WHEN I first arrived on board The Grand Princess, my cruise ship, in December 2019 one of the first things that happened was my passport was taken from me and kept by my employers. I wouldn’t get it back until a couple of hours before I as evacuated off the ship by the British Consulate in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak in March 2020.
The company also took my account details and photographed me for an id card. I just gave everything away. Accepted it all as my new life, real pay as a musician, travel and necessary for customs control in the USA, Mexico and Hawaii. After all I was now a foreign immigrant, a foreign worker, in a foreign country.
From that point on I would no longer be using money unless I left the ship at a port for a few hours – which meant using dollars or Mexican peso. While on board the ship I would not be using money at all. I would be eating the food at a crew canteen and at a passenger buffet for free. I was now on board my workplace 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, apart from a few hours off in ports at the end of a 3 or 4 days at sea. Like working at Tesco but living and sleeping there too.
If I wanted to buy a bottle of corona at the crew canteen or a Hershey’s Bar from the crew shop I would use my employee number. If I wanted the internet I was allowed to use one device only for around 30 days at 60 dollars a month (about fifty quid) – taken directly out of my account.
Personally I found that totally confusing. Aside from the changes in time zones, I was further confused by the changes in hour specific to my ship in the middle of the ocean and no time zone in the world. The roughly 8 hours difference with the UK and initial jet lag just added to the disorientation.
There was also changes in currency and prices. How much did everything cost, which bank note was which, and where was I?
I was in a ship with a maze of decks, doors, stairs, lifts, rooms, cabins and people from all over the world – about 3000 of them.
My first music manager also mumbled instructions badly when he wasn’t telling you that he couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork or spouting alienating new jargon and abbreviations. Apparently the managers work was making his head explode like a mushroom cloud (he made the hand gestures and the noise). Musicians from the Ukraine with English as a second language would ask me what the mumbling manager said and I would tell them I had no idea.
I took me days to get online and then it could vary in signal. Always switching off between rooms. It took me weeks to really get to grips with the crew services offices, which only opened for a couple of hours a day dependent on if it was a sea day or a port day. You would stand and queue in the busiest corridors of the ship, below decks in a flurry of activity, waiting to ask for a new name badge after it had fallen off its weedy magnet or safety pin or about pay discrepancies.
Everything to me was hard to find, hard to see and hard to remember. There were random notices everywhere, on every wall, posters, adverts all new and garbled. To add to this, all my set times would change every day unannounced until the evening before with a piece of paper stuck on my door – which my room mate always seemed to find first having been working as a musician on ships for years with barely a break.
I felt as if I had no idea what was going on.
The easiest part of the whole contract was playing, chatting to audiences and singing. That was something I could literally do with my eyes shut. That was starting to work well with the passengers even if the managers never bothered to watch it or talk to me about it. I was happy not being asked. I was happy to learn song after song off my own volition until I had around 140. Only my room mate and passengers witnessed it.
I didn’t know until the last week or so that if you were persistent and if you had the knowledge you could make your life easier. Because I couldn’t know what I couldn’t know. That proved a satsifying challenge – eventually.
I could never work out which item that I had bought on the ship matched up with with which money was taken out of my account. They weren’t itemised. Once, in my 3 months, I was shocked to be given a print out of my itemised goods at crew services but I never knew I could see one or get one. No one ever said. I only ever got one.
I can look back at my Lloyds Bank account now and find December 19th Grand Princess £81.50 dollars. It had started. What did I buy which ended up costing £81.50 or 106.42 dollars in 3 weeks. I’ve no idea. I didn’t drink often, and 1 or 2 beers, maybe more, sometimes. 60 dollars internet. What else? Bottled water. So 3 dollar drinks. 1 dollar water.
No idea. Probably did but I not until I do my accounts, see if I kept my receipts, will I even begin to guess. To top that Loyds Bank started charging these non-GB purchase fees £2.50 and £2.43. What were they? They were joined by non-GB transfer fees 20p, 50p, on they went.
It would carry on for 3 months – 100 dollars, 13 dollars, transfer fees, purchase fees, to add to the rest. I never bought anything beyond approx 3 dollar coronas and 1 dollar water and once I bought a lead for my ipad. And I didn’t spend much time at the crew bar. Presumably it was right but I couldn’t really tell. Money just started to disappear out of my account.
I made sure I never bought much on shore. A few coffees, the odd beer, a museum entrance fee, an occasional light meal. One taxi ride in Hawaii for a fiver. But I paid a cleaner 40 dollars a month to restock our bathroom and hoover. Money went but at least I could see that. Control it. Choose knowingly like a free person.
As the weeks went by I noticed other random things happening in my account while lying in my bed staring at my mobile. Sky Mobile started charging me extra even though I wasn’t using any calls or any texts. How could that be? I was paying for the ship’s internet. In March they charged me £57 which included £24 for “add ons” what were addons? £12 addons in February and £20 “add ons” in January. Did I have a choice about “add ons”?
Sky Internet at my mum’s had moved onto a rolling contract in my absence – the Skysports and Skybox ended up reaching £100 by March 2020. Monthly fees for Netflix, Amazon Prime, my contact lens, my musical instrument insurance, my £2000 loan which got me here I had agreed to. I wanted. But it felt like you were watching other money go out of your account and then playing catch up on things you never knew you were paying for.
The 10% commission taken out of my net income each month by my agent and the emergency tax applied by HMRC on every monthly payment I felt I had to agree to. I was glad of the agent working on my behalf. I don’t disagree with contributing tax to the country. I wanted to get there, work and play as a professional musican. I could get the tax back – I wondered how long that would take and how people did it. But I will manage.
With the computer training at random times, the emergency drills, the dress code, the fluctuating times we were allowed to eat in passenger areas, the cabin inspections, the last minute on board duties rota at ports, you learnt that you could be asked to do anything at any time with no notice. That if you made excuses for having no tie it would be written up and put on a secret file which you would never see for months. If you did the wrong thing in the wrong area someone from head office might take a sneaky pic and send it to other staff via e mail before you were called in to sign an official document reprimanding you.
I coudn’t make any calls from the ship and yet my mobile still thinks it’s in the US even now. Lloyds Bank is still charging me for foreign transactions blaming Amazon for the latest ones saying that Amazon says I purchased my latest purchases in dollars. Thing is – I didn’t and I have the e mails to prove it.
Sky Mobile has stopped the “add ons” and I have mesaged them to ask what they were. My complaints are in the system somewhere. I dropped everything but the landline off my BT package though they gave me an 18 month binding contract but it’s around £20.
I was totally confused by it all. Utterly confused. Somehow though still optimistic that I will get around it now. Beat it. Teach myself to cut my losses and move on. Not be defeated or enraged by it.
Now I am trying to tackle it all. From home in England with a working phone. With a laptop. With my accounts printed out. Not on a moving ship. Having rejoined the Musicians Union to seek info and advice. With time in a lockdown and a clear head.
Ready for the next contract and the next adventure.
By the end of my time there my later music manger insisted on showing me our contracts which he claimed said that in an emergency – in this case staying on board a ship rife with COVID-19 and cleaning up the same ship at risk to your own life – meant we were obliged to work 13 hour days. Quietly I was thinking – that’s never happening. Not with me. I live by EU working standards at least.
I managed to get my passport returned, maybe they were always going to give it me, and be evacuated on March the 11th. Eventually most of the 1000s of crew and all the passengers were evacuated and quarantined. A few remained. 1 crew member died and a couple of passengers, as far as I know.
A Public Relations guy from Princess Cruises relayed a company promise that I would receive my pay up to the end of my contract. As well as my pay up to the end of an extended contract on the 22nd March and 30 days compensation pay as promised by the CEO to all crew members in an official announcement on March the 19th. My agent felt secure enough to put in a 10% bill for this lump sum.
Today I only received the pay to the end of my contract. None of the rest. I have no idea when the rest is coming. Nobody is telling me except to say I will “probably” receive it. Nobody is promising. No e mails are arriving with any guarantees. All I know anecdotally is that some musicians have their payment in full and I don’t.
It’s all completely out of my control. It’ll might come next month. It might not. They owe me around £100 for a Medical Certificate refund that I’ve been shown is on the ships accounts. Maybe I’ll never see that money again, maybe I will?
The Music Workers Diary 