While college students are known for being busy, food services looks out for their student employees.
Stephanie Lee, communications specialist of food services at Appalachian State, said that working for food services is just like working at any other job. Students that work for food services simply have to have proper tax and employment documentation and fill out an online packet, just like applying for any other job. Also, no prior experience is necessary.
“We don’t have a requirement on experience because we trust our training process,” Lee said. “We do a lot of training and there is also a lot of cross-training. Students learn how to work a burrito station one day and then maybe help out on a salad bar. They are consistently learning and consistently being trained, just as any employee should be.”
While working as a student in food services seems like a lot of work and time, food services encourages students to not let work get in the way of school because they are students before they are employees.
Hannah Robinson, a junior English secondary education major, said food services at Appalachian State is generous to their student employees.
“I chose food services because you get to choose your hours, and they’re flexible with school schedules and you automatically get holidays off because they are not open,” Robinson said.
The minimum to work in food services is nine hours per week and the maximum is 30 hours per week. The student employees are able to decide how little or how much they want to work based on how they are doing in school.
Eden Spencer, a senior management major, is a student employee at Cascades. She usually gets to work at 6 a.m. and has an hour to prepare the food for the day.
“There is usually one other person with me at 6 a.m., as far as students go,” Spencer said. “Then there are two or three full-time people.”
Spencer has been a student employee for two semesters, but she said that she has become very helpful throughout this past semester because the job is a lot harder than it looks.
“My shift ends at 8 a.m. but I stay until noon or 2:30, mostly because right around 8 a.m. is when people start to trickle in,” Spencer said. “By the time 10 o’clock rolls around I feel like I want to go home, and that’s when it starts to get really busy, so then I’m just like, ‘I might as well stay and help them.’”
Spencer is graduating in May. While she said she wanted her last semester of college be laid back and easy, she does plan on working until graduation.
“I enjoy it. I think that’s important. I wouldn’t be back here for a second semester, if I didn’t enjoy it,” Spencer said.
Story by: Anna Dollar, News Reporter
