Day 46 At Sea

We awoke this morning unsure if we had changed time last night. So we turned on the TV and saw it was 6:50 AM so John said well I am going to sleep some more of the clocks didn’t change. So shortly after 8 am we decided to go for breakfast in the dining room. That is when the entertainment director came on and announced it was 9:10 AM!  What??  We had missed breakfast in the dining room and I wanted to attend a coffee hour talk at 9:30 with four female team members. So we hurried up to the lido and I had a quick cold breakfast then went down to the second floor to hear the coffee hour chat. Good thing they offer tea too!

The coffee chat was with Maja (Guest a services Manager), Natalie (Shore Excursions Manager), Twinkle (Food & Beverage leader) and Chantal (Future Cruise Bookings).

These ladies offered such insightful comments that we stayed to chat for 70 minutes when these conversations usually last 30 minutes. 

A couple of noteworthy things I will share with you.  

1. Maja was offered jobs with both Princess cruise lines and Holland America initially. Princess offered her $700 per month. Holland America would pay her $70 per day. (Maja had to ask, “ I am sorry is that One- seven or seven-zero dollars per day?). HAL would pay her $2100 per month in 2004 when she joined - a huge difference!
2. Maja also said that this cruise in particular has been really difficult. So difficult that she was prepared to hand in her resignations a couple of times during this 50 day cruise. Remember her job is to manage the front desk and hear all the complaints!  And each time she was wanting to quit, a guest happened to come up to her and thank her for all that she was doing. So remember people, a simple thank you goes a long way!
3. The internet outage affected employers as much as guests. Two of these women have children back at home and they were unable to have their daily conversations with their kids while the internet wasn’t working on the ship. 

After the coffee chat we ordered coffee and tea to our room to enjoy sitting on the balcony. J thought a carafe of coffee would be appreciated so we ordered fruit and cookies to have a coffee break on our Verandah!

For lunch we found two couples seated at a six person table. We knew one couple through cruise critic and the other through bridge and they are Canadians so we sat in between them!  They didn’t know one another when we joined them but we introduced everybody and had a lovely long chin wag about travel stories!

After lunch J went to bridge and I watched a movie “Family Squares” which will not make the top 100 list but was appropriate for this demographic! One matriarch of a family died and the story is about the family left behind bickering after her death, then finding common ground, all set in COVID lockdown times!

I then went and spent some time transferring my best of my 50 day HAL cruise pictures from my phone to my laptop. Finally after supper we got that squared away and now have a 12 minute slideshow to show friends on the ship. 

We plan to invite a few couples to watch it over these last few sea days!