Dartmouth Dining Services attracts both students and community members to its employee ranks, and while employees generally agreed they liked their jobs, tensions exist between different groups of workers. DDS worker Alex Gray, a temporary employee who will work full-time until June, has mixed views of working with students.
"Some of them are helpful, and some of them are snobs," Gray said.
Workers from the community, working longer hours than students, tend to form stronger bonds that students sometimes do not incorporate student workers.
"The full-time workers definitely seem to be buddies," Jonathan Merten '09 said. "Definitely among the full-time workers there's a good sense of community."
The dynamic between student, special needs and community employees is a good one, with no divide between the different groups, full-time DDS employee Renne Plante said.
Merten also found the other employees to be helpful.
"All the people there are very nice, very friendly and willing to help you out," Merten said.
Cliques and supervisor favoritism can detract from the close-knit atmosphere, however, according to Plante.
"There's not many of us, which makes us all close as far as that goes, but you do have your little groups and supervisors play favoritisms," Plante said.
Although community member employees did not always express enthusiasm about their colleagues, student or otherwise, many staff members said they view student customers very favorably.
"The students here are awesome, that's one of the best parts about working here," full-time employee Sarah Mallary said. "Always very friendly, it's just amazing I think."
Merten agreed and said that serving friends can make his job less monotonous.
"It's nice to see your friends every once in a while, because it breaks up cleaning off dishes," Merten said. "It's kind of different."
Students and community workers were attracted to DDS jobs for similar reasons, despite their different backgrounds.
Mallary started working at DDS five years ago because she was out of a job, she said, and drawn by "great money, great benefits and summers off." The pay and 20 percent off of DDS purchases appeal to students, and DDS is also known by many as a fairly undemanding job.
"I'd heard that the pay was good, that it was a pretty easy job and that it was a good place to work," Merten said.
Despite these positive qualities, some student employees said DDS needs to improve its organization and foster more effective communication between adult supervisors and student supervisors. Gray said he found supervisors too controlling and said they need to allow employees to feel a sense of responsibility.
"Get ones that aren't on everybody's case all the time," Gray said.
Though each of the employees outlined an area that DDS could potentially improve, both student workers and community employees expressed overall content with their DDS jobs.