By Eva Howe
Food connects people from all walks of life, and nowhere has this been truer than in GW’s dining halls. On your first visit, you’ll see friendly smiles greeting you as they swipe your card, but on your second, third, and fourth visits, you’ll notice some things change: the faces behind the counters seldom stay for long, the cooks in the kitchen get overheated, tired, and uneasy, and then it happens–a fight breaks out. It’s not every day, but it’s a common enough occurrence that most frequent patrons have seen it happen once or twice. But why do some friendly smiles disappear, why do they get replaced with frowns, and what makes others stay?
Everyone’s got to eat.
From time to time you’ll see cooks sitting down during their break and enjoying their own meal. In a roundabout way, it forces you to consider the economics of the job. In a food desert, like many parts of DC, it can be hard to make ends meet. Working at a dining hall pays the bills and literally puts food on the table. Despite the advantages of the job, the turnover rate is noticeably high, even from a student’s outside perspective.
“In affluent regions, people don’t want to work for just over minimum wage,” a member of the dining hall’s administration tells me. “We have a lot of attendance issues. People just won’t show up one day and we don’t hear from them again.”
The gaps in our dining halls are just a piece of the puzzle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that while hiring rates have gone up in many sectors after the so-called “Great Resignation,” the food services industry has been consistently experiencing a higher-than-average quit rate. In higher-paying industries, however, the quit rates are much lower.
The Dramatic Outcome.
Student after student has a sensational story about a fight that broke out between workers at a dining hall. Chances are, if you eat at the dining halls, you’ve seen it too.
“It’s always between temp workers,” an employee I sat down with tells me. She hadn’t seen it for herself, but she’d heard gossip from the other workers.
The temp workers are just that: temporary. They aren’t employed by the company that runs GW Dining, Chartwells in Higher Ed. They aren’t familiar with the rules, the setup, and the day-to-day, and some lash out.
Chartwells in Higher Ed doesn’t just run GW dining either. They’re all over DC and the country, with positions open everywhere from the U.S. Senate Building to Los Angeles. That does beg the question: why do staff members choose to work at GW?
“Because they love the students,” the administrator told me. “They love being around you and knowing they get to be a part of your journey.”
The pay may be lacking, but for many students and employees, the food and the community keep them coming back for more.
