Doulos Hope Diaries: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (3/4)

During a time of sailing, the receptionists of the ship had no work to be done. Therefore, I had a receptionist assigned to the Galley.

"Belle, I've got an aunty for you during sailing," Lukas told me one day. "Only because I think you handle aunties better than Mells."

That is true. Aunties couldn't seem to handle Mells' bluntness. But much later on, I found myself wishing I had some of Mells' aunty-repellent characteristics.

A day before sailing, I sat with the Aunty who was going to be working with me for 3 days. I wanted to get to know her and her background a little.

We had a very pleasant conversation. She told me of her career in a big company, and how she worked as an admin all the way to the top. I complimented her and said, 'Great! This is exactly the kind of person Galley needs. Someone that knows how to work hard from the bottom.'

I had never been so wrong in my entire life.

Aunty had been commenting about cooking, but I always laughed it off with her and reminded her that we only do cleaning now that we have a professional chef.

When she came to work, I prepared some cleaning buckets and I got my team together and assigned them tasks. I got one of my guys to help Aunty with the heavy lifting and assigned her to only wipe things down.

She took the cleaning buckets and began to wipe. Then she looked at me, displeased. "Are you telling me that I will only be doing this...all the time?" she asked, lifting the cloth and gesturing to the metal shelves.

"Aw, no, of course not! There's other things to clean too!" I said, humorously. "But you, me and the others will only be cleaning. We're all doing it together!"

"No cooking?"

"No, we have a professional cook now, so we only focus on the cleaning."

Aunty did not look happy. She went back to cleaning, but not before giving one of my teammates a shrug and a roll of the eyes.

From that day onwards, Aunty proceeded to completely ignore my existence.

Once I was looking for her to assign a task. Finding her, I said, "Ah, Aunty, can you do this task please?" She did not seem to hear me. I tried again. But she just simply walked past me, without so much looking in my direction, or acknowledging my existence. I watched her make some tea and despite the Galley rules, she entered the Galley.

Mells and Lukas were in the dining room and saw what happened. "What the hell?" Mells mouthed, in disgust. I shrugged.

Lukas looked at me and grinned. "You better get her out of there," he said. "Volunteers aren't supposed to be in there!"

I had to call her multiple times before she acknowledged me.

"I'm sorry, Aunty, you can't be in there." I said.

"Uncle KC needs my help," she said, giving me a snobbish look. I paused for a moment.

"Uncle KC, volunteers are not allowed to be in the kitchen," I said to one of the cooks. "Do you really need her help?"

Uncle KC, who was quite a grumpy but good old man, looked up at Aunty and said. "Ah, she is right. I don't need your help."

Aunty was absolutely furious, but she did a good job of hiding it. As she passed me by, I said "I'm sorry, Aunty. But all we can do is just clean now." She said nothing.

Thankfully, the 3 days of sailing was up, and that meant Aunty could return to her receptionist job.

I thought we would get back on good terms, but throughout her entire stay on the ship, Aunty would always walk past me and avoid all eye contact with me. She would refuse to acknowledge and return my greetings. She was like that right up until she left.

I later learned that the people she worked with in reception suffered as well. She would look down on them and offload her tasks to her colleague whenever possible. She would only be pleasant to her friends and other people, but never to the people she worked with.

The rest of my friends were able to have much better experiences with her. They could not believe me when I shared my bad experiences about Aunty.

This made me wonder about myself, and whether I have a reputation that is constant and stable.

I understood immediately that Aunty struggled to receive instructions from someone much younger and much more inexperienced in life. R had given me good exposure to these kinds of people, so I didn't struggle with her disrespect and defiance to my leadership.

However, I was more confused on her supposed experience of climbing the ladder. How could someone who knew what it was like to work from the bottom, NOT understand the rules of the kitchen? No one immediately starts cooking from Day 1. Everyone starts with menial cleaning tasks.

My mother gave me some insight: It is easy to forget.