Week 4 - Supervising

June 28, 2010

Monday of week four began as every other Monday morning here does with an abrupt awakening to the sound of an ancient vacuum cleaner. It’s like clockwork; it’s so reliable that I didn’t even set an alarm for today, granted I did not have to be at Mrs. E’s until 10:30. Starting today, for the next two weeks I will be learning every detail about being a supervisor at Mrs. E’s so that I myself can supervise for a few days. Therefore, for all of today I shadowed Lorraine and tried to absorb all the information I could on what her responsibilities are as a supervisor.

As does every supervisor, Lorraine has her particular way of going about things. She starts off her day by checking the schedule, which she pre-plans a few shifts in advance, to see who is at work and who is absent for the day. Then adjustments are made as needed. Today I got a much better sense of how scheduling works in our dining hall because a lot of the employees either called out sick or had to leave early for various reasons. When we are short staff, people have to be moved around from station to station in order to accommodate the flow of diners accordingly. For instance, at the beginning of a meal most staff are placed in service stations to serve food as efficiently as possible, then a number of them are periodically moved into the dish room, and last some staff are moved out into the dining area to clean up tables and prepare the dining area for the next meal.

After reviewing the schedule for the day, Lorraine and I went over the menu for the week to ensure its accuracy. This week we noticed an error. Usually hamburgers are served for either lunch or dinner every other day; however, this week hamburgers were on the menu for both lunch and dinner every day. We brought the problem to the attention of all of the other supervisors and higher level management but it was too late to make any changes for the current day. However, there was still time to alter the menu for the rest of the week by replacing hamburgers with other main dish menu items. The hamburger fiasco was a good example of how everything in Mrs. E’s is so interconnected. As a result of having hamburgers on the menu too many times several purchases needed to be changed such as increasing orders for other main dish items and the menu for the week needed to be rewritten.

Next Lorraine and I continued to move down the “Supervisor Checklist.” We set up the cash registers for lunch, first checking that they had the proper amount of change, $45 in 5 dollar bills, $35 in 1 dollar bills, and $5 in quarters for a total of $85 in change. At the end of a meal it is also the supervisors responsibility to change out the cash drawer and collect any profits made during the meal. For the rest of the afternoon I observed Lorraine as she made rounds around the dining hall making sure that everything was cleaned and prepared for dinner service. We also ventured down to the basement to see if there were any decorations in storage that I might be able to use for my World Cup themed dinner event. We found a few things, however I think I will have to keep on looking or make some of my own decorations.

Once again the thing that always impresses me most about working with the supervisors at Mrs. E’s is how well they get along with all of the staff. There generally seems to between them instead of a hierarchical relationship which is how I think most workplace environments function best.

June 29, 2010

This morning I continued my supervisor training with Sergio. He printed out some very helpful information for me, like the supervisor training manual he created which detailed how to complete daily work assignments, supervisor check lists, sanitation assessments, cash register set up and break down, and employee operating guidelines. It gave a nice overview of everything that supervisors are responsible for. Today I got to experience an additional supervisor responsibility, job interviewing. Bill, myself, and Sergio interviewed a young man this morning for three different positions: hot foods prep, pizza prep, and grill cook. First we described each jobs responsibilities, hours, and benefits. Then we asked the interviewee some interview questions in order to determine if he met the requirements of the job. Even half way through the interview it was obvious that he was more than qualified for the job, in addition to being a well mannered and motivated individual. He was one of the top candidates so far.

After the interview we started gearing up for lunch service. For the past few days we have been preparing most of the meal in advance because one of the camps, which has 450 campers, arrives all at the same time so we need to make sure we are well stocked with menu items when they arrive. Lunch ran very smoothly today, which I think had a lot to do with the fact that we had almost a full staff and had prepped much of the food in advance. While food items might lose some of their freshness after sitting in a warmer for a while I think the general idea is that it is better to have food available rather than running out of or getting behind on an item. We simply don’t have the ability to batch cook during the meal given timing of the arrival of the diners, the labor we have available, and the machinery we have available. I think batch cooking is more feasible during the school year when diners come and go at a more even pace.

For the rest of the day I continued testing recipes for my special event. I first prepared my main dish, the Brazilian Feijoada because it takes nearly two hours to cook down. It was nice to be back in the kitchen preparing food, getting my hands dirty. The Feijoada is a meat and beans dish containing several different kinds of beef and pork, black beans, and spices. We don’t have stove tops in the kitchen so I had to use one of the steam kettles to prepare it. The kettles get very hot very quickly and it is difficult to keep them at a consistent temperature so I kept on having to turn the kettle on and off but all in all I think the dish turned out just fine. Although, I think I will an additional Serrano pepper and more water to the final dish because the test dish really did not have much spice to it at all and ended up being a little too thick. Next I tested the collard greens recipe I had which was quick, simple, and yielded great result. There’s really nothing better than fresh greens when they are cooked right. The collards will be served in the traditional Brazilian manner, with the Feijoada over rice. Tomorrow I will finish testing the rest of my recipes and put in a marketing request for my special event.

June 30-July 2

For the rest of the week I continued learning all of the details of service supervising and tried to make progress on details for my monotony breaker dinner. Lorraine and I scoped out what decorations were in storage at Mrs. E’s and then I took a trip down to Oliver dining hall for a tour of the facilities and to pick through their decorations as well. Oliver is closed for the summer but Dave Weakly painted a good picture as to what things are like when it is up and running. Compared to Mrs. E’s, Oliver serves significantly less people so it had less of an industrial feel and it also connects with the residence part of the dormitory via a lounge area which also gives it a more homey feel. After the tour Dave and I were able to go down into storage and find a few decorative odds and ends like a wire Eiffel Tower, some Italian decorations, and cloth with countries flags on it (all of which will come in handy). In addition I found some netting in Mrs. E’s that I should be able to fashion into a nice goal over the entrance to the dining hall.

During the end of the week I got to encounter one of the challenges that supervisors have to cope with, being short staffed. Several employees called out sick or left sick on top of many staff members being on vacation therefore we were not left with enough people to run the dish room properly so we had to “go to paper” meaning we replace all of the dinner ware with paper or plastic products. The main reason we decided to go to paper tonight is because we have a camp of close to 500 people that all arrive and leave at the same time so it would be impossible to keep up with a flood of dishes all at once without more staff. No one really likes to go to paper because it is so expensive but sometimes it is necessary to avoid undue stress on staff and to keep things running smoothly.

This week Lorraine is also helping train one of the supervisors from Oliver, Kuni on how to close Mrs. E’s so I got to observe that as well as learn how to close up Mrs. E’s myself. Luckily we have another check list, a closing checklist to follow along so I didn’t get too lost. Mostly, at the end of the night everything gets deep cleaned, like the grills and dining room. The supervisor’s job is to ensure that everyone is on task at this point, especially in the dish room so that everyone does not have to stay until the wee hours of the night. Lorraine was also good about going around to each food station towards the end of the meal and making sure that they had everything in order and mostly wiped down so that closing would be quick and painless. For example, she always asks whoever is in the deli to weigh all of the meats and cheese and start filling out their actuals sheets when dinner calms down in order to get a head start on things.

The next day we attended the Housing’s “First Friday” meeting which was ironically on a Thursday due to many people not being able to make it to a Friday meeting. We mostly discussed how to make the First Friday meeting more efficient so that it is less of a report and more of a discussion. Everyone concluded that the meeting itself was a necessity in order to keep everyone in the department on the same page but no conclusion was reached on how to better format the meeting.