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Austin Dike | Phoenix Staff

BY ISAAC HAN

In print | Published February 26, 2009

Indeed, the rumors are true — there is one among us who works at Sharples. There is someone working at the place that some of us even avoid for long periods of time, or alternately get sucked into, thanks to the Sharples friendship whirlpool, when you don’t want to be rude and leave your friends alone even if they come at different times in succession, so you end up staying in the dining hall for three hours for one meal. (Yes, I am naming this phenomenon since it seems to happen to me a lot and I feel like it needs a name.) You may have seen her behind the main grill, refilling the coffee or chatting with the local high school students who work in Dining Services. I got to sit down and talk with Ashley Acle ’11, who hopes to make Sharples a better experience for all.

Isaac Han: How did you get a job at Sharples?

Ashley Acle: Freshman year, I was looking around for a job and I was talking to some friends from back home and they had said that they had gotten jobs at their dining services. So I figured that I’d check it out here and see what I could find.

IH: What is your job? What do you do?

AA: Here it’s mostly data entry, computer stuff. If you look on the student dashboard, there is a little section that tells what the menu is. So I put that information in there with the little stars saying that this is what’s new and labeling stuff as vegetarian or vegan, because that is a really important issue on campus for students.

IH: Have any interesting things happened during one of your shifts?

AA: Almost every single shift is really interesting because there are a lot of people who work behind the scenes at Sharples. I can’t pinpoint one moment that was really interesting but there’s million types of personalities around, there, and it’s very easy to just see how much everyone enjoys work and has a good time. So it’s positive for me.

IH: Who is your favorite person to work with?

AA: Everybody. It’s because everyone has something unique that they contribute to this working environment, and everyone looks at working here a little bit differently. Like there are so many strings that I really feel like I’m being given a lot of opportunities by being able to work with different people around here.

IH: What is your perspective of Sharples from behind the counter?

AA: A lot of people put in a lot of work and lot of time to make sure that Sharples runs as smoothly as it does. And I think a lot of times it kind of goes unnoticed. It’s really easy for us to just grab our food and go sit down with your friends to go eat dinner and lunch but not realize that there is someone who is behind the counter serving food who has been standing there for an hour or two hours. You know, all the work that is put into the food. And by working here I’ve been able to see the effort and the commitment that people are here put in.

IH: Do you get angry when people say that Sharples food is bad?

AA: I don’t think I really get angry because it’s criticism and I think criticism is important, but I also think that it is really important that it’s constructive criticism. So if someone is going to say that Sharples food isn’t good, then I want them to say what they think can be done to improve it. So that, I mean there’s some way to improve and some way to grow from that. Just complaining about it doesn’t change anything and all of it is pretty useless in a lot of ways. So constructive criticism is really important.

IH: Do you think that more students should be allowed to work in Sharples?

AA: I don’t think that it’s that students are not allowed to work in Sharples. I just think that very few students think about and pursue a job in Sharples. It is a time commitment. It is fairly regular. I’m in this building, working at least eight hours a week. But it’s almost like an everyday type of thing sometimes. And because it is a time commitment, I think that’s hard for students to really put the effort into, and, I mean, it’s regular. Like I can’t do my homework and be downstairs entering data on the computer because then I’ll get the data wrong or get my homework [crazily] messed up, and it’s very much one or the other when I’m here working. So I think that’s hard for most students to incorporate into their regular patterns.

IH: How would you rate your job and are there any lessons that you’ve learned?

AA: Ok, so rating my job, I probably would say an eight or a nine on a scale of 10 because I’m fairly satisfied with my job here. I think it’s taught me a lot. A big part of has been just balance and being able to work towards having more balance. There are a lot of learning opportunities here that I feel are important for me incorporate into my own life that I’m not necessarily going to learn in a classroom. And that’s not bad or better than academic learning. But, like basic stuff of being able to cook food to me is really important to me because I want to be able to eat. It’s as simple as that. And it’s like learning how to take care of myself and how to balance school and work at the same time. I think that’s a really important lesson that I have pulled from working here.

IH: Do you sometimes get to put in special requests to the chef?

AA: Well, everyone here is very receptive to suggestions. It’s very important to contribute ideas. And I have found that everyone has been very receptive even when I have mentioned a little idea like the fresh vegetables at the end of the vegetable line. When I first started here, that was just something that I didn’t understand, why there were never fresh vegetables. And coming from California, there are fresh vegetables everywhere. It’s impossible to not have some option of fresh vegetables. So I worked on that idea, and I suggested it and put together a little plan and a rough outline. And I found that people were really receptive to it. It’s a little bit of extra work, but students really appreciate it and value it. So in that respect, I wouldn’t really call it a special privilege because if some other student had mentioned the same thing of, why don’t we have fresh vegetables or some similar idea, I think that the Sharples staff would have been more than happy to at least talk with me about it and we could see where it goes from there. It’s part of the process of being able to develop a good plan for something to create change.

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