Foodservice 101
Food Service Management: 5 weeks, pre-K though 12 school district with 7 campuses, and 1 food service director
**DISCLAIMER** My experience in this rotation was less than stellar, I hope to briefly describe it while staying positive and focusing on what I did learn during my 5 weeks. This is pretty uncommon, so please don't expect that every (food service) rotation will be this way. I just think it's important not to sugarcoat it and pretend like all of my rotations were awesome.
Reflection from week 1:
After my first clinical rotation, I was ready to be treated like a new employee and get a lot of hands on experience, but this was not the case with this rotation. I think the take home message is not to assume anything before day one of each rotation. In my case I think there were a lot of other contributing factors, but regardless of your situation, always be ready to ask questions, and speak up with your expectations.
My preceptor was working all on her own, her secretary and warehouse manager were both out sick for this first week! So my she was seriously stressed and overwhelmed.
I started to see a lot of negativity and unprofessionalism in the work environment (for the sake of being professional, obviously we won't go into that)
After a few days I still had done nothing but observe, so I was getting worried that there was no way to appropriately evaluate my skills!
I emailed my ISU instructor Friday night to give her the lowdown, and asked for her opinion/guidance.
We completed the first of three evaluations, and my preceptor answered all the questions very positively. From the outside that is great, but I knew (I assume) from how stressed and overworked she was, that she didn't read the questions.
I asked my instructor at ISU how I should evaluate her and was told to remain professional (essentially don't say anything negative)
Week 4 update:
This rotation has been 100% observing, and 0% hands on experience
I learned a lot of important management and social lessons by watching it all! I.E. a lot of what not to do, and how I can improve as a manager and leader.
I found a spot in my preceptors office where I could see her computer screen and watch her work while also working on my assignments. (I started studying for the RD exam and prepping to go back to clinical in this time)
ISU told me I was allowed to switch facilities if I could find one, but with only 2-3 weeks to go, I didn't see the sense in trying to frantically do that.
I asked to spend one day in each of the seven school kitchens, to observe their different cooking and management styles. Also because I wanted to feel helpful.
This ended up being food service work, which is fine! But frustrating because that's not what I was there for. I did appreciate feeling helpful though, and it was cool to see the scratch cooking kitchens differ from the satellite kitchens.
I found out during week 4 that my clinical rotation that I was starting in 2 weeks had not been finalized...so I needed to find another rotation! My preceptor was insanely helpful in letting me take half days to go home and call facilities. Unfortunately for me, my last week was 90% focused on the clinical rotation, and 10% or less focused on the food service rotation. I don't think I learned anything new that week.
It's really unfortunate that I lost this week to finding a new facility, but having the clinical was more important.
Last day (Week 5, week 14/25 of the internship)
My agreement for the next rotation was still not finalized, and had to wait until about 3PM to hear from my new preceptor in California that the agreement had gone through! Then with 2 days to go, I started packing and getting ready for 6 weeks in California, 7 weeks out of the country, and 3 more weeks in California. I booked a flight on Monday morning, to leave that evening, said goodbye to my hugely supportive fiancee, and started Tuesday morning.
So what did I learn from this less than stellar experience???
How to take initiative and find tasks to complete
How to avoid office negativity and cattiness
How to effectively talk to my employees so that they respect me without hating me
Effective time management and how to self manage in a position where there is not a lot of day to day structure, where every day is different