Dining staff at Hopkins work every day through the cold, snow, heat and rain to serve students. To allow the students to get to know these dedicated people a little better, The News-Letter interviewed some of the staff about their thoughts and experiences working at Hopkins.
At the Fresh Food Café (FFC), Janice Walker reflected upon her time working in Hopkins dining and getting to know the Hopkins students.
“For me personally, I get along with the students. I’m out here, I get more contact with the students than the people who work behind the scenes in the back,” Walker said. “Because I work the register, some of them I know by name; some of them, I’ve met their parents.”
Walker described an instance where she built a relationship with a student.
“Some of them know us by name, and some of them come in here looking for us, too, because we just sit and talk with them, and they talk with us. I had a student come here one year, and her first year was kind of rough,” Walker said. “She wrote me a nice card telling me that she was glad that I was here because I helped her decide to stay here, and I was really surprised when she wrote me a real nice letter.”
Walker explained why students are so important to her job.
“It’s all about them anyway. Because if they didn’t come here, we’d have no job,” Walker said.
She also spoke of Bon Appétit’s role in the providing dining services.
“It’s not all about Bon Appétit, it’s about the people who have worked here. Because... we can run this building practically by ourselves. All we need are their equipment and supplies to do it,” Walker said. “[Bon Appétit] is trying their best to please the kids, and that’s what they tell us every day. We got to do this for the kids, but we already know that.”
Also at the FFC, Ruth Kelly gave her thoughts on her job.
“For one thing, you adjust. I don’t care what company it is or what’s going on — you adjust to the situation and me myself, I adjust. It’s a job,” Kelly said. “You make your job hard? No, you make your job easy, that’s what you do. You come in and you know exactly what you’re supposed to do. And that’s what you do. You accommodate the kids. Always remember, it’s not what you do, it’s the way you do it.”
At the Bamboo Café, Daniel Lopez spoke of the importance of creating a comfortable environment for the students.
“Working here at Bamboo Café, it’s kind of carefree and very attuned to the customer’s needs,” Lopez said. “I don’t know about the other dining facilities on campus but... here, the customer’s experience is paramount. So if there’s a customer who needs something while they’re sitting down and we notice it, we’ll act on that need and we’ll try to facilitate it as best we can. We try to make it kind of a family-type environment here so that customers are actually given an importance.”
He also stressed the benefit of forming a connection with students.
“As a cashier you appreciate smiles; you appreciate positive interaction between cashier and customer. Just positive interactions really help out the cashier,” Lopez said. “It’s just these little bits and pieces you get to learn about the students that come into the café. I think that’s really the most rewarding part about the work. There’s something about feeding a whole bunch of people; it’s just rewarding.”
Workers at both Bamboo Café and the FFC spoke of how they dealt with students who misbehaved but understood the stress they can face.
“Some of them are very well-mannered, some of them not so very well-mannered, but you overlook that because I know they are frustrated because they got a lot on their plate, dealing with class,” Walker said.
“And sometimes I’m frustrated because I got a lot on my plate just dealing with trying to get things done in here to make the day easy for them. But other than that, I mean, it’s a good job.”
Lopez agreed with Walker’s appraisal.
“It’s a stressful environment here at Johns Hopkins University,” he said. “I think that there are some really terse interactions you get sometimes and again, as a cashier you just really try to think ‘Oh, maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe they’re going through something stressful in their lives right now,’ because you don’t know what things people are bringing with them when they’re entering the café. So you’ve got to be accommodating to that.”
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