My experience may be a little different than most; the ship I was on, for the time I was on it, was not actually in service yet. I boarded in Bremerhaven 2 weeks before construction would be finished and it started making its way to Hawaii. I fell down some stairs carrying some shit on our way across the Atlantic like 2 days before we got to NYC and I was going to be out of commission for 2 months, so they let me go. The only passengers we had were some bigwigs from the company.

As for fringe benefits and perks? I was averaging 16 hour days and you don’t get days off so I didn’t have the energy to do much other than sleep by the time my shift was over. But you only work 5-6 months periods, you get room and board, and since you’re not really spending anything you earn, by the time you get off to go back home, you’d have a pretty nice sum in your bank account. I had 1 month of paid training and was only on the ship for about 3 weeks, and when I got off in NYC, I had almost $10k.