Officer of the Dick

On a cruise ship the surveys at the end of the journey are the life blood of management. I have enjoyed mostly good notices and surveys with Royal Caribbean. You occasionally have people that don't like anything. I'm always prepared for the occasional ventrilophobic. Usually the ship management takes it by the numbers, if you get mostly good reviews they never say anything. They place greater value on the good notices than they do the bad ones. At least that is what I thought.

At the first part of the second half of my week. (Yes, that is correct. I split a week and get a shot at two sets of passengers.) Anyway, starting my second half, I was called into the production manager's office and told that I had gotten a couple of bad notices from the first set of passengers. The Production Manager was very serious and I couldn't imagine how I had offended anyone with the act that I do on a ship. It is as clean as a corporate show which is cleaner than a shot on network television. The shows had gone extremely well, and I was really pleased with the reaction. It is hit or miss on a ship given the day you go on, what time, how old the crowd is, and 10 other variables. But it all worked that night and I was very happy. So, I was baffled as to what was bad enough to be called into the office.

Very seriously the PM said, "Two bad notices... One person didn't like that you said the word Ass. Another person objected to your use of the word Pornography." I asked if this was a joke and he got a little offended. "No, they really complained." I started to giggle but he was treating it like it was a big problem. I asked if I had gotten any good notices. He said I got a lot of those. I asked if it was in the report that I got two standing ovations and the Revue show the night before had gotten none. Yes, that was in the report, he said. Do you want me to cut the words? No, he wasn't asking me to change anything, but I ran the risk of getting more bad notices if I didn't. I still couldn't believe we were even having this discussion. It did not seem to matter to the Production Manager that whomever wrote those surveys were obviously way out of touch. "They were passengers," he said. "No problem, " I said. "I will change the word Ass to Hiney....and instead of the word Pornography I will say Fuck Film." His jaw dropped and he began to stutter.

People with a tiny bit of power and no common sense should stop wasting time on ridiculous "meetings". I wish I had a survey to rate his performance. I would be able to use the word Ass in its proper context.

As you were,
Jay