'Crazy and restrictive' cruise ship rule that all workers have to obey

Our jobs come with rules. It's just a part of life and quite often there's no point kicking up a fuss when you don't agree.

But for some, it's enough to call it quits on that particular industry altogether.

We're on about the unique world of cruise ships and the many people that work on them.

It's a unique industry, spending weeks on end journeying to idyllic destinations across the globe, all while making sure the paying customer gets the holiday of a lifetime that they're hoping for.

Most people who sign contracts to work on the vessels can spend anything from two to nine whole months on board. That's a very long time living in cabins that tend to not be very big at all.

But often, people call time on their contracts before they end.

One cruise ship worker who has worked on the vessels for almost a decade is Lucy Southerton. She spends her down time when not working posting cruise content to Instagram and YouTube.

CruisingAsCrew/YouTube

Lucy, from Birmingham, regularly puts out updates from her experiences on board cruise ships, including one on why cruise ship employees really should avoid sleeping with each other for their first few weeks, if not months, on board.

In her most recent YouTube clip, Lucy spoke about the gruelling reason people quit the cruise industry.

And while it's certainly not for everyone, she also spoke about one strict rule all staff must obey when they're working their cruise contracts.

"Embarking on your cruise ship career is going to be thrilling. You are bound to encounter wonderful people and visit beautiful destinations but it is not for the feint hearted," Lucy says.

"It is work hard play hard; the working curve is steep. The hours are long, the self-improvement is difficult and is ging to happen, you've no choice.

"When most people make a huge life shift they typically focus on one aspect at a time; you either get a new job, a new group of friends, you move house. Going to work on a cruise ship means you are going to tackle multiple transitions simultaneously.

Getty Stock Images

"While starting a new job on land allows you to return home to your friends and family, working on a cruise ship means you're uprooting your entire life at once."

But one rule that really catches people out? Being banned from areas of the ship.

Lucy says: "As a crew member depending on your rank you may not be allowed in certain areas of the ship either at certain times or at all. And people are like 'this is crazy' and depending on what cruise line you're on you might not be able to go in passenger areas unless you're working.

"If you have time off, you are only allowed to be in crew areas and this obviously cna feel incredibly restrictive. Rules can make people feel incredibly claustrophobic.

"And because you're on a cruise ship and there's cameras everywhere - it's not people are watching you - but if you try and break a rule people are going to see. It's like Big Brother.

"Although for some people like myself it was never really a problem for some people this is too much. They don't feel like they can live their life."

This can lead to people quitting their jobs part-way through and journeying back to where they came from.

Lucy says she almost did this herself in her first two months only for her to stick it out due to her cruise ship being in Australia and the flights back to the UK being more than £1,000. By the time the ship returned to Europe, she had fallen in love with the industry.