Pre paid gratuities

This subject really irritates me, and I thought I may have finally found the real answer to the question………………

When you prepay your gratuities do the people that look after you actually get the money?

So let me tell you a little story, I will not mention any names or the specific cruise line but this is what happened, having arrived at my cabin I was excited to go out and explore the ship, as I exited the cabin I bumped into our cabin steward, she look startled and started to laugh, I thought I may have forgot to put my trousers on or something, as it happened I did check and all was ok!, the reason why she started laughing was she recognised me from 19 years ago when we both worked on the same ship (I will not mention the ship), I was blown away that she could remember me form that far back, however I must say I was always centre of attention and well liked so I really should of not been that surprised ! Any ways we obviously started sharing stories and going back over old times. I know I should just get on with the story………so fo some reason and I have no idea why, I asked her about how does she do with gratuities, because I do know their standard wages are quite low. I asked what happens when one of her guests that she cleans for have prepaid their gratuities. Surprisingly and I must say allegedly she told me she receives very little from it and it gets split around the majority of the service crew. That surprised me because I was under the impression that when you prepaid your gratuities it was split between your Cabin Steward, Head restaurant manager and your waiter. ok. I do realise that if you take the option of freedom dining it would be very difficult to know what waiter you used in which restaurant and at what time, but you would always have the same cabin steward, you don’t decide one night you have had enough of your original cabin and decide to move to a better one, that is taking freedom cruising too far ! Any ways I said my goodbyes and enjoyed the rest of the day.

Any ways a few days later I bumped into the Hotel Director, who again I had worked with in the past and decided to question him about this prepaid gratuities issue, I did not mention that I had spoken to a crew member earlier, but did explain that I had heard that it does not go to the cabin steward but gets split up into many areas, he seemed to get quite defensive when I mentioned this and kind of gave me an unclear answer. So I still have no idea how the prepaid gratuities are shared out, but it seems this is a very grey area.