CRUISE – Kirkwall/Orkney

Today we learned another important lesson. By now I consider this to be part of our daily training. Well, at least we do sign for training units almost every day, so they must be happening, even though the management almost never makes any attempt at teaching us anything.

Kirkwall looks really old, becasue it is so. I also start to feel old, but that has more to do with my stressful occupation.

We learned that free days are still work days. At least on paper. Yesterday two people from our department had half a day off, one was sick, the other had accumulated too much overtime. Foolishly assuming that a “day off” would mean staying away from work, neither of them punched their ID cards, which turned out to be a great mistake.

Our feverishly stressed-out manager threw his forehead into a deep frown, and relayed his message to s like this: “even if I give you day off, you still need to punch in like regular work.” This supports my earlier feelings that there is no real rest for anyone aboard this vessel.

Oh, and even after two weeks my “photos are shit”, and most of us “should be ashamed to call [ourselves] photographers”. What we need is “quality picture”. But don’t worry, he will teach us. One day. Maybe.

I don’t know what qualifies the man as Photo Manager, other than his Rumanian passport. But if this nightly derailing of his personality continues, I might just complain about him to the masters. And that is something I have never done before, not in approximately twenty years of facing various forms of harassment in school or work place. So you know that the current situation is pretty darn bad.

And thus, we continue to punch our cards, in and out. Work and rest, and groom and feed and repeat. Man, those UK ports sure are nice, but long term they won’t be able to distract from the human tragedy that this job as cruise photographer brings. At least I get paid?!

 

Orkney is so full of history that you can smell it.

PS.: Orkney is a pretty island town. Here are some photos.