I wish I could say I finally got my ears; unfortunately, I’m still in my last couple of days of training. Now that I’ve finally worked on all of the stations, I can comfortably reflect on the ones that I prefer over others. As mentioned in a previous journal, the position of Quick Food and Beverage at French Quarters can be broken down into about 11 tasks. During a shift you can be switched up to 4 or 5 times depending on how slow or busy a day is. During the morning shift, the cast members are responsible for opening shops, making breakfast, and making sure everything is prepared for the afternoon and night shift. The night shift is responsible for opening up some stations, cleaning and closing. So far, the positions that I feel most competent in are the ones that involve making food, for example pizza, carving, grill, pizza and pasta, and po’ boy. Making food is my comfort zone; even if it is just taking orders or dropping fries, I enjoy getting to move around, interact with guests, and make food.
My favorite station by far is the bakery because making beignets is always a challenge. In this station I seek consistency and perfection. Unlike all of the other stations, beignets is one of the hardest to deal with because there is no timer indicating when the beignets are done, making consistency something difficult to do. If frying beignets were the only thing we were doing, consistency would not be an issue; however, when you have to take orders, get plates from the back, plating, and making coffee, you tend to miss one thing. I didn’t realize how busy the station was going to be until I was working a morning shift on a Sunday right after the disney run. When people join the disney run, they get a complimentary set of beignets which means that at around 10:00 am, there is a massive line of people coming to get beignets. While at first it seemed overwhelming, especially when there is a long line of guest who have already ordered, but you haven’t been taking the orders so you don’t know what belongs to who, you get used to it and the tasks become enjoyable. I have the most fun in bakery because I’m constantly doing something that I enjoy.
My least favorite tasks at the moment are beverage island and registrar. Beverage island is fun when it’s busy because you’re constantly interacting with guests, cleaning, and keeping stock. On slow hours however, beverage island can get to be super slow and you can walk around the station about 5 times without having anything to do. Register is also one of those stations that I don’t favor because I have to stand in one place for hours. Although it’s not physically strenuous work, memorizing all of the different buttons can get to be frustrating. In order to be successful there you have to know the board like the back of your hand. The registrar is similar to the micros system we learned in dining room class, except it gives you the task of putting in orders and forms of payment. Using it is not difficult, it’s just all about knowing the placement of all of the items being purchased. So far I’ve only trained on registrar once, and I’m sure that with practice I will learn how to move around the screens with agility. I look forward to becoming more proficient in all of the tasks before the end of October because holidays are approaching bringing with it many busy days.
