers weren't looking. My greatest claim to fame involved a seventh grade incident in which I spat into the music teacher's coffee cup without her ever knowing. This was enough to gain the respect of my classmates and by the time I graduated high school I was awarded the highest honor of all at the senior awards ceremony--"class clown." If I hadn't been able to make others laugh I may have easily become a target of the schoolyard bullies due to my emaciated physique. I have always been thin, and at times I have been compared to a stick. My body wasn't going to get me much attention so I relied on my personality. My older brother didn't fare much better; with ears the size of Dumbo, he was often surrounded by fellow schoolmates and taunted with the painful yell,"BIG EARS."

  I developed a list of requirements for the job I would seek. I was looking for a nontraditional job in a creative atmosphere that would allow me to speak to crowds, be around young people and travel at the same time. Several friends suggested I look into the travel industry and in particular the cruise industry, which was one of its hottest sectors. I had stumbled upon the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  My basic knowledge of cruise ships at this point in my life was comparable to the typical American. I was a scholar of the Saturday evening television hit the Love Boat. Images of love affairs at sea and murder plots filled my mind when I heard the word "cruising." The truth was Americans didn't know very much about cruising. Only 5% of the American public have ever been on a cruise. How many times do you come across people who have worked on a cruise ship? But I still had the Love Boat to work with. Having no intention of serving drinks like Isaac nor any illusions of becoming a doctor or captain, I narrowed my choices down to gopher the purser and Julie the cruise director. Gopher was just too goofy. I had arrived at a very scary conclusion: I wanted to become Julie McCoy.

  Yet, I knew instinctively I had found the perfect match. All cruise ships have ?cruise staff ', the entertainers and personnel who run the activities. These are the people who greet passengers as they arrive on a cruise ship as well as entertain and host all the fun events on board like bingo, shuffleboard and dance contests. I began to imagine the job. I pictured myself on a ship sailing into the crimson sunset, surrounded by exotic women and fruity tropical drinks. My mouth began to water, a good sign indeed. It was time to begin searching for my dream position.

  Every job search needs a home, a place of operation. I had no other alternative but to turn my room into an office, buying file cases, staplers, folders, and markers. I was opening my own company with one objective, to get Micha Berman a job on a cruise ship. I even went so far as to give my company a name, Operation Cruise, Inc. There was only one way to become an expert on the cruise line industry, and that was to read everything published about it. I ordered every possible cruise line publication and had it delivered to my dorm. My mail overflowed with cruise magazines. You name it, I got it, Cruise Travel Magazine, Ocean and Cruise News, Cruising, Cruise Digest Reports, among others. Drowning myself in this material I soon learned to speak the language; I could rattle off the names of every single ship in a fleet in one breath as well as the dates new ships were coming out. A transformation had begun.

  My dorm room, once sparse and clean became a jungle of boxes, papers, folders, magazines and envelopes. The walls in my room were plastered with large white billboards with inspirational messages on them. My favorite one was from What Color Is Your Parachute, a billboard with a hundred "nos" on it and finally one big "yes" at the bottom. Hung above my desk, a poster with a beautiful cruise ship on it and the city of Miami in the background glowed holy light. Another crucial item was my phone and answering machine on which I would leave current news of the cruise line industry on the tape daily, labeling it Mic's Cruise News. During the months I was looking for a cruise job I let everyone I met know I was job searching. I visualized the whole search as a big game, filling my walls with strategy charts and various diagrams tracking my contacts. It was becoming clear that I was creating a war room, heading into uncharted territory
and loving the whole experience.

  Though I considered my job search a full-time position, I still had college to worry about. I created office hours for myself and fit my class work around my hours of operation. I was running my own class; a mixture of marketing, public speaking, and creative writing. Each morning I woke up and began my workday in my office. At one point, I ran out of space and turned my refrigerator into an extra filing cabinet, an unpopular move with my parents, but providing a uniquely chilled resumé. I quickly discovered that human resources departments in cruise lines were dead ends and were to be avoided at all costs. The question remained, if I were to avoid the human resources department who was I then to contact? The answer was three words: The Entertainment Director.

  My mission was now clear. I needed to be within arms length of an Entertainment Director. To make contacts within the cruise lines required major networking and networking was the heart and soul of my entire job search. I intended to connect through several different channels gathering as many contacts as I could through family and friends. Often I wrote congratulation letters to people I had read about in magazines who had been promoted or won awards. However, my largest networking effort was known as Project Random. I wrote to every one of my college and fraternity alumni in the cities of New York, Miami and San Francisco on the whimsical chance that one of these individuals had connections to employees in the cruise lines. Creating a database was so cumbersome, I had to hire another student as an intern. No ordinary letter was sent out. I carefully tailored each letter to alumni; the words emphasized our family bond and the chance of helping a young person early in his career. Sometimes I got lucky and actually found names of alumni who worked directly in the industry. In fact one of the Vice Presidents of a major cruise line was an alumnus and it took one letter and a phone call to set up an interview with the Entertainment Director.

  Along with the letters to alumni and Entertainment Directors, I always included my resumé. I figured why not reach out to a wide array of people and get their inside scoops on what made a powerful resumé? One professor suggested I look at magazines and model my resumé with the fashion and style of magazine advertising. At the top of my resumé, like a Broadway marquee, I printed in large boldface: "Conversationalist, Host, Actor, Creative Programmer.

  During the time of these mailings I was always on the look out for any type of conventions that featured cruise line representatives. One day I received a flyer in the mail about a Travel Review Conference in Washington D.C.. Cruise line representatives were streaming in to within an hour of where I lived and there was no choice but to be there and meet them. The fee to get into the conference was exorbitant for a frugal college student like myself so I called the organizers and asked if I could volunteer my time to help run the event. A day before the event I showed up at the hotel to stuff gift bags, a requirement for all volunteers. I received the best job, responsibility for the distribution of name tags to attendees of the conference.

  Perusing the conference guest list I was delighted to see that the President of The Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), a cruise lobbying group, was to give a speech. I took special care to watch for his arrival since this one man had more than enough contacts to land me jobs in any cruise line out of Miami. After an hour or so most of the name tags were claimed except for his; it seemed I was plain out of luck. Dejected, I began to pack up my belongings and was about to grab some snacks from the courtesy table when down the hall I spied a man in a suit approaching. Could this be my knight in shining armor? He was heading directly for my table. "Hi, I'm Jerome Gottesman. "Jackpot" rang in my mind as I greeted him and gave him his name tag. Too nervous to start any type of conversation, I smiled politely and before I could say a word he was gone. "You stupid idiot, the only reason you're here is to speak to him; now go run after him," I angrily chastised myself. I watched him as he made his rounds, shaking hand after hand. Time was ticking. He broke away from one group and headed to the men's room.

  Since this was my only chance to meet him, I darted after Mr. CLIA and approached him, at of all places, the urinal. Of course, I had the courtesy to wait for him to zip up his pants but after that I had no mercy. I gently tapped him on the shoulder."Um, Hi my name is Micha Berman and I had, I mean, I have been researching the cruise line industry. I am interested in getting a cruise staff position and wanted to ask you for advice." I finally got the words out and now I expected a very polite brush off. Slowly, he turned around. There was a moment of dead silence followed by a gentle smile."Well hello there. How are you? Great to hear such enthusiasm." He suggested some relevant books, which could aid my search. Needless-to-say, I had already devoured the literature. This man disguised as an angel, disclosed the magical information every job searcher craves, his secretary's name and phone number."Call anytime," he said. And with those words he hurried out of the bathroom for his speech. I desperately wanted to give him my resumé before he left and then remembered I had brought an article printed in the Washington Post the day before about cruising. Sticking two of my resumés in between the rolled up article, I rushed after him. "This will make good reading for the plane ride back," I said. He accepted the newspaper and slipped it into his briefcase. That afternoon all I could do was laugh and think of this man reading my resumé on the plane back to New York. I was truly going nuts!

  Then one day it happened. Project Random began to bear fruit as my mailbox overflowed with letters from alumni. On average, I expected to receive over ten pieces of mail each day. Soon it was taking an hour a day just to sort through the mail. Like Charlie breaking open each Wonka chocolate, I hoped and prayed that the letter I was holding in my hands would hold the magic key to the cruise kingdom. My letters had struck a chord and although many alumni admitted they knew no one in the cruise line business, their kindness and support was incredible. Some sent articles, others maps, and some even ripped pages out of their phone books with the numbers and addresses of cruise lines highlighted. I received dinner invitations and several alumni even offered me a place to stay while I was visiting, an offer I would gladly take. Some of the correspondence was very emotional. The mother of one of the alumni wrote in detail how her daughter had died on a street in New York when she was hit by a tractor-trailer. One letter begged me to stay in contact after I got my cruise job--now this was a person who understands the meaning of reverse networking!

  Some alumni called me directly. One early morning I woke up to the phone ringing. Half asleep, I mumbled my way through the conversation, took down the name and number and fell back to sleep. Later in the day, I was unable to decipher the phone number but the name was very clear, Dr. Crown. I searched through all the names of the alumni in my computer and finally came up with a match. When I called and spoke with Dr. Crown, his southern accent and soft demeanor intrigued me, but his words seemed peculiar. He invited me to come by his office any time, but wouldn't give me details about any contact he had. I showed up at the address and asked for Dr. Crown's apartment, which also served as his office. As Dr. Crown opened the door a strange odor emanated from the room. It was a stale smell, something old, decaying. Immediately I had images of a serial killer, not an elderly southern gentleman. Dr. Crown could not have been taller than five feet, his old shaggy clothes matching his unshaven face.

  "Welcome, come in young man and make yourself comfortable," he said in a creepy tone. I stepped in cautiously to a studio apartment that looked more like a chemistry laboratory. The room was filled with books and as I looked around I saw little furniture and strangely enough no bed. Dr. Crown sat down at a desk and asked me to take a seat. Warning bells went off in my mind but I figured what harm could this little old man do? Apparently, he had been working for over a decade trying to come up with his own cure for AIDS. He was completely committed to the cause, working 12 to 13 hours a day and then pulling out a little foam mattress from his closet to sleep on at night. For what seemed like an eternity he spoke passionately about the AIDS crisis.
It seemed fascinating but I didn't see the connection to the cruise line industry. Before I could ask any questions, Dr. Crown began staring at my neck as if he noticed something. "Has anyone ever told you that you might have an enlarged thyroid?" he mentioned casually. "No, not really," I responded. He said he noticed a protrusion from my neck and was curious whether I had certain symptoms of an enlarged thyroid."Are you tired often?" and "Do you get cold easily?" he asked.

  What was really strange was that all the symptoms he had listed I had experienced in the last year. "Would you mind if I feel your thyroid?" he asked. "I guess not," I said before realizing what I was getting into. Dr. Crown slowly rose from his chair and crept behind me. I felt his cold hands wrap around my neck and chills tingled down my spine. I had two thoughts. First, that this man was going to strangle me and I would die in this little decayed studio and end up with my head in a little jar. And second, I thought this man would make a pass at me. I expected a peck, nibble or kiss but nothing happened as he rubbed my neck and said I should probably get it checked out. I needed to get out of the apartment. I quickly explained my search for a cruise job and Dr. Crown responded by saying he was looking for help in his research and thought I might want to earn extra money. Yeah extra money as a love slave, no thanks. "Thank you, Dr. Crown, but I really must be going." As I closed the door behind me I was happy to have escaped. I couldn't help but enjoy the fresh air of the world outside. "No more visits to creepy old alumni," I muttered as I walked back towards campus.

  Each day at lunch I tore into the pile of letters waiting for me. I separated the mail into two piles, duds and non-duds. Duds were defined as nice letters but with no real contacts into cruise lines, while non-duds represented the jewels, actual contacts into cruise lines. For the first couple weeks I only received duds but soon my luck turned.The first letter I received in the non-dud category came from a college alumni named Jack who worked for Merrill Lynch in Southern Florida. In the letter he mentioned he had a friend who worked for a cruise line and attached his business card at the bottom edge. Throughout my entire job search I always found it nerve-racking to pick up and call people I did not know. It felt like seventh grade when you had a crush and were terrified to pick up the phone to ask for a date. I dialed the numbers quickly and held the phone to my ear. A man answered and I knew immediately it was Jack. "Well, Micha nice to hear from you," he said. We talked a little but he seemed distracted and distant. I heard kids in the background and realized that this was probably a bad time for him to talk when the conversation turned dramatically. "You know Celebrity Cruises is undergoing some major changes," he said. Did I know, what kind of question was that, after all I had been eating and drinking cruise magazines for months. "Yeah, I know they recently combined with another cruise line," I answered with confidence. "Oh, I see you have been doing your homework; let me make a couple of calls," Jack replied, acknowledging my intensity. Jack's friend would turn out to be the Vice President of Finance for Celebrity Cruise Lines.