Is he in trouble? Crew members please respond!

[NowCruisin]

Hello everyone. I recently was on my first Royal Caribbean cruise, a very small ship, approx 2,000 passengers, and it was a nightmare. Rerouted and docked at nowhere due to Hurricane Matthew & Nicole. 1/2 passengers left. I stayed. Nothing to do but hang out and make the most of it. Struck up conversations with the same bartender. He gave me his email and the last night, met me on the pool deck and talked for about 15 mins. He never sat down saying Big Brother was watching. He was off the clock but in uniform because he had just finished his shift. No one else was out there at 1am until OF COURSE, his supervisor walked by. At that point, he said I better go, gave me a hug and left. By the time I got back to my cabin, I had an email from him with a few pics of him from previous ports. Before leaving the next morning I dropped a gratuity envelope with money in it for him in the guest services box and I emailed him back a few days later. No response. He told me he isn't too tech savvy though. And his wifi rate is 36cents day / 12cents midnight. I don't know how often he signs on. Yet remember, that night before I got back to my room, he already sent me email with smilies and pics of him at ports.

 

So my questions are this:

1) OMG DID HE GET FIRED OR REPRIMANDED JUST FOR A QUICK TALK? it was innocent talking just was going to have a pen pal.

 

2) Do the cruise lines monitor gmail email addresses? Can they read the crew's emails?? That would be an oops......because there is coy flirting in them

Or...

 

3) Today has been just a week since I left the ship. I know he works 70+ hrs, maybe it seems longer to me than it is? Land time vs sea time?

 

I just feel HORRIBLE not knowing if this poor guy got in trouble. He's on his first contract that began only a month ago. I'm sick over this, he is such a nice guy.

Thanks in advance!

[Ken at the beach]

Call me cynical but it sounds like he got his extra gratuity for befriending you and has now moved on and is making friends with other guests.

[Ocean Dancer]

They are NOT to frat with the guests. He went over the line with you.

 

A. Yes he's on probation with more work hours and may have had his internet suspended.

 

B. He may have been relieved of his duties.

 

C. He was just playing you, but at a cost to himself.

 

What ship was this? This relationship is going nowhere.

[mollyeilis]

Call me cynical but it sounds like he got his extra gratuity for befriending you and has now moved on and is making friends with other guests.

 

 

 

I'm right there with your cynicism.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[marti315]

Call me cynical but it sounds like he got his extra gratuity for befriending you and has now moved on and is making friends with other guests.

 

Completely Agree with this. I'm sure he is a great guy with a lot of stories but he has another few thousand guests to try to make their vacation more enjoyable and possibly get additional gratuity. Don't take it personally, if you enjoyed your vacation that is what matters.

 

No he did not get fired or reprimanded for talking to a guest for a lengthy period of time, i've had plenty of those type conversations, it just makes me tip them well and come back again.

[DragonOfTheSeas]

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

 

This sounds like the OP was on the Grandeur Hurricane Matthew cruise.

Edited October 20, 2016 by DragonOfTheSeas

[TBone2K]

Just FYI it isn't possible for anyone to snoop on a secure website like GMAIL.

 

I wouldn't sweat it if you don't hear from them again. Could be any number of reasons.

[Biker19]

This sounds like the OP was on the Grandeur Hurricane Matthew cruise.....

....and the bartender was simply chatting up a guest.

[Rosy1013]

Call me cynical but it sounds like he got his extra gratuity for befriending you and has now moved on and is making friends with other guests.

 

My thoughts as well...

[A&L_Ont]

Call me cynical but it sounds like he got his extra gratuity for befriending you and has now moved on and is making friends with other guests.

 

Very possibly.

Edited October 20, 2016 by A&L_Ont

[Cruising Golfer]

He was drawn, quartered, and made to walk the plank... :eek:

[looking4info]

He has been emailing his wife and kids and let them know he was able to wire them few extra$$$$ this month. You should be getting a thank you email from them in the next week or two.

[orville99]

Just FYI it isn't possible for anyone to snoop on a secure website like GMAIL.

 

UHHH...NO. There's a reason gmail is free - it is by no means a secure environment, and

 

Any email service can be monitored by whomever controls the systems it routes through. That's why workplace privacy is such a hot button issue today. Employers routinely monitor both inbound and outbound traffic on their systems. All they have to do is turn encryption off, and everything is visible if they want to look at it.

 

The servers at my employer trash any incoming email that's not encrypted that comes to by business email account, but my gmail account gleefully accepts them.

[A&L_Ont]

UHHH...NO. There's a reason gmail is free - it is by no means a secure environment, and

 

Any email service can be monitored by whomever controls the systems it routes through. That's why workplace privacy is such a hot button issue today. Employers routinely monitor both inbound and outbound traffic on their systems. All they have to do is turn encryption off, and everything is visible if they want to look at it.

 

The servers at my employer trash any incoming email that's not encrypted that comes to by business email account, but my gmail account gleefully accepts them.

 

And if he did nothing against his employment contract by email or in person this crew member will still be employed.

[NowCruisin]

It's completely fine, no different than any other bar, their livelihood depends on it. It's all a part of the game and I am not naive to that fact! :)

 

I was concerned however, because I started seeing things online about crew no longer allowed to 'hang out' with guests, and didn't know how far they'd take it. When he saw his boss, his eyes got big and he said "we're talking about the cruise". He's new too, so maybe he wasn't sure if he'd get reprimanded either.

 

I'm okay with not hearing from him again, I just wasn't okay with the thought that I may have aided in getting this guy a reprimand.

 

Thanks!

[A&L_Ont]

He has been emailing his wife and kids and let them know he was able to wire them few extra$$$$ this month. You should be getting a thank you email from them in the next week or two.

 

This made me LOL.

[chengkp75]

Crew are limited in their access to guest areas during their off times, by rank. Typically, bar staff, wait staff, and housekeeping are not allowed to be in guest areas when not working. NCL has had for years a strong non-fraternization policy with guests, so it would simply be up to the supervisor to determine whether discipline was warranted. The Surveillance Department, that runs all the cameras around the ship, report to corporate outside the chain of command to the Captain, and they are empowered to hand out discipline for acts that they witness on video. Since you weren't in your cabin, I doubt he'd get fired, but if the hug was witnessed, it didn't help his cause.

 

I know of one Hotel Director who was fired for spending too much time in a guest's cabin, even though it was an old family friend.

 

And while they don't do it often, as others have pointed out, any communication done on a ship's computer is available for review by the employer. If the e-mails were sent using a personal laptop over wifi, I don't think the ship's servers save this data.

[SteadyBetty]

No, he didn't get fired.

 

He got tipped for his "services" and he has moved on to someone else to "service".

[reedl]

UHHH...NO. There's a reason gmail is free - it is by no means a secure environment, and

 

Any email service can be monitored by whomever controls the systems it routes through. That's why workplace privacy is such a hot button issue today. Employers routinely monitor both inbound and outbound traffic on their systems. All they have to do is turn encryption off, and everything is visible if they want to look at it.

 

The servers at my employer trash any incoming email that's not encrypted that comes to by business email account, but my gmail account gleefully accepts them.

 

When you visit a secure website like Gmail, Hotmail, or the like, you use an SSL connection which guarantees that the connection between your computer and the server you are accessing has not been intercepted. That is why the connection to your bank is always secure also. If there is anyone who is decrypting the connection in the middle, then it would have to be re-encrypted with a different encryption key which would cause an HTTPS error on your browser.

 

So the connection between your computer and Gmail is secure.

 

If OTOH you do not trust Gmail to change your email then that is one issue.

 

Also if the sender is using a company email service which scans outgoing emails then of course the email will be viewable by the company of course.

 

Nowadays, all transfer of email occurs over an secure connection instead of the non secure TCP connection.

[reedl]

If the e-mails were sent using a personal laptop over wifi, I don't think the ship's servers save this data.

 

That is correct. Because the SSL connection between the client computer and the server it is connecting to is protected with a SSL server certificate. Using TLE 1.2 there is no way (without a lot of computing power) to decrypt the traffic in transit.

[AmazedByCruising]

And while they don't do it often, as others have pointed out, any communication done on a ship's computer is available for review by the employer. If the e-mails were sent using a personal laptop over wifi, I don't think the ship's servers save this data.

 

Even if the ship would keep a copy of all data sent over wifi they still can't see what you do on gmail as that data is encrypted.

 

A ship's computer is different, even every key press could be recorded. Then again, that's not "simple monitoring" but intentionally spying on your employees. IMHO, that violates basic privacy rights. It wouldn't be very effective either because after one crew member is fired because of what he did on a computer everyone would only use smartphones.

[ewenix]

That is correct. Because the SSL connection between the client computer and the server it is connecting to is protected with a SSL server certificate. Using TLE 1.2 there is no way (without a lot of computing power) to decrypt the traffic in transit.

 

Actually a lot of businesses do this for security reasons. They're doing deep packet inspection and decrypt the traffic then re-encrypt it.

 

On a personal device you'd know since you'll get a certificate error, and it's what you'd see in a 'man in the middle' attack. (It's the error you had previously mentioned.) In a business we can just push out the appliance certificate to each device as a trusted certificate and the users see no error but the connection is *not* encrypted end to end.

Edited October 20, 2016 by ewenix

[Biker19]

Hey, enough with the techno babel - let's get back to the saucy story with the bartender.:cool:

[Cruising Golfer]

Hey, enough with the techno babel - let's get back to the saucy story with the bartender.:cool:

 

Not very saucy if all she got was a hug... :cool: At least that all she is admitting to... :eek:

[poz222]

No, if what happened is what you say he did not get fired... if questionable, he might have gotten a "wag the finger no no" talk and reinforcement of the rules if he is new... the issue was because they were in a Public area while not working. As background, I am married to a crew member I met onboard as a passenger (16 years ago so a different world back then) but we were always respectful of the rules and kept all communications done on personal time and personal computers (much less available options back then so I waited for Miami when he could call from a call center).

 

Generally, the cruise line cannot dictate what they do in their personal time. When I visited him onboard when we dated (2years) he never came to my passenger room and I did not go to crew area (but he had public area privileges so it was easier). So I guess am not always as cynical as some (although I have seen plenty of players onboard too)! But sometimes there is a genuine connection.... anyway, internet is crappy for crew and time is limited but I would not stress yourself about him getting fired.... at worst a reprimand. If you don't hear from then again, take it for what it's worth and glad u had fun!