Day 1:
Today we toured
around the campus and the town to start to get acclimated and learn about the
activities we could participate in. We
also met many of the managers we would be working with, although it is hard to
remember all of their names because of how many there were! The campus is really beautiful as is the
small town of Laramie, Wyoming. I have
been enjoying the amazing weather that we really don’t get down in Texas. The view from my dorm window is beautiful,
and I love to leave the windows open all the time because it feels so great
outside. Although, leaving them open
means that I wake up when all of the birds do!
We
also had a couple hours with Human Resources in the dining services to get to
know what she does with the university.
This was our first rotation of management. This really involved learning about laws and
payroll concerns. I really loved her
views on employee retention. She
believes that job rotation and a reward system are important to keeping employees
on longer. She discussed how having
student workers start out at lower positions and then working them up the
ladder to a supervisor position could encourage workers to really work hard and
stay at this job. Also, it is good to
make the more undesirable jobs be rotated through so that students could split
the time they had to spend in those areas, such as the dish room.
The
orientation was a little slow going, but it did help us to understand what we
would be doing and what is expected of us.
I am looking forward to all that I can learn through this internship and
working with my fellow intern, Sara.
Day 2:
First
thing in the morning we were able to attend the meeting with all of the
managers. There they talked mainly about
how they were going to renew their PepsiCo contract since they would be meeting
with PepsiCo later that morning. Also,
they discussed how to use the CBORD system in a more effective way to reduce
the over ordering of food. The CBORD
system really drives the entire operation because everyone uses it in some
way. After the meeting, we continued
with orientation. We discussed, in
detail, all if the projects we would have to complete in our time here. I think we were both pretty excited about the
recipe development one, which is also first.
We will be able to prepare our dish and also serve it in the dining
hall. I am currently planning to do a
Japanese dish for my main course, but I am still unsure of what to do for the
vegetable side or the prepared salad.
Day 3:
Today
we were able to work in the dish room to learn all the different chemicals and
the different operations. This was a
little difficult because they were retiling the floor so we were not able to
see it in action. We were able to look
up all the chemicals in the MSDS binder and found some interesting ones. There was a hand soap that was
combustible. We were also able to help
to update the binder with the new chemicals they were using.
We
had two meetings in the afternoon that were kind of interesting. The first one was with the city health
inspector. She told us how she did
inspections and then through in a couple horror stories. We really enjoyed our next meeting which was
with the pest control specialist on campus.
He talked about all the different ways that bugs and rodents can affect
the food establishment. Not only can
they come through places in the walls or open doors, but the people who work
and eat there can bring them in. He also
discussed that the most important part of pest control is the prevention of
them getting inside in the first place.
What was most interesting about the health inspector and the pest
control specialist was the way they set their standard for how they do their
jobs. They both had said that the level
of safety they wanted to provide was whether or not they would be comfortable
bringing their child there.
Day 4:
Thursday
morning we continued our Safety and Sanitation portion. We mainly discussed the importance of HACCP
plans. Here at the University of Wyoming,
they have been starting to implement HACCP plans even though they are not
required. This is more or less to get
the employees used to them so that when they are required to follow HACCP later
it will be easier to implement them and probably already in full swing. There was some time for us to work on our
projects while we were waiting for the dish room to be ready. We were able to observe the dish room in
motion during dinner time. After dinner
was over and all the dishes had been cleaned, they showed us how they cleaned
the machines to be ready for the next day.
I
had my own little drama that had to be taken care of. I had forgotten my social security card in
Texas and this was quite necessary to continue working. My family had mailed it to me, and it was
supposed to arrive on Wednesday but it did not.
I was told I would not be able to work again until the card came
in. So, do not ever forget your legal
documents when getting in a new job.
Day 5:
I
was not able to work Friday morning because my social security card did not
come in. It finally arrived in the
afternoon so I could pick up work for the dinner shift. My fellow intern was able to work on recipe
development with one of the employees, so we were able to try and critique
it. That was a lot of fun. Then we worked the salad bar and learned how
to clean it up at the end of the night.
Day 6:
I
had to work this Saturday to make up for the time I missed on Friday. I went in and worked to organize the MSDS
sheets and make sure that the binder was up to date with all of the chemicals
that we use in the kitchen.
**Pictures to come, my camera did not turn out well.
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