Ain’t no rest for the wicked

I am few days away from 1 month mark on the ship. And I am starting to grasp some things about it. In particular the working schedule. Something I perhaps overlooked before was the 70 hr workweeks. This is an average of 10 hours a day. When I first signed on things were slow so we would usually pull anywhere between 7 and 9 hours on days. But now that the ship is preparing to go for dry dock we need to prepare for the unusually large movement of crew members, luckily the supervisor is knowledgeable and we know what we have to do. It’s normal for us to work anywhere between 8 to 12 hours everyday. No days off.

This is job is becoming a nice little challenge in my career path. Being voluntarily exiled from my comfort zone mixed in with people of different cultures in the middle of nowhere.

The company follows an international labor code policy, which has harsher standards compared to the Canadian Employment Standards Act, then again the environment is different as well.

The structured environment was something that I have strived for while in school, I thought that hey I can follow a curriculum in class; I should be awesome in a structured environment. This was again a quick and inaccurate conclusion. The thing about this kind of work environment is that people that are familiar with the way things are done are efficient enough in doing the routine things, and almost everything is routinized. Once you learn whatever you have to do you can virtually check your brain at the door and just plug away at the tasks.

This is also the reason why the company is so willing to hire inexperienced people and train them. They can also pay people less because everyone on the ship is replaceable. I came here to get experience first and foremost, As long as I am working and learning I am happy, everything else here is supplementary, I am not worried about it. The plan is to be realistic about the situation I am in and be hopeful for the future. I still see myself becoming a compensation specialist in the 5 years.

I miss my team, I still haven’t seen Raptors play this season.