MSC Lab Technician – gossiping, arguing, backstabbing …

Hi everyone, here, after longer break I decided to report on my work experience with the MSC Cruises.
I worked for MSC as a lab technician, and will write here my experiences, of course, for this position, but I will also write what I have seen a photographer does there on MSC – on board the ship where I was.

First of all, the interview was very leisurely, if you have the experience, getting a job is guaranteed. I went through a foreign agency, an agent, and I did not pay any commissions and similar nonsense.

MSC is, so to write, gypsy firm. Of course, as it is known, all the Italians are very arrogant and unprofessional, most Southerners who are culturally totally different from northerners – usually the biggest **** is sent to the MSC ships – this is information from the Italians personally …

In fact, as for the photo team, my assessment is that they were total amateurs. If you ask why amateurs, the answer is as follows:

Photographers who work in photography field for 10 years don’t know how to determine exposition for a photo, for example – Sail-away (the problem is that it can be the bright sunny day, and they rarely use exposure and flash features, which a layman would notice, let alone someone who works in photography for many years as a photographer and lab tech).
Of those 6, 4 photographers were constantly producing photos with a bad exposure, and a couple of guys often had very few images that would be good enough to go to the wall in the ship’s photo gallery.

One thing that caught my eye and really bothered me was portraits. I was very negatively surprised to see how they do it. A horror, to say the least! Photographers had no exposure meters, they would set the studio arbitrarily and also shoot the photographs in a same manner. As exposure parameters were concerned, they would take a couple of photos, and whatever photo comes out in good quality, they would use those settings for all other. It thus means that all of 6 images had different settings, and it’s a horror and suffering for lab technician. Posing for a photo and cropping a photo were all done by “feeling”, too amateurish. Lighting was performed with an unknown manufacturer’s light fixtures (at least unknown to me), and the only thing I know had quality were AUTOPOLEs!

The work organization was poor, you would not know who drinks and who pays.
There are three levels of photographers, which serves as a kind of hierarhy, although often the first level photographers were total amateurs. They had many years of work experience, but knew nothing much, just loved to talk a lot, and pretended to teach others something that they themselves didn’t know.

While I was on the ship, there was a lab technician who was giving me handover for 7 days, to get me familiarized with the photo laboratory. He, like a department manager was also Romanian of course, so I believe that he is still with the company. His photographs were horrible, he preferred to work quickly, did not control exposure, density or anything, he would just let the photos stay as they were taken, in order not to stay all night in the lab (I used to start in the evening at 7 and stayed until the next morning to 12, in order to get high quality photos, which was not easy to do since every photo had to be corrected because photographers were not doing their job properly).

Another thing that I did not like, photographers were very messy, had no respect for you in your lab, leaving garbage behind, they would take whatever they could get from the refrigerator from food to drinks. They come to LAB, drink, eat, and then security hooks on you, which are mostly Israelis, and they don’t forgive things to their dads, let alone to one of us. Many times they reported us and we had problems because of gathering in the lab, drinking, loud music, etc. (if you ban these things you’re not part of the team, anti-social and the like, which personally I did not mind). After some time, when a glass over spills, you have to send them all to hell, and maintain order in your lab.

Photographers like these have not exactly been a team, they gossiped, argued, back-stabbed each other. I didn’t like it, and since I was at the lab, they would all come to me and complain, which was not a good feeling. It was difficult to remain neutral all the time, but you have to keep your mouth shut and put up with it.

The bad thing, in my opinion, in MSC is that EVERY DAY YOU WORK SAME HOURS!
So if you do not work on embarkation day at gangway (working at gangway is rare and depends largely on the port and the manager), then you know you’re working from 16:00 until 24:00, or you’re in a gallery selling those or making portraits, there is no third, no evening off.
Teams are very small, unlike for example of the Princess, who has so many photographers that a one team works, the other resting, and then switch, means you’re working one night, and the other night you’re off. Here is not like that, you work every night.

The food on board was extremely terrible! For example, staff mess is open, but if you start working at 16h, and at break you didn’t have time to eat, you have to eat after your shift, which means eating in the crew mess, and that means only one thing, hot dogs and French fries all f***ing night, or rice, tons of rice, dry rice, for Indonesians course. So you try to enjoy yourself. Sometimes you score some good food but it was a very very rare occasion. For this reason, I often ate out and spent money. I often used to bring food to a cabin and ate for 2 days, made sandwiches to myself etc.

The bright point on a ship on which I was working was definitely my manager Cristian Popescu, a Romanian, but a great man, a hard worker and a pretty good manager. I could get along with him, he tried to help everybody as much as he could, I thank him for that.
He supported us to the maximum and that is why we each cruise went over the target and received additional bonuses.

Finally, I believe that you’re interested in money, wages, salaries.
My Lab Technician contract paid $1.505 per month + commission.
My first salary with bonuses was paid at $2.800 and the other $3.005, then I returned home because of problems with work permits in Brazil because of the season in Europe had ended, and papers for Brazil we were not ready on time. So the money is good, at least it was for me, with photographers a little less paid and commission a little smaller, but again, I can not say that they were dissatisfied with the pay.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask here: MSC Lab Tech, …

Conclusion: Go to MSC if you can handle the pressure, a lack of professionalism, and mental torture on a daily basis.

All the best to everyone, calm seas …

TSUNAMI