Rotation 2: Retail Services

Tuesday when I arrived I went over the retail services curriculum and what is expected of me with my preceptor and cafeteria manager, Bill. He demonstrated some things that he does with CBORD that I would later have to do. Each day I had to leave a voice message of the day's menu on the Cafe Presby menu line and send out an email of the menu to all employees. Then we did a pre-service checklist. We stocked foods and utensils, cleaned tables, and got hot food ready for the dinner hour. I taste-tested FRIED GIZZARDS! They taste like a really chewy chicken tender and are a huge hit of the south apparently. I've only heard of using gizzards in Thanksgiving stuffing. I won't be eating anymore fried gizzards. I got to eat lunch with the interns for once. It was nice to compare how everyone else was doing in their rotations. After lunch I sat in during a meeting with cafeteria supervisors and then I was instructed to tidy up the menus in CBORD. After working on it for two hours, I found out that I was told how to do it all wrong.

Wednesday was a long day. Tropical storm Hermine kept me up for much of the night from the pounding rain. It rained all day and night Tuesday until about 3 pm Wednesday. Luckily I don't have a long drive to the hospital because the roads were a mess. People think they have hovercrafts here. A few roads were completely covered with water. Dallas got over 6 inches of rain, other surrounding areas got over 10 inches! When I arrived in the morning, I got sent to the kitchen again to tidy up the new 4 week cycle cafeteria menu in CBORD. I was taught the correct way to do it that time. I worked on that from 7:30-11:30 then went to the cafeteria to bus tables and keep the cafeteria clean during the lunch hour. After lunch I played a manager role and met with a new employee about the Food and Nutrition department orientation. I went through a bunch of paperwork with her about her job description and department procedures. When that was done I worked on the menu in CBORD again to make it perfect. When I got home I couldn't take my eyes off the TV because they were covering all the flood damage. Weather was the only thing on TV for the night. I payed close attention when I heard there were tornado warnings in Dallas County, then I got scared when they started coming my way. Seven tornadoes struck down in north Texas, two of which were very close the area I live, heading right towards the hospital. The hospital called the first Code Grey/Black ever, which means severe weather/tornado. All of the patients (about 450) had to be moved from their rooms to the hallway. The tornado that struck closest to me was an EF2 tornado with 115 mph winds. It caused damage to buildings and threw an 18 wheeler against a building.

Thursday I was sent to work on the cash register during breakfast. I was pretty slow at first and accumulated quite the line of people. There's so many buttons on the computer! Then at lunch time the whole screen changed and I was slow again. What made it worse is that people don't know how to read signs. I was in the "NO CASH, credit card and employee badge only" line and people would hand me $20 after rung them up. I had to say "Sorry you have to go to a different line." It's not my fault they didn't see the big sign. I could help them because I didn't have any cash in my drawer. I got to be done on the cash register at 12:15 to eat lunch because us interns had orientation at the VA hospital in south Dallas at 2 pm. We had to take the DART rail to get there. It left at 12:47. We had to sprint to the station, luckily we had 2 minutes to spare after we got our $4 day pass. It was a 50 minute ride to the VA hospital. I got to see a nice tour of Dallas, including the Trinity river that flooded from all the rain. We had to make one transfer of trains. During the wait a homeless lady that smelled like sour milk came to stand next to us. You should have seen all of our noses wrinkle up the instant we smelled it. South Dallas is the run-down, crime side of Dallas. I would not feel safe if I was alone. I will probably take the DART during four weeks in the spring when I have my rotations at the VA to avoid rush hour traffic. Once at the VA we met our future preceptors and got an overview of what we will be doing. We were only there for 45 minutes then went back to Presby.

Friday was a busy, fun filled day. When I got there I made my last announcement on the menu line and sent out the day's menu to all the staff then went to the cafeteria to do the pre-service checklist. At 8:30 I got to go to the quarterly Leadership Development Institute. It is a leadership conference held at the hospital for all administrative people. I laughed a lot, there were two very funny speakers. I had to leave early to be back in the cafeteria to work the lunch hour. After lunch I helped a new food service employee complete her computer based training then Bill showed me some of his management responsibilities like payroll, budgeting, menu costs, and employee scheduling. Us interns met at Fireside Pies when we were done with work to celebrate Alyssa's birthday. It was a really yummy pizza place with the best pizza crust ever!