June 2nd 2010

Hi everyone,

It has been awhile since I have blogged and a lot has happened since then. This past Memorial weekend I had the pleasure of spending a day in Providence, RI with my roommates and I had a great time. The girls and I ate and walked around Providence for almost an entire day. The rest of our weekend went well too, we were constantly going places and had movie nights almost every night among other things. On Monday we relaxed and then it was time to start work again. All this week I have been an assistant manager with Debbi Lee, where I was assigned weekly inventory. To be honest, at first I was not too happy about this because if you have ever done inventory you know it can be tedious and time consuming. I guess my unhappiness started to show on my face a bit, so Eric gave me a pep talk or something like that lol. It was nice of Eric to tell me to remain positive but I was still feeling a little down about my day. It was not until another manager, Steven Anthony, gave me a one on one lesson on FoodPro that inventory really started making sense.
While working with Steven, he explained how important inventory was, before that I had no idea why it had to be done every week. However, Steven Anthony basically explained that the guys that do inventory pretty much do the ordering for the entire building. If inventory is not done right it can really affect food cost and ordering. After that lesson with Steven I felt like such a jerk because I had been whining so much about it. I also had to correct some mistakes I made on the inventory sheet because I could see how it really screwed up the food cost numbers in FoodPro. Seeing the importance of inventory on the screen really hit home because often times it is easy to overlook your job’s importance, compared to the big picture. For example, today I really wanted to get into the manager roll and do some big stuff like employee discipline which didn’t happen by the way lol. Nonetheless, I have a new found respect for ICA. Today really proves that everything in food service serves its purpose. For now I will just have to see what the rest of the week will bring.
Mahalia

FoodPro: Computer system that manages food ordering, and inventory for a large scale foodservice operation.