Experience With Organizations

University Housing Dining Hall

My second semester freshman year I worked for two of the dining halls, PAR and FAR, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The dining hall is an organization apart of the much larger organization of university housing at Illinois. I will focus on the organization of the dining hall. The dining hall is built around a structure that hires two different type of workers. The first part of the organization starts with student workers who usually live in the dorms.  At the top of this part of the organization there is a manager for student workers who is in charge of hiring and managing student workers. For the semester that I was hired and worked for the student manager, he seemed to be using a gift exchange model. He was very devoted to the interests of the students themselves. He worked very had to accompany the demanding flexibility that student workers need. He would often times go out of his way to help student workers. For example, when my fellow student worker was asked by one of the full time managers to clean the floors she refused because it is the job of the janitor. However, the manager urged my friend to do it and after that shift she called the student manager who professionally reprimanded the manager. He also let it be known that no student worker was to clean the floor as that was the job of the janitor. There are many other times the student manager would go out of the way to be a reference to people for different jobs. He understood this was only a temporary job for us and wanted to ultimately help us in our career. He was a great manager who cared for his workers and each worker would work diligently knowing they were working for a good organization. Having an understanding and devoted manager made me intrinsically motivated for my job because I felt protected and wanted to work hard for my manager. In the end this increased my productivity.

Student workers during their shift however, would report to a shift supervisor who was also a student. The shift supervisor keeps track of student workers and gives them their tasks for the day. The shift supervisor would also act as a connector for the full time manager who would manage full time staff and the shift supervisors. If the manager felt like reassigning students he would use the shift supervisor to accomplish that task. The shift supervisor was also act as a buffer for the dining hall. They would facilitate the jobs of the other student workers. If a student did not show up for their shift they would usually take their place. Also, if there was a rush or any type of problems the shift supervisor would help pick up the slack and help work in the front or back.

The second type of workers in the organization are full time staff who usually work as cooks, janitors or managers. The full time cooks would usually report to the full time manager. They also worked with students in their respective food line preparing and cooking food. Cooks usually had students prepare the food that they would then cook. They also used student workers to keep their area clean and free of spills or messes. The few cooks that I worked with seemed to take their job seriously. They had an extrinsic motivation to work well or would probably be reprimanded by their manager otherwise. And since this is their full time job they depend on it to provide for themselves and their families. Student workers on the other hand, worked part time and often were more focused on their school work. Most student workers worked in the dining hall because it was also where they lived.

One possible transaction cost of the dining hall organization is that student workers were not necessarily able to be punished by the full time manager. They would only report to their shift supervisor and the student manager. Since the student manager isn't the one managing the actual meals they aren't aware of any problems until after they occur. There inevitably is a lag time between the problem occurring and the student manager being able to resolve the conflict. This can be applied to my example with my friend who was forced to take on a job that was never supposed to be assigned to her. Their was a time delay between her problems with her duties that day and the student manager. Overall, the organization seemed to run well and the only reason I left was the opportunity I was given to work at a better job.

Comments

  1. The piece would benefit from proofreading. There are some incorrect usages - the wrong word when it should be clear what the right word is. Those distract from your post.

    You didn't actually say what student workers do except that they don't mop the floor and they don't cook. It would have been good to describe some of the jobs that student workers do.

    As it turns out, when I was in college I worked in the food service one semester, as the checker of those people who were on the meal plan. A few years later I washed pots in a sorority. In both cases the work was in exchange for a meal. No cash was paid. In your case I'm guessing that you actually did get paid some money, but that it was a minimum wage job or with pay near minimum wage. Is that right?

    Even though I've been at the U of I for a long time, I don't really know how the food service at the residences work. For example, when are they open? Are there busy times and then slow times? When did you work, both hour of the day and day of the week? Do they have trouble staffing some time slots but not others?

    A different question is whether the student manager and shift supervisor had been there longer, so understood the job by "working their way up the ladder." Was that the case?

    I gather that you stopped doing this job after your freshman year. Had you moved out of the dorm then? Did you find some other work to replace that job?

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    Replies
    1. Student workers are usually either dishwashers or work in one of the food lines. Although, some student workers also wipe down tables and clean the counters of the food lines. The food lines vary from different dining halls, but usually a full time staff cooks the food, while a student worker prepares the food. For example, when I worked in the pizza line I would put the sauce and the toppings on the pizza, but the cook would actually put the pizza in and out of the oven.

      It's interesting that you also worked in the food service when you were in college. Many of my friends have also at some point worked in one of the dining halls on campus. The dining hall is almost always hiring it seems. You are right and I was paid near minimum wage while I worked for the dining hall.

      Most dining halls are open for breakfast lunch and dinner, but I only worked the dinner shift at FAR and PAR. PAR is also open for late night however, which is from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Usually when I was working the dinner shift there would be a dinner rush right around 5:30 or 6 p.m. When the dinner rush happened I was constantly making pizzas. Other than that I would only occasionally prepare a few pizzas here and there depending on the demand. It's interesting because sometimes there were slower days than others. It was never busy the entire dinner shift at either PAR or FAR, especially close to closing time. Although there is a high demand for student workers there is a big supply. Normally, they don't have trouble assigning shifts but college students aren't entirely reliable and sometimes skip their shifts without any warning. In this case, we would be short a person that day and usually the shift supervisor would assume their duties.

      The manager usually has worked there longer since students usually only work while they are undergraduates. However, when I worked at PAR the manager started that year. Most shift supervisor work as student workers before and know how things are run while the manager still had to learn. I highly doubt shift supervisors would go on to become managers of a dining hall although it is possible. I would assume that they would most likely only work for the dining hall as an undergraduate.

      After my freshman year I moved out and quit my job. I did not immediately find another job till later in my sophomore year. I used the income from my job as extra spending money and didn't immediately need a job. Although, I did find a job that I was happier working at with the football team. Working for the dining hall gave me good experience since it was one of my first jobs.

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