gammonfrog

Pick up a backgammon set and you are touching one of the oldest games still played anywhere on earth. The 24 points and 30 checkers describe a structure that has barely changed in two thousand years, and parts of it are older than the pyramids. Mesopotamian kings played a version.

The first time you walk up the gangway of the ship you have signed a contract with, the suitcase in your hand is too heavy, the language at the gate is not the language they greeted you with at the airport, and the only thing you know for certain is that the next six or eight months of your life are about to happen inside a building made of steel that floats.

The two contracts that mark a long cruise career are not the first and the last. They are the one where you picked the right position, and the one where you did not.

Civitavecchia is what cruise itineraries label Rome, though the two are not the same place. The town is a small Italian harbor with enough cafes, shops, and back streets to fill a comfortable day, and a train station that in theory gets a crew member to Rome and back before sailaway. The only practical question on this port day is whether to use the train at all.

St Thomas is a US territory in the Caribbean where the official currency is the dollar, the cars drive on the left, and the city begins at the pier.

San Juan is one of the more accessible ports on a Caribbean itinerary. The pier sits at the edge of Old San Juan, and the colonial streets begin within ten minutes of walking in any direction.

Most people working on cruise ships eventually start thinking about what comes after. Contracts do not last forever, and life circumstances change. The moment arrives when something closer to home becomes the priority, and when that moment comes, many former crew discover something that was not obvious while they were onboard.

Hawaii is the only port on most major cruise itineraries where the casino does not open at all. Federal law prohibits gambling within three miles of any US coastline, Hawaiian waters are US territory, and that means casino staff arrive at the most spectacular stop on the schedule with around five days off in a row.

Copenhagen is not the easiest port to get in and out of quickly. The cruise terminal sits at a noticeable distance from the city center, which means you cannot simply step off the gangway and start walking.

The recruitment process for cruise line positions follows a fairly consistent path across most companies, regardless of department. This article focuses on the casino department, but with a few exceptions noted below, the same general process applies to most guest facing roles onboard.

Applying for a casino position at a land based casino follows a structure that most candidates encounter without much advance warning. The stages are fairly consistent across the industry, particularly at larger companies, and knowing what to expect at each one gives you a real advantage before you even sit down for the first conversation.

When most people hear the name Carnival in the context of cruise ships, they picture one company on one fleet. That assumption will cost you if you walk into a Carnival casino recruitment process without understanding the bigger picture. Carnival Corporation is not a single cruise line.

Pick up a deck of cards and you are holding something that has passed through more hands, crossed more borders, and outlasted more empires than almost any other object in human history. The standard 52 card deck sitting in a casino shoe looks unremarkable, a disposable consumable replaced every few hours and thrown away.

Job hunting in the casino industry comes with its own kind of pressure. You want the role. You want to be taken seriously. The gap between where you are and where you want to be can feel wide when you are staring at a job listing with requirements that stretch slightly beyond your current experience.

Every casino dealer knows the moment. Somewhere around the third hour of a night shift, the same faces around the same tables, the same city outside the same walls, a question begins to form in the back of your mind: is this it? For many, the answer is yes, and there is nothing wrong with that.

To start working at a casino as a dealer, you need to complete a croupier course. Some courses are paid. Others are provided for free by the casino you are applying to. The better route is usually the second one: a course provided by a casino that wants to train its own dealers.

Most people who enter the casino industry come through the pit. They train as dealers, learn the games, and for many of them that is where the entire career happens. Running parallel to the pit, though, is another path.