Recovering Carrot Peeler Tells the Truth About the Cafeteria
I work in an office and sit in a chair five days a week. When we had the snow day last week during Spring Tournament, I wasn’t sure if all of the Union College employee volunteers would be able to make it in before and during the meals for the tournament participants. So I decided to go help in the cafeteria, since I can walk to work.
I arrived in the cafeteria at 8:30 a.m., and by 9 a.m. I was peeling 50 lbs. of very large carrots. Two hours later, I was finished peeling those carrots and needed to sit down for a few minutes.
During my short break, I was asked to help with the juice and soft drink table during lunch time, which meant standing for another hour and a half. After that, I went back over to the vegetable processing area where four other volunteers were working. Two were working on several bags of fresh broccoli, making sure the bad areas of the broccoli were thrown away. The other two volunteers were chopping tomatoes, using a large weight-bearing manual machine to dice the fresh tomatoes. I was asked to cut up a large bag of green onions that took an hour to do. Prepping these vegetables took several hours with multiple people working.
I’m sharing this experience for several reasons:
I was shocked to learn how many fresh vegetables the cafeteria preps and serves. I was told that 200 lbs. of fresh fruit is received twice a week and repackaged for resale. I asked Denise Serack, the director of Union Market, why she doesn’t serve frozen vegetables. She told me it’s because the taste isn’t very good; it’s too watery and mushy.
I was also surprised how much time it takes to prepare these fresh vegetables. Even though my experience included preparation for an additional 300 people for the tournament, the cafeteria still does this type of prep work for the college students daily. There is one full-time employee and two part-time student workers just prepping fruits and vegetables.
It also surprised me that every full-time employee wears multiple hats that can take hours to complete. One employee could be responsible for cooking multiple meals, creating grab and go food, cleaning, stock management and dish room responsibilities — all in the same day!
It was a very good but very tiring experience for me to work at the Union Market for the whole day. It made me appreciate all the time, work, and energy that the cafeteria employees do to provide the best and freshest food they can at a reasonable price.
I know that if the College administration ever decided to contract the cafeteria workers and food out to a third-party company, I would suspect that much of the food would not be as fresh and that some of it would probably be pre-packaged, processed and/or frozen because that is cheaper and a lot easier.
I hope you will take the time to thank a cafeteria employee for all their hard work. If you have time to spare or are looking for an on-campus job, talk to Denise about working at Union Market. There are job openings and they will help you find a position and hours that work best for you.
Claudia Kaiser is the Office Manager in Financial Administration.
By: Claudia Kaiser