Hospitality & Housekeeping Handyman

A pocketful of tools makes the ship a better place.....

So as I mentioned before, in my plea to find some tasks that made better use of my gifts and abilities, I did manage to create a new sideline as the Handyman for both Housekeeping (the section I have been in) and Hospitality (the team Alice has been in), both in the Hotel Services department.

So what that has involved is people in both those group raising any fixing jobs in a teams chat called Handyman, and also me looking out for things that I am cleaning around the ship that need fixing. So that has ranged from many of the bathroom and washroom fittings being loose, many furniture problems in the cabins, blocked sinks, broken soap dispensers, loose toilet seats etc. etc.

Those 5 tools I have carried around for eight weeks in my pocket and there is very little you can't fix with them. The exceptions to that are rehanging cabin doors (which require a drill, wedge and washers), re-gluing table tops in the cafe (scraper, knife and sealant), repairing soap dispensers (need to go down to 2 to rivet those) and fallen down door signs (needs the glue gun) and a few other one off's including rebuilding the hinges of a medicine cabinet!

Bathroom fittings have made up the lion's share of the jobs - by design they get very loose and sometimes fall off, so they can be tightened but I moved on to putting Locktight on the threads to try to prolong their service. I haven't tallied precise figures yet but I estimate that more than 200 items have been taken off the wall and tightened while I've been doing them (at least 80 soap dishes, 60 spare toilet roll holders, 35 toilet brush holders and more than 30 coat hooks). There has also been a good sideline in taking the shower rail down to enable Hospitality to clean the mouldy plastic slider under the soap holder.

Loose table tops have been a regular item in the cafe, with at least ten of them requiring the old glue cleaning off, the wood scored and new sealant applied before re gluing and clamping for 24 hours.

A few of the other items include these soap dispensers where the rivets fail (I knew all that hands on training in the metalwork shop as an apprentice at BA would come in handy one day!

Then there have been cabin furniture repairs, some quite major like this broken cabin bed, but many simply requiring screws re-fixing to hold the fridge or microwave or many many broken magnets on the sliding bed cupboards.

Then some challenging jobs like a failed pin in each of the four hinges of this medicine cabinet, requiring new pins to be fashioned out of panel pins and fitted into place.

On top of that I have taken on quite a few plumbing jobs which, like the carpenters, the plumbing department were very happy (in the end) for me to do. Most particularly that has been tightening and straightening toilet seats (maybe about 40-50 of those). The real sell on that to the plumber was that just with a spanner in my pocket I could do that and I could know the toilet is clean before I do it - as I am cleaning it too!

And then there has been perhaps my favourite job shown in the pictures above; cleaning out the basin traps in the cabins. It can be a bit yucky but, in my view, very worthwhile despite the suggestion by some people in the department that it didn't need doing! The pictures tell that story.... I only did about 10-15, I would love to see them all done across the ship regularly.

So that is some of the detail of what I have been doing but apart from giving me something a bit more technical to do, is it worth it?

Well all the above work has been done as a sideline to the cleaning me and my team have been assigned on the ship. Although I have to regular pop off to get a few things done I can say hand on heart that the cleaning of the ship has not suffered because of it. the truth is with a good team on your deck they were happy for me to go and do them at times when we weren't all needed and when there was just a few of us you realise that you can always find time and space to do something that, in my view, is so worthwhile. Also I spend my time all over the ship cleaning so it make sense that I can just work out where to nip off to to get that little job done, it isn't some expedition from a workshop on deck 2, rather a little deviation from my daily rounds.

For me it has given me the satisfaction that I do indeed leave the ship in a better state than I found it in. I think that those hundreds of jobs done will make a difference to future crew and patients on the vessel and I am very happy to have been able to bless them in that way as well as making the public areas clean for them each day. But perhaps one of the biggest personal benefits that it has blessed me with is the sense of appreciation that I have received from many of those I have done the jobs for. Particularly the Hospitality team have been so appreciative as they have seen things fixed in a matter of hours (sometimes minutes) that before would have taken lots of effort to raise as a repair request on the computer system (a JIRA is the term onboard) and then might have been sorted within the week. That process simply doesn't work well when you are trying to turn cabins around quickly. The Hospitality Team leader was so appreciative that she would be very happy to me in that team if we ever came back so... But that sense of appreciation is by no means limited to the Hospitality team; the Housekeeping team have been pleased to see their mops fixed the same day, reception to get their blind back up within the hour or a crew member have a cabin door that they could shut again. So thank you to you all.