Thank you for reading my story, I hope that you enjoy it. Love Mica xx, Yorkshire England.
All email comments good or critical welcomed. Please note that all email comments from an invalid email address will be deleted immediately and will not be read, so please take care when entering your email if you want a reply. Rude or abusive comments may result in blocking. Please note that I am a British female, and I write in British English and vernacular, so for me a fanny is the correct term for female genitalia, a pussy is a pet cat and the ass is a bum or arse.
The taxi dropped me off at the airport and I made my way to check-in. I couldn't fly with one of the cheaper airlines due to the size of my checked luggage, I needed a full thirty kilos and I had to pay an excess charge anyway who ever I flew with. I also had ten kilos of hand luggage, laptop, chargers, kindle and so on. Living on a cruise boat for three months meant I couldn't just pack a few bikini's and a thong.
Luckily my uniform would be waiting on board for me, or rather, three uniforms. I had sent them my complete and exhaustive measurements a few weeks before, and naturally, I had added an inch or two to hips and bust, weight tended to increase on a cruise ship, clothes didn't. Airport security was the pain it always was, taking out and turning on the various electronic devices, going through the whole body scanner and then putting everything back in my pack and heading off to duty free for a wander around, and then onto Wetherspoons for a lunch before the flight.
The flight wasn't too long and I sat looking out of the window for most of the journey sipping the complementary water. I had eaten in the airport and so didn't need any airplane food, and when we landed at Josep Tarradellas Barcelona--El Prat Airport it seemed to take an age before the luggage appeared at the carousel. I waltzed through security and found a taxi to take me to the port, a good forty-minute journey, worsened by the ten minutes it seemed to take us to get out of the airport.
At the port I paid off the taxi and towed my suitcase to the ship. The MS Mediterranean Queen, my home for the next three months. I was Operations Director and basically I was in charge of all the customer activities' staff. I would be passenger facing for around eighteen hours a day, with a couple of hours down time in the morning and the same mid-afternoon.
As a senior member of staff I was assigned my own berth, lesser staff usually had to share, one thing in common though, our staff berths were all below the water line. Only paying passengers had portholes and balconies, and only then if they had the more expensive cabins on the outside of the boat.
I checked in and got my room assignment and was then taken to meet the Captain and First Officer, The Captain was Scottish, the First Office Spanish and I was Yorkshire, it was an interesting conversation. Formalities over I went and found my room, deep down, not quite the bowels of the ship, but far enough.
My room was not bad, I had had worse. It was double, obviously available for married staff, or failing that I supposed it could be let out to paying customers in a pinch. I had room to spare and that was good. My Uniform clothes were hanging up in the door free wardrobe. I put my suitcase on the bed and started unpacking, undies in one drawer, blouses in another, and so on. My empty suitcase I stood up on end at the water side of the cabin, as much out of the way as I could make it.
I stripped my travelling clothes off and stood in bra and knickers and tried on one of the uniforms. A white cotton blouse, knee length blue skirt with red piping and a matching jacket. All fitted perfectly and there was room to grow. I rolled on a pair of hold up stockings, put my shoes on and went off to meet my staff, basically the hospitality crew.
My predecessor had disembarked before I arrived and so there was no handover. I had my phone with me, I would use it to keep notes, I could look at them during the day and hopefully quickly get a handle on things. Luckily I was good with faces and names, and so wouldn't need to make notes of people's names.
At the reception desk I asked them to page my deputy, and he appeared after a few moments, oozing diversity and mincing along the corridor towards me. 'Good job this isn't an American ship' I thought after the recent DEI changes enforced over there. Me? I don't really care about a person's way, I just accept what they want and move on, usually makes no difference to me.
"Hello Mica," he gushed, "I am Alan. I am sooo delighted to meet you."
"Hello Alan, shall we walk the boat and you can introduce me to the Heads as we go, and tell me more about her, what I need to know, and anything you think I need to know."
"Yes of course." As we walked his mincing seemed to wax and wane and I began to wonder about him, was he actually what he portrayed? Be interesting to find out. He took me around the various departments and I met the Heads, a good mix of staff, I felt pleased with what I had inherited and there wasn't a single person that gave me any cause for concern.
The passengers were due to start arriving tomorrow morning for a mid-day embarkation, next port of call was Civitavecchia and we would arrive in the evening giving the passengers an almost full day to visit Rome, our staff would be busy selling excursions, a key product to increase the profit margins.
Everywhere visited and most people met, I turned to Alan, "let's go and grab a coffee, let's do it in private that way you can say anything that you feel needs saying without prying ears."
I led the way to my cabin and opened the door. Our cabins were not serviced, like the passenger cabins, so I tended to change the sheet once a day and the quilt once a week. Coffee pods and milk sachets were available from a store on each deck, and I knew that mine would be low on stock, so I grabbed some on the way past.
In my cabin I filled and turned on the kettle and then turned to face Alan, he was supposedly gay so my next move should not phase him.
"Crikey they keep the boat hot," I said as I undid my blouse and took it off, my eyes firmly on his. He looked and his trousers bulged. He was no more gay than I was. I undid and slipped my skirt off, standing there in my bra, knickers and holdups.
"Oh that is so much better," I sighed.
I looked at the bulge in his trousers, "why pretend?" I asked.
He shifted as if to make himself more comfortable. "On a previous posting" he said, "one of the male staff was accused of inappropriate behaviour to a female guest. He denied it, but the company dismissed him as he could not offer an acceptable defence."
"Ah," I said, "so you pretend to be gay and then if anyone says anything, well, you are more likely to be believed."
"Yes. No one knows except you."
"Is that a problem?" I asked.
"It depends what you do about it."
