Senior Projects

On Wednesday I had my first show at The Sheldon. This was a comedy show so I was told it was relatively easy in comparison to music shows. (the comedian was David Cross if you wanted to know). I helped with set up for the show and for the VIP event after the show. As well as helping with ushering and scanning tickets. I also talked to a lot people with a bunch of different types of jobs. This helped me get a look into what type of jobs I may be wanting to get once I finish college.

For the first few days into my senior project it has been what I had expected. I have been shadowing my boss (Steve Krueger) around seeing what he does in his field of Building Engineer. Steve makes sure that throughout the day the residents are happy and that the machinery and staff are working properly. I have also shadowed Steve’s maintenance crew (Jeff and Fred). They do whatever Steve tells them and they take care of calls from residents like if their A.C doesn’t work anymore they go out and fix it, and if they can’t they call Steve who will go up to the home and help. Throughout these three days I have, helped Jeff and Fred on the pool deck by carrying pool lounge chairs and replacing the bathroom toilet valves and faucets, been to two work meetings, manually switched the chillers on the roof, changed batteries on grills, fixing the cooling tower on the roof so it stopped overflowing, fixed leak in water heater, and I have checked on residents and helped them get into their storage units. I would say that the worst part so far is waking up at 5:30 every morning.

This week was spent at Tri-Co again shadowing Ryan Smith (superintendent) and Micah Roufa (project manager). I sat in on more meetings and helped with various projects around the site. It had been really interesting to see the types of issues that come up around the site and how Micah and Ryan choose to deal with them. While these issues are a pain and sometimes delay the project, I think they are what keeps work interesting. On Friday also participated in a company golf tournament and that was pretty fun. Overall it was a good week.

Week 2 I only worked 1 day at the front desk, since I drove to boulder on Tuesday and got back Sunday.

Week 3 – For week 3 I have been dealing with fielding a lot of questions about the flooding. When the state park floods. We have to close the campground for a while until the flooding clears. I learned what day we would be reopening and had to tell people when that was. I also had to deal with some, people who wouldn’t look at their tickets and drive to the state park without realizing it was closed. Since we couldn’t have them in the park, we had them drive to another nearby park until the park opened again, and tried to refund them what we could.

I have been working the front desk for a while at Meramec state park. I spent the last 2 days of my first week at Meramec state working the front desk at the visitors center. What I have to do at the visitors center is answer the questions of the people coming into the visitors center, and help them as best I can. Most of the questions I get are asking for directions to the campsite, or a tour of the exhibit. I can help with all of those kinds of questions. The questions I cant help with are the ones about booking or canceling a campsite. If I cant help with a question I have to ask some of my supervisors or transfer the call to them.

This week was spent shadowing Micah Roufa again. I did most of the same things as last week but now that I know more stuff about the site I am able help out more. I also drove a Bobcat this week which was pretty cool. Overall its been a good week. I only have a four day week this week because of districts and a two day week next week because of state and project presentations so I am doing my best to learn what I can in the days I have left.

I was able to set something up where I could go out to Phoenix and meet the people from my first four weeks, so I was in Phoenix with them for a few days this week. I was able to sit down with them and talk some more about AppSec and how cybersecurity will affect my career as an airline pilot, as well as potential career shifts based on how unmanned flight progresses in the airline industry. We spent a good long while discussing aviation cybersecurity and the future of UAVs and drones, and how that relates to what their company does. It was a great wrap-up to the first part of my project and I greatly appreciated meeting in person the faces on my computer.

The rest of the week, I was back at Panera, working 12-hour days. It was crazy again, and we had to deal with a much higher quantity of rude customers than normal. I finished the closing checklists, and they are printed and ready for use. I knew how much managers had to bounce around during the day, but I never realized how exhausting it was. This next week I start studying for my private pilot airman knowledge test.

I’ve had a good amount of rotations in craftsmen the last serval weeks.

I spent a week at Craftsmen’s family-owned sister company, Craftsmen Industries. That week I spent with the engineers who create the specially made trailers for the customer. I spend a week with the engineer manager sitting in on meetings and learning about what he does. For the next couple of days, I jumped around to see what other key employees do. I was with different engineers who design different special-made trailers. I spent one day in sales learning about how they “cold call” and learning how they sell their trailers. After my week at the sister company, I went back to Craftsmen Trailer and spent some time with the parts department learning as best I could about the ins and outs of what goes on in parts. I spent a day with the guy who orders all the parts for the parts department. I spent a day with the parts manager where I got to see how he talks with his employees and how he handles issues with these employees and problems they stumble upon. I spend a day with one of their sales guy who goes out and sells the parts to customers. I also spent a day with the guys who deal with the mechanics and give the guys in the warehouse their parts.

I’m learning a lot in each rotation and I’m excited about my next couple of weeks learning about different positions Craftsmen employees have and continue to learn about how a small relational business works.

I spent week 5 shadowing management at my job. My location is a training cafe, meaning we get managers in training (MITs) and they’re with us for 2-8 weeks learning how to do their job. We currently have an MIT, which gives us another person. We also don’t have a drive-thru. Since last Saturday, I’ve worked about 60 hours, hours managers tend to work in a week. Saturday and Sunday were normal craziness and we had to do a lot of damage control. We’re insanely short-staffed and so we had to step in and work in position quite a lot. Normally the manager in charge (MIC) floats around and runs things, checking on the dining room, line, cashiers, counting drawers, and generally not being tied down anywhere. I opened Sunday, coming in at 6 am (we open late on Sundays, normally it’s 5 am), and learned about how managers open (the manager and I were running on a combined 5 hours of sleep). They do coffees/teas, get a drawer for cashiers, print various papers out, and get a head start on any bagel orders that have come in. Sunday lunch was bad, and it set the pace and feel for the next week. After lunch, we had to stock and clean and as a rule of thumb, managers shouldn’t leave until things are well set up for the rest of the day, so I got out of there just before 4. On Monday, I worked 13:00-close, Tuesday and Wednesday from 12:00-close, and Thursday I worked 10:00- 21:30. For closing, since we are a training cafe, the standards are higher, which means we get out later. We close at 21:00, but I didn’t get out before 23:00 any day this week, it tended to be 23:30, or later. Tuesday I got out at midnight. Suffice to say, I was a little tired. Basically, if I wasn’t at work, I was sleeping.

We’re terribly short-staffed during the afternoon when we have to get everything done and set up for dinner, a change that has happened in the last 2 weeks. For most of the week, it would be the manager, me, and our dishwasher for an hour or two in the afternoon. This was probably the most real manager experience I had throughout the week. I was completely alone on the line and the manager was completely alone ringing. On Monday, I helped set up for truck, which was supposed to come Sunday night but didn’t. It ended up showing up at 19:00 on Monday, while we were busy, delivering half the stuff, then showing up at 22:00 and delivering everything else, which threw off our schedule to put everything away. Because of the supply chain and understaffing truck schedule was thrown off this week. On Tuesday, I helped with pull thaw, an hour or more lengthy process. On Wednesday, I worked on closing checklists for dining room, bakery, and line. I finished the line close checklist and will work on dining room and bakery the rest of this week and next. They will be used to train new associates, and be a backup for both MITs and new team managers. Just as we were finishing up closing on Wednesday, truck came and we skedaddled. On Thursday, we found out truck put the stuff in the wrong spot, and I helped put truck away. I also sat down with the food cost manager and learned about how food costs work. After that conversation, I worked on a spreadsheet for leftover bakery product, which will be used to help other managers and MITs understand the concept.