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Week 4: Wrapping things up, but also looking forwards

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These past four weeks have been filled with long hours and lots of stress, but with them came many learning opportunities and avenues for growth. At the beginning of this project, I set out to improve my communication skills, both in the workplace and when dealing with customers, as well as learning to run the store on my own. I feel as though I was able to reach all three of these goals, having led two shifts on my own (once while closing and once during a Sunday night rush), having been able to see the positive impacts of good communication and leadership can have on the efficiency inside a store, and having dealt with multiple customer complaints, ranging from the raw pan pizza incident to dealing with a lady with a five-year history of making complaints to our store (yes, five years of trying to get free food from our store and calling to complain about their pizza) and having to give her a refund. In addition to meeting my goals and achieving what I set out to learn during this pr...
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Week 3: You guessed it, more pizza, and opening shifts!

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Since the last time I wrote on this blog, OER still hasn't shown up (read my previous blog to read my rant on who OER is and why they are scary). However, knowing the deadline for OER is this coming Sunday, our store is now just getting ready in anticipation, knowing that we are bound to be hit within the next few days. This has meant a few things in the store, from deep cleaning every nook and cranny of the store, to making all food to perfection. But with hot summer weather and playoff basketball games, the store has gotten busy, so it doesn't help that our store has lost a few drivers over the past couple of weeks. Because of this, I found myself managing the store on my own mid-rush on a Sunday evening, since our opening manager had left at 5pm and our closing manager wouldn't be in until 8pm. And with a store of only one other experienced worker and only 3 relatively new hires, the store got busy very fast. However, things got worse when some customers started calling ...
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Week 2 of Pizza Making

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Since my last blog post, a quite a lot has happened at my Domino's store. From OER to being shortstaffed, my second week is only half over for me but a lot has already transpired. This week, I've learned a lot and have already made many steps towards some of my goals. Mainly, our store has lost quite a number of drivers recently, so this past Wednesday, our closing manager did deliveries to cover a callout while I ran the store until we closed. While I haven't fully run the store on my own, I was able to start to get a feel for what it is like to manage the store singlehandedly, especially on a night with limited employees. While I haven't had many interesting interactions with customers to warrant a good story or learning opportunity, I have been able to make progress on my third goal of improving my communication skills. Not only did I run the store on my own on Wednesday, but out of the three insiders I had to help make food, it was the first day for one insider and ...
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Senior Project--Week 1 (sort of)

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For my senior project, I am continuing my job at Domino's and becoming one of the managers at the store. I was inspired to do this project since I've found fast-food work to be a really humbling experience, with long grueling hours in a greasy environment, working nonstop and having to learn to deal with not-so-nice customers. There are also often many misconceptions about what fast-food work is like, both with the work itself and the people you work with. This is something I hope to address throughout my project as I've made many close friends and interesting people through this work. I chose this project because given how long I've worked at Domino's, I knew that after I turned 18, my experience would most likely land me a job as a shift-runner. In the fast-food industry, employee turnover is rather high, and having worked at my local Domino's since June/July of 2020, I'm considered to be more experienced compared to some of the newer hires. Thus, it was p...
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