Take your family to work week

February 2-9, 2014
What a week! I’m not sure how many people have experienced “take your child to work day,” but imagine that, but for a whole week, when you work and live in the same area. It’s a bit bizarre. Here you are, with an ‘adult’ job, thinking you might finally be figuring out a little bit how to be an adult (as much as you can with this type of life on ships, after all, I don’t even have to make my own bed or food!), and then your family comes to visit. It’s not a bad thing, far from it, but it is strange.
My family actually booked this cruise a while ago, before I was even confirmed to be on this ship. Thankfully, this was one of my options and I could join my parents and uncle for their first ever cruise. Knowing this was coming, I talked to my YPC and Event Manager and worked everything out so I could 1) have most port days off, and 2) have permission to visit their rooms and eat meals with them. I worked a few extra port days last week so I could have more time off this week, I ended up only having to work on one port day, and didn’t have to do Open House! And it may seem odd that I had to get special permission to eat with them and visit their rooms, but it’s company policy that no crew member can be in a guest cabin unless working, in which case they have door stoppers to keep the door open. And, if a guest invites us to have a meal with them, we have to get permission from our event manager before we can join them, preferably a few days in advance so they can let the manager of the dining room (or the Pinnacle or Tamarind) know that we have permission. So, I just had blanket permission to be anywhere my family was.
It was a great week. I had the whole day off in San Juan, so I went on a tour with my family (thanks ShoreX for letting me go!), then we went shopping and out for dinner before we just spent time hanging out around the ship. Somehow that was the only day ashore I spent with them. I had fire drill in Grand Turk, so got off later and talked to them on the beach for a while before I headed down the beach in an attempt to find some of my friends at our usual spot. I had to work St Thomas morning, and by the time I got off the ship with Alex to go to the beach, my family had already gone and come back, and Half Moon Cay we just managed never to find one another (easily done because there were two ships there that day, so the beach was very crowded). Aside from the first night, we at least had dinner together, most often in the dining room. It was nice to have a change from eating in the Lido every single day.