UNI--Week Three

The third week went so fast that I forgot to take any pictures! I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday working at the Rialto dining center, which is the all-you-care-to-eat facility open for the summer. I worked on inventory, dishroom operations, food preparation, service, greeting, and office tasks such as bill paying and invoice verification. Monday was mostly office work with Deb, the clerk for the center, and I was able to complete some of the data entry tasks used for tracking orders and payments. In the afternoon, I attended a staff meeting consisting of all of the top managers for the summer dining services. In the evening, I worked on researching recipes for my upcoming special event (which will be a safari themed lunch) and played some late night sand volleyball with a few friends.

Tuesday was split in half with inventory in the morning and dishroom work after lunch. I have never participated in taking inventory before, so it was a very informative experience. Mike, one of the managers, read of the names of items and the counts that I then recorded in the binder. Even though the stock is much lower in the summer, taking inventory was still a daunting task! After lunch, I observed the dishroom operations and rotated through all of the stations. It was sort of a fun job because of the fast pace and constant movement.

Wednesday was focused on food prep and customer service. I started early enough to serve breakfast and clean up for the lunch switch over. I did some cooking as well and made chicken rice soup, lasagna, cheese sauce, and twice baked potato casserole. During lunch, I rotated around to the deli, pasta, home-style, and dessert stations in order to get a feel for each station. After work, I went to a Wednesday night church service that turned into a pizza and movie night with some of the other attendees.

Thursday was a tour day so Lisa, my internship coordinator, and I took a trip out to Iowa State University. The drive was about an hour and a half each way, and our tour lasted about two and a half hours which included lunch. It was a gorgeous sunny day, so our tour was an outdoor walking tour. We got to see all of the main dining centers, retail locations, and cafes. The campus was much larger than UNI or UW-Stevens Point, which also meant that there were more dining centers. Iowa State has many more students on campus in the summer and also hosts more larger conferences, so the dining centers that were open offered greater variety than here at UNI. I had fun getting off campus for a day and seeing another university and how it operates its dining services. On Thursday night, there was a “Wings and Wii” program in my hall so a bunch of us had Buffalo Wild Wings and played some Wii games.

On Friday, I worked with Dawnell, the general manager for catering. We discussed menu planning for catered events, types of service, and levels of leadership in catering. We had an unexpected conflict that needed to be resolved during our time regarding centerpieces for a customer’s wedding. We ended up having to find an assortment of vases and made up several sample centerpieces with different numbers and arrangements of flowers. We then had to photograph the rough samples, estimate the cost for each, and send the customer the options. This took a significant amount of time, but it gave me the opportunity to observe conflict resolution in the catering department. During my day of catering planning, we also attended a meeting about catering storage issues, saw a formal event being set up, taste tested peach pie, and started assembling a menu for an upcoming event. Next week I will be doing catering food prep and serving at a wedding. On Friday night, I went and saw my friend’s band play at a small local venue. The crowd was not very large, but the band’s energy and sound were great!

Yesterday was Saturday so I did not have to work, but kept busy. I took a bike ride down to Main Street with my neighbor and we strolled around and explored some of the shops and restaurants. We were limited on time, so will have to go back another day to see the other half of the shops that we missed on this trip. Tonight (Sunday), I will be working an over-night bakery shift. I love working bakery, but have never worked a shift overnight. It will be an interesting experience that will probably require a bit of coffee!