I had a wow-you're-grown-up conversation with Muffin's Sister this week that I wanted to share.
She recently got her fourth promotion in three years, going from an entry-level job in an elementary school cafeteria to manager-in-training to manager to coordinator and now to warehouse and inventory manager. (I'm not exactly sure of the new title, but she deals with vendors, manages inventory of food and supplies, works with cafeteria managers to make sure they have what they need, makes sure they have their paperwork in order, and so on.) She's also still the coordinator for about 14 schools.
Every time this happens, she says she was supposed to spend much longer in the current job and there's a similar time limit on the next one, so it'll be a while before she leaves this position. And then they find something new for her to do.
This promotion seems to have been an emergency situation, since the previous person must have simply reached his Peter Principle level. The corners of the warehouse were full of things he'd mis-ordered, failed to enter into the system, and hidden. Management knew it was bad, but she had to get in there and start shoveling (metaphorically, I think) before she realized that he hadn't ordered critical things for the semester, like food. She's stressed and overwhelmed, but her history with the school district has been to take over a situation that's running deeply in the red and have it in the black within months.
I was feeling real proud about all of this, and then she surprised me with something that made me even more proud. She was leaving soon for a conference and offhandedly said that she was going to be teaching the same class she'd taught for the last two years. I said, "What class?"
She said that she teaches other managers how to incorporate commodities food into their menus, so that they can feed more kids for less. She also teaches them about some kind of exchange system where she can somehow use her allotment of, say, commodities pork to buy prepared pork products like Jimmy Dean sausage at the commodities price. (I presume Jimmy Dean has some kind of contract with government for this exchange.) She's developed several menus that can be prepared with all commodities foods for about twenty cents a plate instead of the usual dollar-fifty-plus. I guess this is how one can turn around a cafeteria that's running so deeply in the red and do it quickly.
She says that these aren't the kids' favorite meals, but they're good. Once her books stop hemorrhaging money, she uses what she saves on the low-cost meals for things like special holiday meals. She likes to offer those, since some of the kids don't get special holiday meals at home.
So...yeah. I'm very proud. And remembering how much she struggled with math all the way through school, I asked her if she ever wanted to call up her former teachers and professors to say, "
"
She said, "Yeah. All of them. Every day."
Jodi
