Job conditions in dining halls drive away student workers

Please see the Editor-in-Chief's subsequent note concerning issues of balance and accuracy in this story.

Working for the Rocky-Mathey dining hall, Robert Wohl ’10 was regularly directed to remove steaming hot plates from the dishwasher with his bare hands, leading him to quit the job over Intersession after working in the dining hall for three semesters.

The dining hall dishwasher used near-boiling water to clean plates on a conveyer belt. Wohl’s job was to remove still-hot plates from the machine once they were clean.

“Originally we were given gloves, but later we were told to use our bare hands and that they would adjust [to the heat],” he said.

Each time he went to work, however, Wohl had to re-adjust to the heat of the plates. The pain, coupled with working in a hot, un-air-conditioned dining hall, was enough to drive him away. He now works as a research assistant and can complete work from the privacy of his room.

But Wohl is not a minority. He has become part of a significant number of students who have quit their jobs at Dining Services due to poor conditions or inflexible hours.

About 250 students work for Dining Services during the academic year and about 450 during the period leading up to Commencement, Dining Services Director Stu Orefice said. Students have admitted to leaving these positions for a variety of reasons, commonly transferring to more versatile and less physically demanding jobs.

“After I worked in the dining halls for three hours a night, I felt like I couldn’t do anything else; I would just go to sleep,” Zhihan Ma ’11 said. She used to work at the Whitman dining hall but found the job to be too taxing.

In November, Ma began work at the East Asian Library. By then, she had quit her original dining hall position, but still worked as a card checker. She has since left Dining Services altogether and now holds two jobs at the library.

Library jobs are generally viewed as more desirable than dining hall work because students can sit and do homework if they are not needed, and the wages are similar.

“While my work before was not bad, I really enjoy my jobs now,” Ma said.

Diana Negoescu ’09 also found working at Firestone Library a more accommodating alternative to her work at the Rocky-Mathey dining hall during the first semester of her freshman year.

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Negoescu, like Ma, was recommended the job by the Financial Aid Office as a way to earn spending money while attending the University but found it too difficult to manage along with her schedule.

“I quit because I found it kind of inflexible. You had to be there at very specific times, and it was difficult to find someone to replace me,” she said. Negoescu left her job by the end of the semester.

She found that work at Firestone Library better suited her needs. There, she explained, it is much easier to change one’s hours if a scheduling conflict arises.

Others have quit their jobs because the work environment became too difficult to manage. Mariela Vacheva ’08 worked at the Rocky-Mathey dining hall as a student manager for her freshman and sophomore years.

Last September, after returning from a year of study abroad, Vacheva spent two weeks as a worker before leaving. She cited the changes in working conditions caused by the renovations in the dining hall as the main cause of her choice to seek other work.

“Everyone was complaining: ‘Oh, we hate it, and it’s so small,’ ” she explained. The renovations made working conditions increasingly cramped, but the work itself became too taxing on her as well. This year, she added, workers were no longer allowed to drink water on the job.

Many other students, however, have come to enjoy their dining hall work and continue working there despite the availability of other on-campus jobs.

Xiaoye Ma ’11 works Sunday brunch at Forbes, where the dining hall has done a good job of accommodating her schedule, she said. While her shift is four hours long, she noted that the time commitment depends on how frequently one chooses to work.

“I actually like working in the dining hall. For me, it’s a good form of relaxation,” she said, explaining that it gives her a break from thinking about schoolwork.

“This job attracts a lot of workers that really like it,” said Margaret Byron ’10, a student coordinator at Whitman. She explained that it is a “fast-track” to some of the best-paid student jobs on campus.

Byron did note, however, that many students trickle away from Dining Services early in the school year because they don’t enjoy the work. She explained that many would rather have a library job, especially because working for Dining Services can be messy.

The workers mentioned above all decided to work in the dining halls as part of their financial aid packages.

Betty Ashwood, associate director of financial aid and director of student employment, explained that students receiving financial aid have a job included in their aid awards. It is suggested that they work 8.5 hours per week — 7.5 for freshmen — to earn enough money to cover the cost of books and personal expenses.

Last year, around 2,270 undergraduates were employed on campus at some point during the year. Of these students, 1,560 were on financial aid and 710 were not. Though Dining Services and libraries are the biggest employers on campus, the Financial Aid Office also recommends working at Frist Campus Center.

At any given time during the school year, Ashwood said, around 450 to 500 students are employed by either Dining Services or the libraries, but it is difficult to give exact numbers because there is always “shuffling between different employers."

The recommended amount of work per week has decreased from last year’s nine- and 10-hour recommendations.

Ashwood explained that this decrease was a “proactive” measure; it was not motivated by negative feedback from student workers. Instead, a review conducted by the Financial Aid Office found that, on average, student workers were not working nine or 10 hours a week. The numbers were decreased to make the recommendations more realistic.