A friend has accepted a job as ship's doctor on a cruise line. They don't do electronic transfer, but send checks to ports of call. Does this sound legit? Also if it is, what is the best way to deposit them into a U.S. bank like Bank of America? Find a place to do a wire transfer in each port? Mail them?

I know nothing about this, but it sounds dodgy like a dodgy thing to me, in this day and age.

Yeah my thought too. The cruise line is legit, but they are contracting the position to a British company who actually pays him. Also, they have internet on board, but they restrict it strictly to professional use, no personal use allowed. They were emphatic that this is enforced, and that not even personal emails are allowed. I'm going to go with even more suspicious.

The bits that I've heard about cruise hiring has seemed dodgy to me. I know someone who was fired in the middle of a cruise, and left on St. Thomas, with just her last paycheck, no means of getting home. (At least it was a US island and she's a US citizen, so there weren't immigration issues in addition left-in-the-Caribbean issues.)

By coincidence, we've had dealings with ship's doctors on two of our three cruises. (Once, we both caught a respiratory bug went around the ship. The other time, Hubs had recurrence of old problem, irritating but not major.) Bills were charged to the room, so no checks changed hands.

So I assume the cruise line or the British company pays the doctor by paper check? Otherwise, I'm not sure how the issue would come up. At any rate, it seems questionable to me in this day and age -- electronic fund transfers would be so much easier.

What makes the practice even more questionable is that, because of work schedules, many crew members can't leave the ship when it's in port. A ship's doctor might be able to, depending on office hours. But a cabin steward or a waiter, much more difficult. (At least, that's how things are on the line we sail on -- but we sail on a line that has a reputation for good treatment of its crew, compared to other lines!)

As to the best way to deposit the checks, your friend should probably contact the bank the checks would be deposited into. A large bank probably has procedures for such things -- and may even have operations in some ports where your friend could deposit the check in person.

This Steiner Maritime LTD a subsidiar of Steiner Leisure Industries. They are one of the big subcontracters for cruise ships. Apparently their argument for paper checks is that they are paying in so many currencies. I'm pretty sure it is a way of getting float, making sure that it takes employees weeks and months to deposit their checks. They flat out told him than many employees just keep their checks in their safe(everyone employee has a personal safe) until they get a chance to deposit them.

There is no chance of his not taking it. He is fairly desperate for work.

And to clarify, he is not paid by patients. He is paid a salary by contractor. They may bill patients if medical care is not included in price of the ticket.

Makes me suspect Steiner is not paying FICA. Are they paying him as a contractor? If so, he may be taking a pretty big tax hit.

Happy New Year everyone

A belated Happy Australia Day! to everyone.

A somewhat random question. I was just reading an article about how the Italian city of Lucca has just passed a law that any new restaurants within the city limits must serve only Italian food. One of the people behind the law, when answering a question about whether it was racist, said something like, "This is just as much against McDonald's as it is against kebab houses."

Which got me thinking about McDonald's, and how, when I was in Italy a few years ago, it seemed like there were a lot more of them, and in much more upscale neighborhoods, than I'm used to seeing in the US. I was complaining then that America seems to only export the crap parts of our culture -- that there's plenty of really great American food, but it seemed like the only kind available in Italy was McDonald's. So, my question for unAmericans is, what do you think of when you think of "American food"?