Well, when you say perks, the whole of the system worked on
perks, I wouldn't say backhanders because that's not the right
word, perks. If you, as a steward, as a waiter, if you wanted
a nice grill, a nice steak, you always looked after the grill
chef. You gave him a couple of bucks in those days and you
knew you were alright for a ...if you liked oysters or shrimps or
anything like that in that line, then you dropped a couple of bucks
to the fella that looked after the pantry on that sort of
thing. And the whole system worked like that. And also
if you wanted better service from the chef you looked after him,
you gave him a couple of bucks so the system worked. Those
were the sort of perks there.
Perks as far as a steward was concerned or a waiter was purely
and simply the tips that came from people in the restaurant.
Mind, there again, that could vary. We always dreaded when we
got our allocation just before the ship sailed. The restaurant
manager and the senior head waiter was doing the seating
arrangements 'cos they had a special table with these slots in with
every table and every chair place, and they slipped it in, and what
had happened of course in those days they would get the list down
from the Cunard office of all the special people, the regular
people who travelled, people with money, politicians, diplomats,
film stars that sort of thing, and if they weren't eating in the
Veranda Grill...and in those days to eat in the Veranda Grill each
meal cost an extra 10 shillings. In today's value that's
50p. How times have marched on.
And as I go back to what I was saying, we always dreaded getting
what we called the 'bloods', and they were known as 'bloods' in
those days, the passengers. The 'bloods', if you had a family of
five or six. What happened was you used to probably have a
nanny or a governess with two or three children so at dinner you
came down an hour earlier than you normally would do to serve them
the meals and then you had to clear off and re-set again for the
mother and father to come down and eat, and inevitably they were
always the worst tippers.
