Just back off of a 10 day on the NCL Joy, and it was wonderful! Brought about 20 plastic ducks to leave around the ship, but I left the labels I had made for them on my desk at home. No biggie, I would just leave them anonymously.
Day Two, we had a late breakfast at The Local. We were chatting and joking with the Hostess, and she saw that I had a duck, so I just held it out to her as a gift.
Well, talk about making someone's day! She'd been on the ship 6 years, and this was her very first duckie! As I thought about it, some of the workers get to move very little in their job, like bartenders, hostesses, etc.
I started just carrying a duck with me every time we left the cabin, and it never failed, we found someone being extra kind or going out of their way to help a passenger, and we gave them the duckie. SO MANY staff have never gotten a duckie - there's an unspoken rule that if an employee sees a cruise duckie, they should leave it for the other passengers to find.
So, please think about giving your cruise ducks to staff that go above and beyond for you - and then fill out a Hero Card for them (or the cruise line equivalent).