A day in the life of a shoppie – Turn around day

Shoppie is the phrase crew use on board for people who work in the duty free shops.

At the home port whether it be Southampton, Dover, Barcelona, Rome, Miami or Venice do you wonder why you cannot board the ship until about midday?  Well once the ship is clear and the passengers have dis embarked, the ships turns into a mad house.  All the rubbish from the previous cruise has to be off loaded and replenished with new food stuff’s, drinks and even spare parts for the engine room. Well this is the same with the shops dept.

So at approximately 6am every turn around port the entire shop staff are up and ready.  As Shoppie Manager it was my job to try to get our stores on the ship as early as possible.  All the stores were loaded onto the ship by a crane and there were only two cranes working at any time so it was a fight by department to get their stock on the ship first.  Now I had a trick up my sleeve.  As soon as I could get on the dock side I found the crane driver, I asked him what his favorite drink was and if he loaded our stock on first….miraculously a bottle of his favorite poison was in the cab of his crane and our stock was loaded first.

There was only 3 crew elevators on the ship too.  So again once our stock was on we managed to acquire a lift to get all our stock (we are talking about 10-20 pallets every cruise) upto the deck the shops were on.  It then took around 6 hours to sort the stock and fill up the shops, making sure all the sizes were out for the clothing, all the brands were out in the liquor shop, all the designs were out in the watch and jewelry shops,  filling up the overstock cupboard and then taking all the excess stock to our storage lockers which could be located deck minus 4 forward and deck 8 Aft so again logistics is a major headache too and we were not allowed to use the guest lifts at all. Once the shops were stocked up, and all the cardboard boxes and packaging  was sent to the garbage room, the shops were then fully cleaned and I checked them over, once I said all was ok then the staff had some down time.  I then had to work out the wages for my staff for the previous cruise, go to the banker on board, submit my statement and they divvy up the wages to match the wage slips to the $. All this is done before guests embark, so If you see any off the shoppies looking a little jaded on the first night of your sailing, feel a little sympathy for them as then are probably quite tired.