Employees come to work despite rain, sleet, gloom
By Bill Morrison
Staff Reporter

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night keeps the food service employees from serving food to the university.

With the university closed, most faculty, staff and commuter students stayed home, but this was not true for some Sodexho Campus Services employees, as they braved icy roads to come into work.

Bryant Currie, Sodexho operations director, said of the more than 130 employees, only 20 to 25 showed up to work. Currie said it usually takes 40 people to run The Main and Frogbytes, but that they only had 20 to 25 total employees working all day.

“In the kitchen alone we had 20 people call in,” Currie said. “The people who showed up worked all day (Tuesday), all day (Wednesday) and if people call in again the will work all day (Thursday).”

With classes being canceled, students had more free time to come in and eat, Currie said. He said there were only two, instead of three, lines open in The Main. He said they did have problems with food running out, but that they just worked through the problems.

“Obviously, since students don’t have to go to class they have more time to go out and eat,” Currie said. “It didn’t go as smoothly as we like. We ran out of a few things, but we just hustled through it.”

Herbert Taylor, a freshman premajor, said he was surprised The Main was open and that he did not notice any problems with the service.

“I was surprised, to tell you the truth,” Taylor said. “I really didn’t expect them to be open. I really didn’t even notice they were under-staffed.”

Mark Hayden, a food service supervisor, said they only had four people to run operations in the front, making things very hectic. He said because they were so busy Tuesday, they didn’t close for two hours like they usually do at 2:30 p.m. He said they just kept on serving students.

“To say we were running around with our heads cut off is an understatement,” Hayden said. “It seemed like everyone just came to The Main and hung out.”

Zerek Travis, a junior marketing major, said he appreciated the staff coming in, but was disappointed that they didn’t open up the Pond St. Grill. He said for those who live in the Worth Hills area it was difficult to come and get food.

“I think it’s great they came here, but I wish they came to the Greek as well, because we had to drive through the bad weather to get to The Main,” Travis said.

Richard Flores, general manager of Sodexho, said because of the low numbers of staff they were only able to keep The Main and Frogbytes open. He said they decided to close at 7 p.m. because of concern for the employees.

“Because we were so short staffed we could only open The Main and Frogbytes,” Flores said. “I wasn’t going to put our people in danger to stay open late, so we closed down at 7 p.m. to give them an opportunity to get home safely.”

-Staff Reporter Jessica Sanders contributed to this report.

w.c.morrison@tcu.edu