Pigs Berthing

[Grundy]

[Grundy]

[astra]

When my husband and I first got married there were no rooms available. We spent a week living in a storage room half filled with storage with no windows. We slept on a mattress on the floor. When we did get a room, it had a shared bathroom with three other rooms, no working light, no shower curtain. The window in our room had a broken pane and it was never fixed. So regular berthing was pigs berthing, pigs berthing was much worse.
Also, for a while at the HGB anyone who was in lower conditions was ordered to eat their meal in the emergency stairwell. When it was discovered they could get in trouble for fire safety violations, they moved it to the trash room. I remember eating in the trashroom, I can still smell it.

Speaking of smells.

Back on the ship, i'll never forget how shocked i was at the dormitory berthing. I had to go and get someone out of bed. It was bulk head to bulk head with beds,barely enough room in between to walk. Stale body odour hit me as i walked in.It was very basic, i can't remember how many beds to one dorm,at a rough estimate i'd say at least a dozen,possibly more.

Sure made me realise how lucky i was to have a cabin that i shared with one other girl. We even had our own sink.Luxury compared to the majority of the crew.

Sharon

Well, let's no forget the other circumstances pig's berthing has been dished out for. Circa 2007 at FSO an entire department was assigned to pigs berthing for at least a week simply on account of failure to live up to assigned quotas, nothing whatever to do with how we kept up our bedrooms.

I was able to "escape" this but only by virtue of having to work 2-3 hours later than anyone else, thus missing the police-musters set up to round up would-be sneak-offs.

I could never agree with the pigs berthing concept in the first place, and this adventure above was one of a series of events that actually lead to my realization that enough is enough and I got out.

More later...

Hi Leerymo - you've made my day! You were there and remember the '94 earthquake. I'd responded to some introductions and mentioned it but no one seemed to believe there was a 'quake then except Grundy. I had a car there in the parking lot and we used it to warm up the freezing kids and let them make cellphone calls to tell family/friends that they were OK. I think we were on the 7th floor too - had recently been moved from a much better room on a lower floor (about a dozen or so of us) and I was seriously pissed about that.
Anyhow, living in the lap of WOG luxury now, I can laugh about it and hope that all that crew is doing well wherever they are.
The BS drills to do that damn christmas display were seriously FU'd to my taste. Hated it. Also, I think I got the world's worst haircut from one of the ITO outer org chicks around that time. Luckily, hair grows.
Did we actually get under the tables at the HGB for the aftershocks, or is that my imagination? Whatever, it broke the monotony of trying to write O/W's. That was serious dev-T in my book.
We did live in a rather piglike fashion - but, in truth, we had some good times too.
I was, and am, very fortunate. And may good fortune smile on you! But then, it already has - you woke up too!

Yes I remember the "pigs berthing" label and the "Nothing to do with Me Club". I never had either assigned to me, most of us girls were pretty uptight about the cleanliness of our berthing and we were all in HCO so we had to "set the example".

After I got married we didn't get a berthing for over 6 months. When we did, it was 1/2 a room with a piece of drywall thrown up dividing the one window in half and down the middle of the room. The second berthing we got was actually hella awesome, with a loft bed that gave us more space and an actual deadbolt on the door.

We NEVER had access to a bathroom other than that shared by the rest of the floor. When I was on the 2nd floor of Main Bldg we went up to the 6th floor to access the one bathroom there, and same when in 2D berthing. So did everyone else in Main Bldg. And no one was assigned to clean it, either, so it was truly horrible. I wanted to tackle it sometimes but with no help and no cleaning supplies it was kinda impossible.

Broken windows, broken doors, exposed subflooring, this was all totally normal. After a while you don't see it anymore.

[astra]