"Dear Fine Art Registry,

"My name is Penny Tyler and I recently left my position as an art associate with Park West at Sea on board the Carnival Inspiration. After months of pay disputes, accusations about our work ethics, and being lied to by our company, my art auctioneer and I both decided to leave the company. When I joined the ship in November of 2008 I was warned of the company's practices and how they cheat their employees out of their pay. I still had stars in my eyes from the buildup and great promises we were fed in our training and I disregarded these warnings.

"During our training this job was referred to as "the golden ticket" that we were being handed - we just had to survive the training and prove we were worthy of the opportunity. Our trainers made a point to acknowledge all the bad press that they had received so that they could explain it away as simply competitors and detractors trying to tear down the great company out of jealousy. They told us "once you get of a certain stature you will always have those that are going to try and tear you down but there is no truth to any of the accusations against us."

"The auctioneer that was on board the ship had only nine days left to his nine month contract and then I would be joined by another auctioneer that had just finished his associate's contract on another ship. The current auctioneer was going to be leaving the company over seven thousand dollars in debt to them after repeatedly earning negative paychecks due to fines and fees.

"Sales on the ship had been very low for a long time but when the new auctioneer came on board we devised a new marketing strategy that drastically increased sales on the ship. Revenue went from an average of $2,000 dollars a cruise to no less than $10,000, sometimes reaching $20,000 and almost $30,000 on one occasion. The auctioneer and myself purchased all the office supplies for the gallery as there were none when we got on the ship. We brought in chairs for the guests, filing cabinets, and silk plants, all of which were purchased out of pocket, to turn the gallery from just a hallway to a beautiful gallery. Our hotel director even wrote to the home office to tell them how much we had improved the gallery.

"Things started going bad in January when I did not receive my monthly pay on the day that I was supposed to. We asked our fleet managers, Gordon Marshall and Mike Mahorney, about the situation and just got the run around for several days. Their usual response when we would ask was "keep up the good work" or "don't worry about the small things right now." Of course the bigger thing that they wanted us to worry about was removing any and all traces of Salvador Dali from the ship because of the investigation into the artwork. On this matter they emailed and phoned us almost every cruise to make sure we were complying with this and that we were sure there was nothing of Dali displayed on the ship. When I finally received my paycheck it was about ten percent of what was expected. However, my boss's check was far more insulting. Although he earned over $18,000 in commission for the month, after fines and fees his check came out to be a dismal $85.

"Park West made all its money from us by having us sell all the art and then fining us so heavily that they not only kept their cut but also got to keep all the money we earned by deducting the fines from the auctioneer's pay. We never received a book about compliance so that we knew what we could and couldn't do. The compliance director would watch the video and send us an email of all the compliance codes that we had apparently violated. The only way to find out what you weren't allowed to do was to do it and then find out that you now owe the company a hefty sum for the mistake you didn't know you even made. It became an ongoing joke between myself and my auctioneer that Park West must have an entire committee of people whose job was simply to create violations so they could take out more money.

"The final straw with the company came in mid-January when we received an email from Steve Weiss, the compliance director at Park West, asking the auctioneer to give him a call immediately. The phone call with Steve was to inform us that he was looking into our auction team for fraud, unethical business practices, and phantom bidding based off of one of our recorded auctions that he had recently reviewed. According to Steve we were not only selling the art way below the cost of what we were allowed to sell it for but we were also selling it to bidders who weren't there, hence the phantom bidding. We were then fined for not showing the audience in our videotape and just zooming in on the auctioneer even though several weeks earlier we were fined for showing too much of the audience and not zooming in on the auctioneer. We were also fined for giving false information during our auctions. However, the information we gave was taken straight from books on the artists that were published by Park West itself as well as our own notes from our training at the gallery in Southfield.

"According to Steve our numbers on this ship were unusually high. We consistently made high numbers, which he claimed other auctioneers on that ship were unable to attain. Therefore we must be doing something unethical. Luckily for us I kept a manual log of all activity during each auction including every work sold, who purchased it, what was the selling price. The auctioneer and myself then created our own report defending ourselves against these actions. After receiving our report they then backed down from the accusations and claimed it was a mistake and that perhaps we had mislabeled the tape causing this discrepancy. Stephen even made a point to let us know how disappointed he was in us for telling our hotel director about the situation, stating it was a private Park West matter and didn't need to involve those outside the company.

"It was after this incident that Rick (the auctioneer) and I both decided that enough was enough and we put in our resignation. I left the ship still being owed over $4,000 dollars. When I inquired about getting my final check I was told I would be paid on the same schedule as the rest of the Park West employees. I finally received the last of my pay almost two months after disembarking. Rick finally settled on an amount that was less than he was owed in order to close out this ugly chapter and move on to employment with the cruise line."

Penny Tyler