- A cruise ship singer said guests asked her rude questions, per The Times of London.
- The singer said guests would ask when she was going to get a real job or what she really did for work.
- Stories of cruise ship workers enduring difficult experiences common within the industry.
A cruise ship singer said guests often asked her rude questions like when she was going to get a real job and what she really did for work, according to a report.
The comments came from an anonymous cruise ship singer who was interviewed by The Times of London.
The singer told The Times that many cruise ship performers are asked "dreaded" questions by guests such as — "When are you going to be on in the West End?" — which she said felt like a "put-down" since many singers had previously worked in London.
She told the publication that workers would have to try and answer these difficult questions while still being polite to guests.
The singer also said during one smaller cruise, which she described as the "toughest" she had worked on, she was encouraged to mingle with the guests who often said "personal things," per The Times.
She added that she was sometimes mistaken for a dancer, causing guests to tell her they weren't impressed by the female singer. She told The Times that she just had to "sit and smile" through the experience so as not to insult the customers.
It's not the first time that negative experiences have been raised by cruise ship workers.
In September last year, amid the pandemic, one worker told Insider that his fellow workers were stuck onboard vessels with no money. He said they were confined to their cabins to complete two-week COVID-19 quarantine periods, which some workers said felt like "jail."
When Insider interviewed 39 current and former cruise ship workers in 2020, workers said that while the majority of customers were pleasant, some had a tendency to ask annoying questions.
As cruise ship workers are tasked with making the guests' experience as pleasant as possible, workers said it could be hard to respond to difficult or rude questions.