Remi and Safiya, the ship's maids.

Remi's dark forehead was soaked in sweat, and it wasn't even past noon yet. The biggest problem with cruise ship guests was that they knew that they were going to be waited on hand and foot and expected it. Most of the time, when Remi went door to door collecting the laundry from various guests' rooms, they didn't even thank her, only shoving their dirty, smelly clothes into her arms without so much as a second glance. It was enough to make a girl hate her job, but there weren't many that paid this well for someone without a college degree like Remi.

The uniform, as mandated by the cruise liner's owners, certainly didn't help her cool off at all. The SS Awesome Excelsior was based on an older ship design, even though it barely looked like the original any more with all of the new technological additions. The guests never even noticed the supposed 'Titanic-esque decor,' though it would probably freak them out if they did. What a line to put in a pamphlet! The idiots. Those same idiots claimed to be dedicated to matching the 'look and feel' of the ship that the Excelsior was modelled on, though. In practice that mostly extended only to the service staff, since the bartenders and the cooks were allowed to dress for their environments, and since no one could tell Captain Mac what to do.

So the 'aids' and the 'butlers' were **** to wear period attire. The 'butlers' dressed in stuffy, poorly-fitted knock-off tuxedos that didn't look good on anyone, since none of the guests really cared about the look of their uniform. The women were another matter entirely. Now, Remi hadn't been alive in the 1910's, but she was pretty sure that maids back in the day didn't have uniforms that looked like fetish wear. Her uniform was a knee-length black dress with a frilly white apron-- frustratingly low-cut, of course. And she had to wear a sort of bonnet or headband type of thing, to keep her hair back and up, which was awful given its natural volume and curliness. The whole thing was enough to drive her crazy, at least if she wasn't constantly reminding herself of the excellent wage that she was receiving for her work on board this ship. That was just the way of the world for someone too poor to afford a 'traditional' college education.

She took a moment to herself, having descended the many staircases on the ship, collecting all the floors' laundry and throwing them down the chute before retrieving the larger bin at the very bottom. It was full to overflowing, to the point that she was constantly grabbing fallen items as she pushed the laundry cart along. She still had so much time left in her shift, and Remi was already exhausted. She was always exhausted, working this much, and she knew exactly why. There was basically only one person responsible for the stress in her life, and that one person was _supposed _to be doing the same job as her, only for the other half of the ship. 'Somehow,' though, things seemed to always work differently than that, wherever Remi and Safiya's duties were concerned.

Remi shut her eyes tight as she stood before the double doors to the laundry room. Safiya will be working, she thought to herself with an equal mix of fear and foolish optimism. Sometimes she was actually right. There actually were the occasional days when Safiya felt like doing her job, instead of just sitting around and treating her position like a vacation with a great paycheck. But Remi had long since learned not to bet on that particular outcome, for the sake of her own sanity. It was a little better that way, though it still ended up with the outcome of Remi doing twice the work for the same pay as her slacker friend and telling no one out of the fear of losing her only real friend on board the ship, even if Safiya was kind of a shitty friend, most of the time.

With a sigh, she placed one hand on each door and pushed, afraid of what would be waiting for her on the other side.