As any followers of my blog will know I've just come back from a two night mini cruise on the P&O Aurora, (my review will follow soon). The reason I'm writing about this issue before getting started on the review is that it really offended me onboard, however, I'm not sure if it's just me over reacting about something again and being too sensitive so I thought I'd ask............... What do you think?
As you'd expect from a cruise the cabin crew, waiters, bar staff etc were made up people from an Asian, Oriental or Filipino ethnic background but whenever I spoke to one of them they all seemed to be wearing name tags saying Hi My Name is..............Colin, Steve, Paul or David.
Now, as I'm about to accuse P&O of being jingoistic I'm fully prepared to admit that the staffs parents have every right to give their children a traditional, Western sounding name.
But all of them?
Curious about this I asked my room steward who told me that this was just his P&O name, his real name was Ibrahim.
His what! A P&O name?!!!!?
Have the UK population become so jingoistic, (or racist), that a British cruise line like P&O have had to take steps to change their staffs name so as not to risk offending their guests? Surely it's not just me who finds this practise offensive?
What do you think? Have you noticed this on your P&O cruise?
Is it a new thing?
Have you noticed it with any other cruise lines?
Do you find it as offensive as I do or are you one of the people who prefer things like this? If so, why? (I'm not trying to judge you, I just genuinely don't understand why this has become necessary in our society).
I've noticed it before as well when calling my bank or other call centres in India so it's not just P&O, the fault seems to lie with us Brits.
Let me know what you think here and if you do find it as offensive as me make sure you say so; maybe if enough people comment P&O will give their poor old staff their names back.
Happy cruising.
I thought exactly the same thing, my excellent Indian sommelier was called Kingsley and I also noticed many others had English first names but not all of them.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how the english officers would react to being called by oriental names. I like you, find it offensive to use P&O names. It removes some of the "colour" of the holiday.
ReplyDeleteOne of the waiters on Azura in April was called Cliff Richard! We were tempted to ask him to sing.
ReplyDeleteNot just P&O-a lot of waiters on RCI have chosen/been given Americanised names such as Elvis and Virgil.
ReplyDeleteIt is so patronising! My mother spent most of our week cruising feeling sorry for the staff - the chefs and kitchen staff who were compelled to prance around the dining roof holding puddings aloft; cleaners who tried to make themselves invisible to passengers by pressing themselves into doorways as we went past; waiters who try to give exceptional service even though they work 12 hours a day for weeks on end for very little; even the Captain who tried so hard to look pleasant as he shook the hands of nearly 1000 people in 2 hours. Cruising certainly wasn't what I thought it would be.
ReplyDeleteOn Aurora, we once asked our cabin steward, who was sporting a name badge that said "Henry", what his real name was. "Henry", he replied, to our slight embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteMany of the P&O hotel crew come from Goa and have Portugese names since Goa was once a Portugese colony.
It is offensive.I feel uneasy when my name is wrongly pronounced or spelt.
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