Cruise ship employees of Reddit, what are things that happen aboard the ship that the guests don’t know about?

1. I'm just curious to how much sex the crew is having with each other.
   — Strip_My_Skin


2. Videos of people having sex in public places (balconies, especially) are often disseminated among crew members. Most of the videos are unfortunately potato-quality, but I've seen some pretty interesting ones.
   — pumpin69


3. I worked on a cruise ship for a few months in the engine room and have sailed on other commercial ships as well. If you have any specific questions then please feel free to ask and I'll see what I can recall. I will start with the scary stuff that you will probably never see. The one thing to realize is that most cruise ships sail under a "flag of convenience." This means that they register the ship under some country that has some really relaxed regulations. For you the customer this probably does not mean much. Your waitstaff, shopkeepers, and cleaning staff, etc. are really all you ever talk to so the companies will really focus on training them. They should not be anything for you to worry about. The more concerning part comes with safety. These ships may not be built to last under heavy conditions. The deck and engine departments (who you the customer will almost never see) may not be very well trained which makes a catastrophe like the Carnival Triumph (the engine department really shit the bed on that one). The people who work on these foreign flagged ships are probably not making much in the eyes of the western world but they may make a good wage for wherever they are from. A lot of workers will also flee the ship by ANY means necessary when they pull into U.S. or European ports. Port security around cruise ships is usually pretty tight. With that out of the way, I'll go ahead and talk about my experience on a ship that treated the crew nice. I worked in the engine room so I don't have any juicy passenger interactions of my own. If you think that you don't have much space in your room then you should see the crew's quarters. The crew is packed in like corn on a cob. Take that single person room you have, double the size, but now 6 people are sleeping and living in there. Sanitation is a big issue and as a result the crew's rooms are regularly inspected. The crew has so much sex. There was a place in the main crew area with free (shitty) condoms but the STD rate is still through the roof. Well over 50%. It honestly amazes me how much sex everyone has when everyone is also sharing rooms. But most employees will be on the ship 8 months out of the year and all that pent up tension will get released one way or another. I'd advise not eating the sushi. You would be amazed at what people will flush down the toilet. Pool noodles, t-shirts, shoes...pretty much anything that people don't want to pack with them when they leave. Cruise ships primarily use vacuum flush systems. These are very efficient but very sensitive. A tampon or condom can take out the toilets for everyone above and below your room. Then somebody from the engine department has to start braking open black water pipes or ripping open pumps to find where your blood stained cotton has managed to stop a whole lot more fluid flow. Toilet paper only in the toilets. When the ship pulls in to port they usually hook up a water hose to fill up on potable water from the municipal supply. Once the ship is underway (and away from the nasty port waters) they then take water from the sea and distill it to keep the capacity up until they reach the next port. It's probably a lot cleaner than the water you have at home. The ship also needs to fuel up (bunkering) and sometimes passengers are on board while that is going on. No open flames are allowed outside while bunkering is ongoing and this becomes a problem with passengers who need a smoke. To get around this they smoke in their rooms which sets off the smoke detectors. There is also a regulation that bunkering must immediately stop if a fire alarm goes off until the hazard of a fire has passed. So somebody from the crew has to go to your room and make sure it isn't on fire. Then they call down to the engine room to report it's a false alarm. Then we can start the pumps again. On average, bunkering is usually interrupted 3 or 4 times due to this and it's annoying as hell. EDIT: A few more things. At least the ship I was on would have crew parties and events that made things a lot of fun. It really sucks for the people who have to work the customer parties because you know all your crew friends are having a blast. Excessive fraternization or sex with passengers is against the rules. Simply entering a passenger's room without a reason is a firing offense. Speaking of firing, it was not in our contract for the company to pay for your return flight if you get fired in an area where you are a citizen. So let's say you were hired on the U.S. West Coast by some big cruise company and you get a ship on the East Coast (some people want to change it up a bit if they get tired of the same route). If you get fired on your ship them the return trip is on you. I can't really give too much info without saying exactly which ship/company I was with but those return flights could cost $600 to $900. The local McDonald's had some ex-cruise ship workers saving up money to get home. One more edit: Cruise ships are trying to become more environmentally friendly. There are whale zones where they go slower to give whales more time to get out of the way. We install scrubbers in the exhaust stack to help remove excess sulfur and carbon. Companies are now also working on reducing NOx emissions through advanced engine timing technology and stack gas treatment. Instead of using harmful chemicals to clean sewage waste we are now using UV and biological systems to break it down. Lube oils around the shaft are being replaced with biodegradable versions. Pretty soon ballast water will even begin to get treated. These are all new and upcoming improvements to try to reduce the environmental impact these ships have. But they are also 1,000 foot long floating cities which must provide food prep and storage, heating, A/C, lighting, water and sewage, recreational areas, and power for thousands of people while also moving them around on a floating piece of steel. There will be an environmental impact no matter what.
   — Phantomsplit






4. I'm not a cruise ship employee, but I do know that people die a lot while on cruises, and due to the fact that you are far away, their bodies are just stored on the ship until you get back to land. [This](https://www.cruiseshipdeaths.com/) website keeps track of most of them.
   — RBLX_RealCaesar224


5. The water the ship is on gets converted into water onboard to save weight and space.
   — ArcOfRuin