The Rocket

Issue date: 12/7/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Jessica Rupell High school student Sara Hedglan works in the dish room at Weisenfluh Dining Hall. Normally three to six people work in the dish room at one time, depending on the time of day and day of the week.

Half-eaten meals. Leftover food. End-of-the-meal concoctions.

Those who have worked in a restaurant before know that these are common sights in the dish room and that cleaning them up can be quite the dirty job.

For students who work in the dish rooms of the dining halls at SRU, the job can be just as messy.

Liz Lash, a senior theatre major, has worked at the dining halls since the spring of 2005 and has done many different jobs in her nearly three years with AVI FoodSystems, Inc., the foodservice provider for SRU.

Lash, who has worked exclusively at Weisenfluh Dining Hall, said this semester she has done line serving, dish room and pot sink, which includes the manual cleaning of pans that can't go through the dishwashing machine.

Even though she said gets stuff all over her arms, Lash said that of all the jobs at the dining halls, she most enjoys pot sink.

"You get to listen to music and talk when you do pot sink," Lash said. "When you're serving food, you can't talk because you have to ask what people want (to eat)."

Tina Neuch, a senior social work major and a student manager at Weisenfluh, said she also enjoys the job of pot sink the most.

"You're out of everyone's way, and it's really not that dirty," Neuch said.

Lash said one of the more disgusting parts of working in the dish room is seeing what people do with their food.

"It's gross what people do," Lash said. "Some people put stuff in their drink glasses and mix all their food on one plate."

Tim Jobe, a sophomore parks and resource management major, said seeing the mixing of food and drinks isn't uncommon.

"You see foods mixed together, condiments, drinks, desserts, attempted root beer floats, everything you could imagine and quite a few things you can't," Jobe said. "Sometimes I don't even want to know the story behind it."

Continued...

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