School Update: Halfway Done

I was actually pretty nervous about starting this semester off.  The last time I took a full load of classes I struggled to keep up with all the homework.  I was also very active in several organizations that took a lot of my time.  I didn't know how to balance things and I definitely didn't know what time management really meant.

This semester, like I mentioned in this post, I'm taking five classes which equates to fifteen credit hours.  I honestly can say that I've learned a lot from this semester already and we're only half way done!  I've learned how to prioritize things, streamline certain activities, how to say no to extra shifts that would put my academics on the back burner, and most of all, that I am capable of great things.

Your Servers Are People Too

One of my favorite bloggers, Ashley from Forever Ashley posted yesterday an experience her and her husband had while dining out at a local sports bar in Atlanta.  She shared with her readers about their server and how wonderful this young man had been and how he thanked them for being so great.

Photo: from WaitersToday.com

This post reminded about the total opposite of what this young server could have endured instead of the lovely conversational guests he had with Ashley and her husband.  I don't know how many stories I've heard from my classmates that also work in the food service industry and their horror stories of sorts of guests who are, let me just put it this way, less than desirable to deal with.  Even in fast food I've seen my fair share of guests who have gotten angry at a coworker or even myself for something trivial or out of our control.

The thing that I want to point out is that people who work in food service may not be doing it because that's what they want to do in life.  Think about it, most people don't want to spend six or seven days a week standing for eight or more hours, walking, carrying trays, lifting things, busing tables, standing over a grill, etc.  They are most likely doing it because they need some sort of income and that job is probably just a transitional phase.

I feel like this shouldn't need to be a public service announcement, but your servers are people too.

Even for people like my classmates and myself who want to be in this industry there are a lot of jobs we have to suffer through to make it to where we want to be.  We do it with a good attitude and give every day our best effort.  I'm pretty sure no one is seriously out to ruin your meal/day so that we can not get tips and you know, pay the bills.

Now take a moment, think about the last time you got frustrated with your server.  Was it something that the server was in control of? A lot of frustration that comes from guests in the food service area, it seems, are things that the server can't control, like running out of caramel cupcakes in Ashley's case.

It aggravates me that there seems to be this idea of giving inferior treatment to those who work in the hospitality industry.  Yes, this is a service industry but we're all humans too.  Can we not forget that when something goes less than planned?

Okay, my ranting for the evening is finished.

September Favorites

The last month since I posted last has flown by.  This morning I thought I would sit down and throw some words out on my screen to at the very least let you all know I'm still alive.

I've come up with several things I wanted to blog about but today I felt like I needed to do something lighthearted and maybe even a bit fun!

Basically this post is just stuff I've found in the last month that I like and that I want to share.

A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to tour the Hyatt Regency in Wichita for an event my class is planning.  The tour sparked a bunch of questions in my head, one of which was what did it take to turn a ballroom over?  This video of time lapse of just that at the Omni Forth Worth hotel was an awesome answer.

I follow several different hotel brands on Twitter to keep up with industry news.  One of my favorites has been Hyatt. They have a special team devoted to tweeting at their guests and it makes me feel so happy that they've taken this stance on Twitter.  You can find them @HyattConcierge

Hyatt had tweeted this photo and I've since shared it to all my social networking sites because I love it so much.  For me this goes for both people who are traveling and for those to explore their own city.  I think it's super important when traveling to do things the locals do and eat where the locals eat.  How else are you going to really experience the culture if you only doing the touristy things?

I think this speaks for itself. I just love it.

Slowly this is becoming one of my favorite quotes.

This article titled 8 Things People Who Hate Confrontation Understand was basically written to explain me as a person.

I found this a couple of days ago and I'm still laughing.  Pig In Australia Steals 18 Beers From Campers, Gets Drunk, Fights Cow.

9 Reminders from Famous Women to Follow Your True Dreams. #2 is my favorite.

Hopefully it won't be another month before I'm back here, but I can't promise anything.  I'm pretty active on Twitter still, you can follow me here.

Eating, Sleeping, Living in the Hospitality Industry

I've been absent for a while and believe me I miss this little space I've created on the internet but as you can suspect, real life got in the way. Again.  This time around I'm not upset with it by any means because I've been doing stuff that I absolutely love.  That doesn't mean I haven't been working hard though.

MOS

The first thing I want to mention was Mulvane Old Settlers Days that fell on the third weekend of August as it does every year.  As a member of the American Legion Auxiliary I worked our booth downtown where the festivities was going on.  I spent the majority of Friday and Saturday at the booth with other members.  We sold water and soda for a dollar as a fundraiser for our post that we do every year.  I got the opportunity to interact with veterans from outside of the area that had traveled to the Mulvane area for MOS weekend.

The biggest part of MOS (for the Legion) was the event we hosted at our post on Saturday night.  We hosted the Nick Gibson Band  and held a beer garden.  I was apart of the planning committee and helped to volunteer during the event.  I was tied up with logistical things for the time that I was there and I did not get to indulge in the live music.  Nor did I get to take part in the beer garden, but it's not like I could do that anyway since I'm still a few months shy of 21.

Classes promptly started the Monday after MOS weekend.

School

Because I feel like I'm slacking in school because I left my other school in the middle of the semester and then didn't get back to school until a year after that, I feel the need to play catch-up and graduate a semester early then what the program track has me on.  Sooooo, I'm taking 15 credit hours this semester. That's right, FIVE classes.

Hospitality Law is hands down the toughest class yet and I have no qualms that it will continue to be a tough class.  The first week was basically just learning about all the legal terms and such that go with the court system and the differences between criminal and civil cases (hospitality organizations usually have to deal with civil cases, in case you were wondering).  There's a lot of coursework for this class and we work for three hours every Monday in class on the case studies in our book.

Introduction to Catering is a fun class.  Our instructor gives us different scenarios and we have to come up with either menus, list of items we need to take (for off site locations) or other things.  The hardest part of this class has been figuring out how to remember the equations to find the cost per person for each menu item.  I have it down for the most part but when it comes to figuring the meat cost it gets tricky because of the shrinkage!  I'm looking forward to two different events we're going to: the United Way breakfast that is going to feed over a 1,000 people and the Cisco Food Show.

Facilities Design & Management is currently my favorite class.  For the semester we are creating our own restaurant (or hotel in one student's choice) and we're doing everything from the naming and branding, down to designing the facility with a computer software program.  I plan on making a post with some of my ideas I didn't use for the first part of my project, stuff like concepts and names.  I'm still trying to come up with a slogan for my project so stay tuned in on Twitter because I'm sure I'll tweet it!  Another assignment I'm really interested in getting started on is interviewing a restaurant owner about their thoughts of opening their business up.

Hotel/Motel Operations is my second favorite class because of several things.  There are only five people in the class so we get to discuss stuff in greater detail.  We also do a thing called Morning News where we each find something from the lodging industry to share with the class and we discuss it.  In this class we're doing a class project together since we can't really divide ourselves equally into groups, and we're creating a hotel with all the fixings down to what we would charge for our rack rates.  We're also going to be interviewing general managers and department managers from hotels in the city!

Event Planning I is a hot mess right now but it has potential to be a favorite class by the end of the semester.  We're currently in our "beginning to plan" stage of planning an event for a non profit literacy group that is partnering with our culinary class and doing a program in a local elementary school.  The event we're planning is going to showcase the work of this elementary program and our class is responsible for the planning of everything.  The only thing we know for a fact right now is that we're hosting it at the Hyatt.  There's a lot of work to be done this semester!  In this class we're touring several places in Wichita as event venues.  One of the ones I'm very excited for is touring Intrust Bank Arena since I haven't been there yet for concerts or anything (which is really sad, believe me).

Work

I'm still working but very little. I'm contemplating giving my two week's notice and focusing on school.  I will at some point have to get into an internship too so I'm just wondering when the best time is to cut ties at work.

Life and Other Stuff

My wisdom teeth are killing me.  My mouth has been swollen all week and it hurts to smile.  It's a good thing I didn't work most of this week because I couldn't have smiled.  A classmate told me yesterday that it looked like I had a "resting bitch face" because I wasn't able to smile as much as normal.

Rocky Road ice cream is now my favorite thing.

I got new shoes and they're sparkly.  Like super sparkly.  Now I have two pairs of sparkly shoes.  That isn't enough though. I WANT ALL THE SPARKLY SHOES.

I managed to get lost the other day in Wichita.  It's been a few months since I've gotten myself lost.  I didn't have Margaret (my GPS) on and I thought I knew where I was going. Long story short, I ended up in a sketch part of town and promptly turned around and went back to school.  I was in search of food, I WAS HUNGRY.

November 1st I'm going to a leadership class for the American Legion Auxiliary and I'm super pumped about it!

August 8th I attended and became certified in Field Service through the ALA.  Meaning I can do more volunteer work in local hospitals, nursing homes and other places with veterans.

In October I'm going to Denton, Texas to visit the University of North Texas.  I'm contemplating transferring there when I graduate from the associates program I'm currently in.  It's still a ways off but I'm really excited to see what options are open for the future in this industry.

I think that about covers everything.  Hopefully I won't be gone too long when I post next.  Ideally I would like to post once a week, but that's going to be tough.  So, I guess I'll post when I can!

Fearing Change

Change is something that can't be fought.  Sure you can fight against it, but you'll still lose.  Every time.  It's going to happen whether or not we're ready for it or if we fully accept it.

Fighting against change is a good thing though.  I think that in the process, no matter how it's done, fighting any form of change allows you to be you.

For me I've learned that when I fight change it's usually out of fear.  Sometimes this fear is rational and other times it's completely irrational and makes me think "what the hell" at some point down the road.

Fighting change, no matter what is or how we do it is a way of what's in our heart making it's way to the surface -- I'm talking about both irrational and rational reactions.

I think that some people, or at least I know this is true for me, irrational reactions to change means that whatever is going on in the heart hasn't been given a chance to show.

This past semester was my first semester as a hospitality student. I loved it; it was new and exciting and I was thriving in this new environment.  About a month and a half into the semester one of my instructors forwarded me an email.  This email was about a summer internship at a national park.

I thought about it for a few days and then decided to just forget it.  Why do the internship?  I would miss family reunions and vacations.  I would be going alone. I wasn't sure I'd get into the program to begin with.  What if I couldn't handle working full time?

I was scared.  I knew that then but now,looking back I realized I was actually fearing all the worst:  failing.  I tricked myself into believing all these excuses I made for myself.

I missed a great chance.  I realize that, now.

There's a quote I always remember when I feel a little scared with what's going on in my life.

 I believed it to be true.  I still do, to a point.

I think I need to take more risks.  That everyone should take more risks.  How else are we going to learn what we're good at, what we're absolutely terrible at, or how to make ourselves into a better person?

Live and learn!

 

I Believe In...

One of the assignments I completed this week for my Quality Management and Customer Service class was to form a personal vision statement.  This was a fantastic exercise as was coming up with a mission statement last week.  Although they can be intertwined together, my mission and vision statements are quite a bit different.  Today I wanted to share my vision statement because it's short, sweet, and for me personally it's pretty encouraging and inspiring.

Photo Cred: Click Here

To me, the goal of creating a vision statement is to think about where you want to be in the future.  After I looked around the internet a bit before starting to create mine I found that most that I looked at seemed to be very specific and set to one specific career goal in mind.

For me, as I've mentioned on this blog before, I don't know exactly what I want to do in the hospitality industry.  There are ideas still flying around in my head, and that's completely fine because I still have at least a year and a half of school left.  I tried to make a vision statement for a hypothetical situation but my gut was telling me I needed to scrap it and just go with my heart.  Which is exactly what I did.  I focused on my values, something that I hadn't really focused on before.

I aim to keep my values of passion, excellence, empowerment, innovation and responsible citizenship at the forefront of my mind in daily work and life as well as in making decisions for my future.

• Passion - …to be passionate about the things I do from school to work,  down to the things I do in my spare time.

• Excellence -…to not only want to do well but to make choices to help me succeed in the future.

• Empowerment -…to do what is right instead of easy and to encourage others around me to do the same.

• Innovation -…acknowledging when change is needed to continue being productive but to keep a hold of the things I believe in.

• Responsible Citizenship -…to adhere to laws and uphold strong ethics that I believe in both my personal life as well as my professional life.

I'm not going to lie, this was a hard assignment especially when I decided that I wanted to take it very seriously.  On the flip side, when I crossed the finish line and submitted my homework I felt empowered and very happy.

Originally I decided to pick five words to use as my values and then sort of describe them to help hold myself accountable and to remind myself in weeks to come what I was thinking when I chose them.  Each of these five I believe strongly in, though before this assignment I had never said "I believe in this and this".  But these values are still things that I need to work on and to make stronger.  I did a lot of thinking about this last night.

I thought a lot about how I need to learn how to keep myself accountable, that I can't always rely on someone else to be there and be the nagging voice in my head that I need.  I thought about the potential I have to do so well in school but yet I find myself still slacking off even though I'm no where near where I was a year ago.  I thought about how I take the easy way out instead of sticking to what needs to be done and doing it right the first time.

I thought about a lot last night.

The great thing about creating your own personal mission and/or vision statements is that you are free to change and adapt them as you grow.  Maybe in a few months I'll add a new word to this list that I find myself believing strongly in.  Or maybe I'll take one of these away for some reason.  Each person is different.

Weaknesses

We made it home last night after fighting some crazy holiday drivers from Denver to Wichita.  I'm working on homework right now.  Yes, it is homework that's due today. But at least I don't have a whole week's worth of assignments to do today, see, there's the positive side on that...or maybe it's just me trying to deflect the thoughts you're thinking.  That yes, I did procrastinate on my homework, again. Surprise? Not hardly.

The assignment I'm working on right now is about listing my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats when it comes to my professional life in the hospitality industry.  The hardest part of the whole things, you guessed it, finding the words to explain my weaknesses.

Let's be real for a moment.  I don't think anyone likes to look at themselves and then share their weaknesses.  Hell, if anyone is like me, they'll try their best to ignore the weaknesses...which is bad guys, because then you never really acknowledge them and work on making them into strengths.

Lovejoy's Bar and Grill

Notes from Jess: Apparently I've summoned the mountain fairies, some way or another! This post was originally written Thursday but the mountain fairies have been having fun stealing my posts!

I'm currently sitting in the McDonald's off of the interstate in Rawlins, Wyoming waiting on my online school websites to load.  I decided now would be the perfect opportunity to use the wifi while I have it and talk about a wonderful experience dining out last night in Laramie, Wyoming.

My brother has been working in this area since around the beginning of February and he and his crew has found their favorite places in Laramie and Rawlins.  Last night for dinner we headed into Laramie and my brother took us to their favorite place, Lovejoy's Bar and Grill.

Lovejoy's is downtown Laramie and parking is a bit difficult to come by in the evening.  We ate a early dinner and had arrived downtown around 5 o'clock.  We got super lucky because of the largeness of my brother's truck we had to go around the block to get parking big enough...and then my dad decided he couldn't walk all that way because of his bad knee. We ended up back in front of the bar and just our luck, someone was leaving and left us plenty of room for the truck right across the street! Score!

Every Life Has a Story

Notes from Jess: This post has been written and scheduled ahead of today due to traveling and the unknown whereabouts of stable internet connection..  This post is a part of the #BlogEveryDayInJuly challenge.  For more information about this challenge and how I'm going to complete it this month, you can check it out here.  Also, lovely credit to Jeane and Jem for the for the challenge button and for hosting/starting/inviting everyone to the challenge this month!

When I looked at the prompt for today, I knew exactly what I wanted to share.  The prompt is to share a video; it took just a search on Google and a link to the YouTube video to get it sorted.  I have so much love for this video.

The first time I saw this video was in my Intro to Hospitality and Tourism class.  We were discussing how a genuine smile to a guest can totally brighten and make their day.  This then lead to the conversation that each person is different and that we have no idea how they're day has been.  I thought about the time I talked with one of my guests just about something that was going on around town.  We weren't very busy at the time and before she left with her ice cream she thanked me for being so kind and conversing with her when I had work to do; she told me that she had been having a really bad day and that a simple conversation (and some icecream) helped brighten her mood.

What a Mess!

Hello ya'll!  I'm currently in a tiny town off the interstate a few miles between Laramie and Rawlins, Wyoming.  This town is so tiny that my senior graduating class makes up the most of this town.  It's that tiny.  Around 191 people to be exact!  Don't ask how I'm doing with wifi because I don't want to jinx it yet on the first full day I've been here; I still have lots of homework to do!

This is the first big trip I've taken since I started studying in the hospitality industry and it's opened my eyes quite a bit.  One thing I couldn't wait to storm onto the blogging field with was our lunch stop yesterday in Goodland, Kansas.  We stopped firstly for gas since the truck was hitting about a quarter of a tank (which was really great considering that we fought a lot of wind on the way west to Colorado) but it was also lunch time and we were all hungry.

Normally we try our hardest to go to local restaurants because it helps the local economy, we get to meet the locals and depending on where we're at they have specialties that we're not used to in South Central Kansas.  Sometimes though when you're just off the interstate you don't want to stray too far.  This was the case yesterday and we ended up in a Dairy Queen since the restaurant we decided to try was boarded up and closed.  Well, that and none of us decided it was worth trying a sketch looking taco shop that had one car in front.

Our experience at this DQ was not a good one and we left as soon as we finished eating.  My responses in purple are what I would have done if I was a manager in the situation or the employee.  Or just my comments and notes.

First thing: the high school kid who eventually ended up taking our order was chewing gum.  No, no. NO.  I wanted to smack the gum out of his mouth and I was tempted to by the time we left.  I just hope he wasn't near the food because I can just see saliva dripping out of his mouth and onto the food. Do you know how many types of food borne illnesses there are that can come from just that? Don't even make me break out my books.  

Next, we waited. For a while.  A long while.  I don't mind this, normally, it was during lunch and I totally get that.  The high school kid and the other employee, I'm assuming the manager looked at us several times but never took the moment to say "we'll be right with you" or anything like that.  It was like they were ignoring us. I find myself super busy at work when I have to cover the front register and get food out the drive thru window.  I've found a balance though and when I can't get to the register I always make eye contact with my guest and tell them that I'll be with them shortly.

The kid never tried up-selling.  This was pointed out by my Ma who would have taken a large drink instead but since he never asked she wasn't going to bother. Taking orders is a conversation.  The guest says they want this and then you ask questions to help complete their order.  In some cases, this would involve asking if my Ma would like a large drink instead of the small.

Ma also pointed out after we sat down that the manager had a drink cup in the back by the window near where some of the food and drink prep was going on.  So yeah, I feel super strongly about this as I do with the gum.  Just don't do it.  I know it's hard to keep your mouth from drying out if you're taking drive through orders but you just can't have drink glasses near the food prep.

My Ma drinks iced tea and sometimes it's hard to hunt down the tea container because it's normally not in the soda machine.  I looked by the soda machine and it wasn't there.  Ma then asked at the counter and she was directed to the soda machine.  She went back and had to tell them that no there was not tea out there.  Ma reported that they were rude to her when she asked for tea.  Employees should have been aware of where their tea and other asked for items are.  They also should get impatient or rude when a guest asks questions. Simple as that.

The kid dropped a bunch of cups on the floor and then proceeded to say "oh well".  Wasting product is bad.  The attitude is an even bigger problem.  Thankfully the manager did throw all the cups dropped away.

Our food is finally ready, I got to pick it up at the counter.  It's in a to go sack.  We never said that it was to go and the kid never asked.  It was the "I don't care" attitude of the kid that makes me so upset with this.  We didn't mind eating out of to go containers, but we would have like it if we hadn't needed to.  Once again, it's a conversation when taking orders.  Ask the guest if it's dine in or dine out.

A kid dropped her DQ Blizzard and it went all over the lobby floor.  I watched out of the corner of my eye what happened.  The grandma helped clean up some of it and then I heard her go tell the employees that there was a spill that needed cleaned up.  The high school kid came out with a mop and bucket and proceeded to clean it up.  The mop was dry and all it did was smear it around the floor.  And then, he never placed a "wet floor" sign.  HELLO LIABILITY! What if the old woman in the corner didn't see the floor was wet, slipped, fell, broke her hip and decided to sue?  It could have been prevented with a single yellow sign that someone was too lazy or not educated to be told to put it up.  Also, who taught this kid how to mop? Draw the soapy water in the bucket, it makes cleaning up ice cream and other spills way easier!

Then, to make things even grander, I noticed that the floor was dirty too.  At this point I wasn't surprised about the dirty floor, not with the careless attitude of the staff I interacted with.

*takes a deep breath*

The whole experience was super frustrating.  But it was a good learning moment.  I got to do one of those case studies in person instead of watching TV.

I definitely plan on making a phone call or writing a letter to DQ about this.  I think, from what we saw and experienced, that it wasn't just at the lower level but it was also a lot of management problems.

Now that my rant is over, I hope you are enjoying your lovely Wednesday!

Goals!

Notes from Jess: This post has been written and scheduled ahead of today due to being consumed by preparation for long distance traveling.  This post is a part of the #BlogEveryDayInJuly challenge.  For more information about this challenge and how I'm going to complete it this month, you can check it out here.  Also, lovely credit to Jeane and Jem for the for the challenge button and for hosting/starting/inviting everyone to the challenge this month!

Today's blog prompt for the #BlogEveryDayInJuly challenge is goals! No, not those goals. I don't watch soccer/football so if that's what you think this post is going to about then you're gonna be greatly disappointed.  But seriously, I don't know anything about soccer except what the ball looks like. Instead, this post is about goals in life.  That's right those goals.

So yeah, I guess I'll start with goals for today.

• Finish my reading my book for class. 

If all has gone well, I should be somewhere near Laramie, Wyoming right now.  We've come to visit my brother for a week and as much as I wish I could just throw everything out the window school wise, I can't skip an entire week of both classes.  Besides, those books are expensive and I need my laptop.  I'm reading The Spirit to Serve by Marriott's Way by J.W. Marriott and Kathi Ann Brown.  I still have a few weeks left to finish reading it but I've been reading for thirty minutes every day that I work.  I sit in a booth in the back and read before I clock in.  I just want to finish the reading and start the paper!

Normally I don't set goals just because I get too obsessed with making sure I hit them.  It's gotten to the point in the past that I will literally forget about every other priority in my life for goals that I set.  At some points, it's been an unhealthy thing to do so I don't set goals often.

One major goal I do have though and I've been focusing on but not on the overly obsessive level is graduating with my associates in hotel management and a certification for restaurant management by 2016 (I'm shooting for a graduation date in December 2015).  That's cramming three years into two years and I'm pretty set in wanting to do it this way because I feel like I wasted a lot of time last year when I left mid semester from my old school and then had all of the summer and fall off from school.  Making up for lost time I suppose, and I'm just really excited for my education in the hospitality field so I want to jump start things so I can get into a bachelors program soon!

Another goal, obviously, I want to improve on making healthy lifestyle changes.  I mentioned last month that I was diagnosed with prediabetes and with that means a diet change and moving way more than I used to.  This goal doesn't have a time limit because it's one of those ongoing things.

What are your goals for today? Do you have any long term goals you're working towards currently?

Tomorrow's challenge post will be short and simple, see you then!

Seven Things that Guests Do That Annoy Me

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who automatically hates their guests.  I'm far from that.  In fact, I love my guests no matter what.  That's right, even when their little gremlin decides to smear their ice cream cone down the wall of the booth in the corner that is such a pain to clean.  Even when a guest gets irrational upset over forgetting their extra dipping sauce.  I love them all, no matter their hot and flustered moments.  Because really, I get them too.

I do however get annoyed some weeks when it seems like all guests are missing a point or two.  Thus, my list of things that guests do that annoy me.

• Not looking me in the eyes when ordering.  I can't tell if you're actually ordering or if you're just talking about maybe trying the grilled chicken salad.  If you make eye contact with me, even just at the beginning of your order I know you're ready to roll and I'll do my best to catch everything you say the first time.  If you talk to the floor, well, we're going to be for a while.
• Getting annoyed when I have to ask extra questions to clarify the order.  If it's during lunch time, which it probably is and you're talking soft or rushing words I can't hear you well.  There's a line of people at each register, employees talking and making noise in the grill and talking to guests in the drive thru window plus if I'm wearing a headset, I have one ear that I can't hear out of because it's getting drive thru orders.  Do you want your burger to have mayo on it or would you like to pick off the tomato because you couldn't stand to answer my question.
• Mistaking me for a guy.  This doesn't happen often, but it annoys the crap out of me.  My hair is pulled back in a bun with a cap on.  I'm not a skinny woman, I have curves and muscle.  But apparently a feminine name "Jessica" and fancy wide rimmed glasses with jewels on the side scream out "I'm a man".
• Standing at the counter waiting for food when they've just ordered.  Your burger isn't ready yet. Your chicken is still in the fryer.  We're waiting on fresh fries to be salted.  Oh, and you had three medium milkshakes made with the hardest flavor of ice cream we have? Yeah, it's going to take a couple minutes, we don't magically have it all ready.  Go, get your drink, pick out your booth and get all the napkins and ketchup you want.  We'll call your number. You won't go hungry. And no,  I can not give you your shake right now because then someone else will try to make it again. Leave it alone, please.
• Asking for lids on a single dip of ice cream in a cup.  Are you serious?  By the time you get home it's gonna be melted.  I don't understand, but here's your lid regardless.
• Ordering diet cherry limeade.  What?  Okay, I get the soda water instead of the simple syrup carbonation mixture, it's not as sweet which I totes understand.  But you do realize that the cherry syrup we put in means syrup right?  Don't complain that it's too sweet, you wanted a cherry limeade, diet.
• Giving me the stink eye when I have to tell you pull your vehicle up to the door at the end of the drive thru lane because we're waiting on fresh fries/chicken and we already have the next vehicle's order completely finished.  Like seriously? Are you in such a hurry that you're not going to appreciate that we're not giving you the old sitting-here-for-at-least-thirty-minutes-and-not-really-that-hot fries? How about fresh crispy chicken strips?  Just pull up to the door, please.

Well, that all came out a bit like I was ranting, but that still doesn't mean that I'm not at least a little bit annoyed when these things happen...at least five times every shift I work (excluding the one about guests mistaking me for a man).

What's your number one pet peeve as a guest in fast food restaurants?  I think mine has to be when I'm not greeted.  I like to see a smiling face ready to help me order.  It makes me want to go back; there have been times when I've revisited a fast food restaurant I might have had troubles with the food before just because I had a good customer service experience with a member of the crew.

Striving for a Better ME

Last night my Ma and I were talking about school.  I had spent the majority of yesterday morning at the main campus of my college sorting paperwork and schedules out for the coming fall term.  We were looking at my transcripts and Ma said "as long as you keep passing, it'll be fine."

I'm tired of just passing though.

Here's the deal; for as long as I can remember I've only ever done enough to barely get by in school.  Up until this last semester, that was true in college too.  I'm tired of saying "yeah, I passed" instead of "I scored well".

I think a lot of this has to do with how my high school operated.  It seemed that I could do very little and manage to pass a class.  I got into the habit, along with the procrastination problems I've mentioned, in just doing a little bit of the work and hoping it turns out for the best.  This way of learning has not helped one bit, and in some ways I think it's actually been the worst thing about high school looking back.  I never felt that need to excel at what I was doing because essentially I knew I would move on with a passing grade.

On the flip side, I think that some of this issue (mostly related in college coursework) has been that I was doing the wrong thing.  I enjoyed my science classes, I liked my history classes, but I love my hospitality classes.

The more that I've thought about it over the last month, I've realized that dropping out of my second semester of college was the best thing I could have done.  When I came home and got a job I felt lost.  I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to be.  The job I got at the dairy store/grill slowly showed me I was on the wrong path.  I got interested in the hospitality industry and eventually I ended up back in school studying hotel and restaurant management.

I always knew that when I followed my gut instinct that told me to leave in the middle of the semester that God had much greater plans for me.  I learned to be more open to Him and I've come a long ways from where I was at a year and a half ago.  I have found where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

That brings me back to the subject of this post, striving for a better me.  I'm tired of doing the bare minimum and with being in the hospitality industry, an industry that I have grown to love in the last year, has made me rethink my views about what I want for myself.

I know that I'll probably never be as great as Cristina Yang from Grey's but I want to be great.  I want to be great in my own way and the only way I can get there is setting myself up to succeed.

My senior English teacher's words still ring in my ears very clearly: "Do or don't do, there is no try option.  Give it your all, or nothing."

TV Stress

I know I'm not the only one that has this problem because one of my classmates and friend and I have discussed how stressed we get when watching TV, particularly about the shows I'm going to mention.  This isn't the same stress that comes from getting attached to a fictional character, this is the stress that comes from reality TV and just how uneducated and lack of accountability there is.

I'm talking about hospitality based shows like Hotel Impossible (Travel channel), Restaurant Impossible (Food channel), Bar Rescue (Spike channel) and several others that I have not gotten to watch in depth yet.

I'm generally making this face between
covering my face with my hands and shaking my head.
photo source

As someone who is actually studying what it takes to run an efficient hotel, the components it takes to make a restaurant successful and about the leadership qualities needed to run a business in general, I get stressed out pretty quickly in the opening of one of these shows. The last episode of Hotel Impossible took me five minutes before I was stressed out.

Don't worry, the stress that I'm feeling from these shows isn't going to kill me if it does then clearly we have a problem on our hands.. Yesterday as my Ma and I watched an episode of Hotel Impossible and then Restaurant Impossible I ranted about everything that was wrong and how it could be improved and specifically how the lack of leadership and encouragement was ruining EVERYTHING we discussed a variety of things like empowering employees.  The stress I get from these shows has been a learning tool because I'm actively applying what I'm learning in class to each of these cases and actively thinking of approaches to help better the business.

I actually went to memegenerator to make this.
EMPOWER YOUR EMPLOYEES,
it'll do wonderful things for everyone.

In many ways it makes so much sense to do things a certain way but the biggest stress I've had with these shows is the lack of education people have when they start their own business (restaurants in particular) or take one over as an owner.  It takes so much more than just having your name on the deed and appropriate paperwork to make a business successful.  There is time that is devoted to figuring out what your guests want on a menu and making sure that your staff can perfectly execute it to keep those same guests returning time and time again.  There's thought behind setting up a dining room to create a pleasant environment and good flow in the room.  Beyond this there are many many more things that need to be taken into consideration.

I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that not everyone realizes how much work these things require and that there are other ways to make it in these businesses without studying in the hospitality industry.  I'm also reminded that shows like these, though they do have a strong tendency to over exaggerate certain elements, provide these clients with the education, tools and means to help better their establishment.
At the end of the day, the stress I go through watching just a single episode of these shows helps me tremendously because I'm staying engaged and taking note on things that I want to avoid in the future.  I haven't pulled too much hair out, yet.