Day 5 - Couch Restaurants

We now are onto our second week here at OU! Today, tomorrow, and Thursday we'll be at Couch Restaurants which is the big meal hall on campus and Wednesday we take a trip to US Foods in OKC.

So to start we met up with Claire who gave us the run down of how scheduling works for the summer months here, and a few details on some other things. Technically she manages/supervises one section of Couch called 'the view'. There are three sections in total with the other two being called 'sizzle' and 'home'. However during the summer months when they're only running camps they have a rotating menu with limited options so none of the regular places are open for us to eat at. So in the view (which essentially holds a bunch of TVs and one giant screen), there are about 3-4 different places you can choose to eat at during the academic year. Freshens and Athens are two of the main ones located in this section. In 'home' they have a sweet section which normally holds all the deserts and treats, there is 'vegetation station' where they cook vegetarian and vegan meals, and there are also long bars with any and all imaginable ingredients for salads as well as some fruit. They also have a special section where they have themed things like a carnival for instance. So if this was ongoing they might have hot dogs and cotton candy out, so it ends up rotating with what is being offered. Lastly in the sizzle section they have a smokehouse where you can get hamburgers and steak, shanghai stir-fry which you can make your own creation or they have entrees out like fried rice, and there is casa de sol which is a mexican spot that makes burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, and a bunch of other stuff with tons of toppings as well. And even the food that's offered with this set menu is delicious! Way better then X.

Claire showed us the system they use during summer which essentially allows for employees to go in themselves and locate shifts that are available. There are typically two 4 hour shifts (breakfast and lunch) then a 3.5 hour shift in the evenings (supper) and there is a max of 40 hrs a week. Through this program employees can see their schedule which is updated daily, swap/drop shifts, take vacation time, etc. During the summer they can't guarantee people that they will get 40 hrs and they usually end up changing the schedule quite frequently depending on the amount of camps that are going on (ie. 900-1200 kids), so they sometimes end up canceling shifts or sending people home. During the academic year though each supervisor/manager (two for each section of Couch) will do their own scheduling where employees don't have the choice of shifts. She also explained briefly the work study they have going on at OU (which we'll learn more about when we spend time with Room & Board) which essentially allows students who need to work in order to pay off their cost of living to have a job on campus. They work a minimum of 18 hrs a week at $12/hr ($8/hr after they exceed 18 hrs), 10 hrs of special events (which is essentially one football game), and 4 days during finals. It sounds like a really great program and allows the university to help out a lot of students.

Claire also explained how they operate the lines during the summer time. So they have 7 in total, and they start with opening the 3 lines in the 'home' section then open them outwards as it becomes more and more busy. When it starts to slow they close from the outside in which allows them to clean up more quickly. They're open from 7-9am for breakfast (so Kelsey and I never eat there cause its too early and we like our sleep), 11-1pm for lunch, and 4:30-6:30pm for dinner. Kels and I usually eat dinner here and sometimes lunch when we're on our own. During the academic year they're usually open a few hours later until 8pm for students.

After talking with Claire, we met up with Frannie who works with food costing and labor. She explained to us (as did Claire a little bit) how they determine staffing certain sections depending on the flow of people at certain times during the day. So they'll compare the numbers from the previous year to what they're expecting, then Frannie will add up the hours of each individual employee for that day and input what they worked, determine their payout, and then compare all of this to the total revenue for the day. This helps them to look at whether they had sufficient employees or not. We also got to talking to a lot of people and how they ended up at OU. More then half I would say come from outside of Oklahoma (Mississippi, Texas, Illinois, North Dakota, etc.) and end up falling in love with the area and staying. I kind of have to agree, its an amazing place and the people are just so sweet and friendly! Anyways, my point was that Frannie (who is originally from Chicago) was talking about her mother-in-law and apparently they own a miniature donkey farm? We had a great laugh over that. It was quite hilarious.

So after that we got to eat and observe how the lines work. This involves several servers who dish out the meals (lunch was chicken pot pie or fried chicken steak, tater tots, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies -- very good!) and others who go and refill the lines and salad/dessert bars and clean up. The supervisors make sure everything is running smoothly and if things get to crazy then they jump in and give everyone a hand. Then there are the people positioned at the entrances by the cashes where they scan everyones cards. Most meals are about $11 during the school year but it's cheaper in the summer since they're buying different food and smaller amounts. There's a small pic and I'm going to try and get some more when there are less people roaming tomorrow when we're back!

They didn't have much else for us to do so we left and went to sit outside and relax for a little bit in THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE HEAT I HAVE EVER FELT. OH my god. It was awful, just beyond humid. I honestly almost didn't survive the day. It's like being in a sauna 24/7. And try riding a bike around campus in the heat with long pants on. Nearly impossible! Besides that, Dot worked something out for us at the main gym so we headed over there and got a tour and a membership for the summer. They have yoga classes in the evenings which we're going to try out this week! We had a little bit more time so we headed over to the union building and Kelsey mailed something off and we popped into the OU student store. They have soooo much OU stuff and I WANT IT ALL! I feel like a student so I need to represent haha and it's all so nice. I'm going to restrain myself though as best I can.

We headed back to our intern office after that and got to drive past some of the sorority houses so I snapped a few pics. Delta Gamma is by far the nicest and it's pretty much straight out of a movie (as you can tell in the pics). Crazy stuff! Once we got back we just worked on some of our project for a little while then headed back over to Couch for dinner. I took some pics of the office for y'all too! Tomorrow we get to look at kitchen production and at night there's a staff thing going on at the clubhouse by where we're staying to watch the first OKC vs. Heat game (GO THUNDER!) so I think we're heading to that after yoga. Tried to look into getting tickets for a game (nearly impossible to find) and they're min. $400 for higher then nosebleed sections so unfortunately I won't be going in person... I'll try and update tomorrow, if not I'll post something on Wednesday :) later y'all.

Inside Couch at the 'Sizzle' section

Poor Sorority House

Poorer Sorority House

Wealthy Sorority House

My Office Workspace

My Own lil' Name Tag :)

Our Office!