Will My Sign Off Ever Come?

April 19, 2012

Unexpected news interrupted today’s regularly scheduled phone call with shore. Once a month our shoreside T&D manager, Lisa, conducts a one-on-one phone call with each ship’s T&D manager to discuss any issues, successes or needs that exist. Our phone call today started off very much in a traditional vein. About halfway through the call, however, we began to discuss a plan to bring me to Miami prior to my next contract. When she brought up my employee movement record on her screen to see what my vacation dates were she realized that something had changed.

I no longer had a sign-off date listed on my record! Knowing the alarm that this would cause me, Lisa immediately did some research. She quickly identified that my scheduled replacement was a new T&D in the process of making the transition to ship life for the first time. The transition was not successful and she had chosen to resign. Completely understandable, but it left me with an open-ended contract. Since I knew that a T&D on another ship was already overdue by two weeks and still awaiting a replacement,  this news did not make my heart sing.

This is one of the worst parts of working a shipboard contract. While we all have a sign-off date it is never firm until you are walking down the gangway. I have known several people who received word the night before, or even the morning or, departure that they needed to stay on. One crewmate had this happen three straight times! We understand that we can’t leave a position uncovered, but it really is distressing if you are counting the days until sign-off and then that number reset on you. That’s why I’ve decided to stop counting. Doesn’t do any good to make myself any crazier than I am.

The trick is that Rosie is scheduled to join me for the last eight days of my cruise. I can only hope it will be the last eight days. It is too expensive to try to change her ticket. I’m also pretty sure that she doesn’t want to stay two days in Rome alone after my scheduled sign off hits if I am not able to sign off when I expected. Those days in Rome were supposed to be our vacation prior to returning to the States. I really hope they won’t be threatened. Lisa assured me that they are working hard on providing a replacement, but we have had several resignations of newly hired T&Ds recently so this becomes questionable. The absolute minimum number of T&Ds that we need in the fleet right now to ensure everyone can take a vacation is 14. However, I believe as of today we are at 13. Eighteen is the more ideal number to give ultimate flexibility. So, you can see that the odds are not stacked in my favor at the moment.

In the meantime there is work to do. The crew still needs to be trained and business units and people need to be cared for. So, that’s what you do when you know you can’t control anything else. Let the waiting game commence!

And the adventure continues . . .