The Job: Behind the Scenes of BYU Dining Services

Well, friends, get ready, because I am about to show you footage that few people ever get to see in their lives: INSIDE the factory of the Culinary Support Center.


This is how the conversation always goes down when someone finds out I have a job:

Person: "Oh? Where do you work?"

Me: "The Culinary Support Center."

Person: "Never heard of it..."

Me: "You know the Creamery Outlet up by the Harman Building? Well, the Creamery is only the small front part. The rest of the building is the factory where they make and process the food for all over campus and the MTC."

Person: "So you make the food? Can you like make cool sandwiches?"

Me: "No, I haven't worked in the 40 degree sandwich room since my first couple weeks there."

Person (disappointed): "Oh. So what do you do?"

Me: "I sit at a desk in an 7"x 10" cement room with sketchy cell-phone reception and transfer all the paper-work from the food shipments for the day into the glitchy computer system, answer phone calls, track shortages, and print the 1,000-1,500 UPC labels for the the next morning's production."

Person changes the subject of conversation.

Chances are, if you walk into the office while I'm working, I will look like this.

Actually, probably more like this.

Or this.

But as boring as it sounds, and as much as I complain about it, the job definitely has its perks. For instance: 50% off card for the Cougar Eat, flexible schedule, free food in the break room (the best days are when the bakery screws up a big order and we get all the doughnuts, cookies, bagels, cakes, etc.), and 3 hours almost completely to myself in which I can sit and listen to music or memorize anatomy vocabulary (or browse Facebook or Pinterest...). So apart from the mind-numbing boredom and the weird delivery guys who think I'm married but hit on me anyway, it's really not all that bad.

I walk up every day around 2 and do the paper-work stuff. Sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes 10 minutes. I usually give myself until 3 to start the labels. These are the least favorite part of my job. Mostly because of this evil machine.

It's a special label printer that requires me to change out the labels depending on what I'm printing for. But it's annoying. See that little silver knob? Probably not. Well, by turning it, you adjust where the laser lines us that reads the space between the labels. Problem: a full turn only moves the laser like millimeter. So ever time I switch labels, I have to change it, and it takes forever and makes my hand cramp up. Therefore, to minimize the time I have to spend winding that knob, I start with the Cook/Chill labels (soups, pastas, sauces, meats), then the produce (all the fruits and vegetables get cut and processed in certain ways and have to be labeled accordingly), and then I do all the sandwich, veggie tray, salad, and fruit cup labels. 
Depending on the day, I have to change the labels 4 or 5 times.

Another annoying thing about the printer: changing the ink ribbon. Only a couple people know how to change it correctly, hence the big orange sign taped to it. I hate changing that thing. Pulling that tightly wrapped role off has resulted in bloody fingers, broken nails, and today a bruised wrist. Sometimes, I have to result to getting a razor blade and slicing through the literally thousands of thinner-than-paper layers to get that thing off.

And it just makes a huge mess. Grr.

Like I said, it's an evil thing with a mind of it's own. And last Friday as I was changing the sell-by dates (I have to change the date off-set every Friday since the labels are for Monday, not Saturday), the stupid database kept messing up the entire label layout, and then the printer would only print a generic, fake UPC code, so nothing was working. The tech support guys even tried to fix it and couldn't. So I got out of printing labels that day, but that just means Alan (the produce/sandwich/salad production supervisor) gets annoyed with me because he doesn't have his labels. But I'm ok with that. See, Alan and I kind of have this passive-aggressive battle going on. He used to be my supervisor but hasn't been since I've been exclusively working in the office. His philosophy in life seems to be something along the lines of, "The more complicated I make it, the smarter I look." So working at his computer for the second part of my shift can be a bit frustrating. And his desk is an absolute mess. He often leaves vegetables sitting there for days until they're squishy. Maybe he's testing their shelf-life. I don't know. But he also likes to leave garbage and papers out everywhere. I don't want to throw anything away, so I started just piling it in the corner of the desk. It's a very high pile. I keep wondering how high it'll get. Guess there's only one way to find out. :)

Anyway, by the end of the day, I have all these nice little rolls of labels which are all labeled with their own sticky notes. Labeled labels. I am so cool. :)

At least I've got this little guy to keep me company. I saw him creeping down the wall one day and showed Mitch (the receiving/shipping supervisor). Before I could say anything, he smashed him with his fist. And there he has stayed. For 3 months. Yup.