Miscommunication at Work

As a waitress, I work as a medium for customers to get their orders...they tell me what they want, I send their order to the cooks, and the cooks make the food and give it back to the servers to give to the customers. Unfortunately, the line of communication does not always flow perfectly from customer to waitress to cooks to waitress and back to customer. Another component in the restaurant business is the host(ess), who seats the customers.

On days when the weather is nice enough, we have tables we seat outside on the patio. Each of the tables is assigned to a different server (it's very hit or miss whether or not people are going to want to sit outside on any given day) and when the host seats a table outside for the first time that day, he or she is supposed to inform the server that they have a table outside. However, it doesn't always work out that way.

One day, I was serving and I had a table outside. It was a slightly chilly day, so not many people wanted to sit out there. However, when it got busy, the host seated a man and his daughter outside at my table. The host forgot to tell me he had seated me, so I didn't know I had anyone out there. It was busy, so I was running around trying to take care of all of my indoor tables, not thinking I needed to go out to the patio. However, I tried to check outside every once in a while to make sure I wasn't missing anyone. I went outside and sure enough I had a table. I hoped that they had just been seated...but no such luck. I went to greet them, "Hi, my name is Cassidy and I'll be taking care of you today. Can I start you off with anything to drink?" They gave me their drink orders and then I asked if they wanted to order or if they needed a few minutes to look over the menus, to which they replied, "No, we don't need any more time to look over the menus. We had PLENTY of time to look them over while you were IGNORING us!" I was mortified, but apologized and took their order.

In this situation, there was miscommunication between me and the host. He was supposed to tell me that I had a table outside, but was either too busy at that moment or just forgot. However, the problem could have been avoided if I had kept a better eye on my outdoor table to make sure I wasn't ignoring anyone. I also could have asked another server with a table out there to let me know if they noticed my table being sat. I feel that I learned from that mistake and now try to check on my outdoor tables more frequently to avoid the situation repeating itself.

Mock Interview

On Wednesday, I had my mock interview with Mrs. Rogers. Overall, I think the interview went pretty well. In response to the questions we were asked to answer:

Were you nervous? How did you deal with this?

I was a little nervous going into the interview, but not too bad. My main concern was that I would be asked something I wasn't ready for or couldn't come up with an answer for, so before I went in I thought about answers to questions that might be asked (common interview questions) and a few stories to tell if the opportunity presented itself (i.e. if I was asked to "tell about a time when..."). I think mentally preparing myself with a couple possible responses and stories to tell h
]elped keep my nerves down. I was fairly confident going in that I would be able to respond to almost any question with the things I had mentally rehearsed.

Did you get any questions that threw you? How did you handle those questions?

I got asked, "If you could change one thing about your personality, what would you change?" and wasn't really expecting that question. However, I had prepared answers for my strengths and weaknesses, so I applied what I felt was my biggest weakness to answer that question. I was also a little thrown off when I was asked how watching my parents working with their company has affected me. I had never really thought about that so I wasn't sure how to respond - I think I may have gone off on a little bit of a tangent with my response, but hopefully tied it all together at the end.

If you could do the interview again, what would you do differently?

If I could do the interview again, I think I would prepare better and come up with more effective responses and stories to answer a variety of common interview questions. I would also try to avoid rambling on with my stories and keep my answers a little more concise.

What did you learn from this experience?
I learned about the interview process. I know now what to expect if and when I have or conduct an interview for a job. I'm glad we got to create resumes for ourselves - that's something that will be useful in the "real world" after college. It was also helpful to have the mock interview to get some nerves out and see what sorts of questions we might be asked in an interview and what the flow of an interview is like. Even though it was a short interview, I got a good feeling for what a real interview would/will be like.

Click to Give

In keeping with my dog-loving theme this semester, I thought I'd write my next blog about a website I visit daily. The website, The Animal Rescue Site, is set up so that anyone can help dogs for free in only seconds. All you have to do is go to the website and hit the button that says, "Click Here to Give - it's FREE!"


How does clicking the button help?

The website tracks the number of times the button is clicked, and for each click, the value of 0.6 bowls of food is donated to animals in shelters. This is paid for by sponsors who advertise on the site. It is mutually beneficial - when more people access the web page (and click the button), more people are seeing their advertisements. The site also sells merchandise. 100% of profits from all sales go to help animals.

How often can I click?

You can click the button once per calendar day per computer. The new calendar day, according to the site, starts at midnight United States Pacific Standard Time. No matter how many times you click, only one click per day will be counted per computer.

Are there other causes I can help with the click of a button?

Yes! The "Click to Give" sites are set up so that you can easily click from tab to tab and help out a variety of interests - hunger, breast cancer, child health, literacy, rainforest, and animal rescue.


I have the site as a tab on my browser, so that each day when I use the internet I see it and am reminded to spend a few seconds to click for all 6 causes. While 0.6 bowls of food isn't that much when you consider it on an individual one-time basis, when you get enough people clicking daily it adds up pretty fast! It is certainly worth the few seconds it takes to do, and is a great help to animals in shelters across the country.

For more information, visit the Common Questions page listed at the bottom of the Animal Rescue Site.

Presentations

This past week in class, we got to hear a lot of interesting speeches on a variety of topics. It was great seeing what people chose to speak about when given the freedom to pick anything! There were three speeches in particular that caught my attention: CJ's speech about football and giving back to the community, Cammy's speech about her animals, and Jamie's speech about Gatorade.

I was really impressed with CJ's passion for his topic and his desire to make a difference. His idea to start a football program for kids who can't afford expensive football camps was very motivating and made me start thinking about how I could give back to the community with my own skills and interests. The pictures and content of the presentation were also very good.

Cammy's speech about her animals was also fascinating. Not too long ago, I had my dog, my roommate's cat, and the two puppies we were fostering. I thought that was a lot of animals to have in an apartment, but four pets is nothing compared to what Cammy has! The number and variety of pets she has is amazing - and getting to pet a baby squirrel was really cool. Her pictures were also very effective (and cute!) and I hope she was successful in inspiring the class to help out in the animal world!

The last speech I want to discuss is Jamie's speech about Gatorade. I thought it was a cool topic because Gatorade is something most (if not all) of us have had, but probably something not many people really think about much. One thing in particular that struck me about the presentation was when he spoke about the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in Barrington, IL. I'm from Barrington, IL, and I didn't realize my hometown made such a significant contribution to Gatorade! When I was on the soccer team my freshman year of high school, we had a senior assistant coach who got a job testing Gatorade at the GSSI, but I never thought much of it until I watched Jamie's presentation.

Everyone gave really interesting speeches, but these three stuck out to me. Unfortunately, I had to leave early on Friday so my dogs wouldn't be distracting everyone, so I didn't get to see the rest of the speeches. However, I was very impressed with all of the ones I did see!

Adopting and/or Fostering an Animal

When I was a finishing up my freshman year at Clemson, I started looking into adopting a dog. I thought it would be cool to have an "apartment dog" for my apartment sophomore year. I wasn't planning on actually adopting a dog until I got back to Clemson and moved into my new apartment that August. Just for fun, I started looking on Petfinder to see what was out there. Sure enough, I found the one. It was an accident really - I saw a picture of a cute little dog and wrote to his shelter, thinking if they had good things to say about him and he was still available in a few months when I came back, I might go ahead and adopt him. However, when I emailed them asking for more information about him, the response I got was heartbreaking..."Thank you for your interest in this dog. We do not know very much about him - he came in as a stray. We don't mean to pressure you, but this is a kill facility and his time is almost up. If you are interested in adopting him, please let us know."

Wow. That was enough for me - he had to be mine. However, there were a few problems:

1) I lived in a dorm.
2) I had finals coming up in the next few weeks.
3) He was in Tennessee and I was in Clemson.
4) I didn't have any friends who would be able to keep him until I could drive him home to Chicago.

But I couldn't let that stop me. I called the shelter and explained my situation. I agreed to adopt him (against my parents will) and, in turn, they agreed to keep him in a foster home until I could pick him up. It ended up working out well that I had to drive from Clemson to Chicago in a few weeks. They had time to get him neutered and I was able to pick him up in Tennessee on my way home.

Needless to say, he's been my little boy ever since. He is the greatest dog I've ever had and you can tell that he knows he was saved.

Unfortunately, not all dogs are as lucky as my dog Sunny was. For the dogs who end up in kill shelters, they may only get a short time before they are euthanized. And for those who end up in non-kill shelters, they may spend a good portion of their life in a cage, hoping someone will adopt them. It breaks my heart just thinking about.

Near the end of my sophomore year, I worked at an Adopt-a-Thon as a community service event for my co-ed professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi. Our job was to walk around with the dogs available for adoption while people looked and asked questions about them. There were probably a good 25 dogs there, but only 1 dog got adopted that whole day. Near the end of the event, a fellow volunteer was talking about fostering a dog. She had fallen in love with the dog she was holding onto for the day and said something to effect of, "my husband would get really mad if I adopted another dog, but maybe if I just foster her he'd be ok with it". Not really sure what she meant, I asked how fostering was any different from adopting.

I spoke to her and to the lady in charge at the Adopt-a-Thon and learned that when you foster a dog, you're simply keeping him/her in your home until you find someone to adopt him/her. That way, the dog gets out of the shelter cages and into a home. The shelter pays for all of the dog's medical expenses and food - all you have to do as a foster parent is take care of him/her!

Excited by this idea, I called my roommate and asked her to come to the Adopt-a-Thon. We decided we would foster a dog (after all, we were already paying the pet rent for Sunny) and took home a beautiful Golden Retreiver mix puppy. We watched him for a few weeks before he got adopted, but it was a great experience.

Watching them load all of the dogs back into the truck to take back to the shelter was sad. If I could have, I would have taken them all with me. However, I feel like I did my part by keeping at least ONE dog from going back to the shelter. Some people worry that they'll get too attached to a dog, but I think that if you go into it knowing that you'll be giving him away, it makes it a little easier. Of course saying goodbye is hard when you've been taking care of a dog for a while, but knowing that you kept that animal out of the shelter and were able to provide him a better life while he waited for his permanent family to come along...it's just priceless.

Once Ricky was adopted, I left to spend a year in Australia. I couldn't have a dog in my dorm there (and my parents were nice enough to watch Sunny for the year I was gone), but my roommate and I were planning on living together again and fostering another dog for our senior year. Well...that time has come! We're fostering now and we plan on doing it for the entire year. Once I graduate, I'll still do it for as long as I'm able.

Whether it's fostering or adopting an animal, the experience is incredibly rewarding for both you and the animal. I would recommend it to anyone who is able to do it.

Cover Letters

The articles we read provided great insight into writing cover letters when applying for a job. I liked and agreed with most of the points they presented. One point I thought was interesting (but I'm not sure I agree with) was the idea of using a handwritten post-script to maximize impact and draw focus to your most marketable attribute. While I agree that writing something by hand would draw an employer's eye to it, I feel like it might look like the applicant simply forgot to type it on so they added it last minute by hand. If I were the employer, I would probably think it was somewhat unprofessional and looked tacky.



I loved the idea of adding a testimonial to the cover letter. I feel like that would truly add value by showing that other people agree that the applicant has great attributes and would be good for the job. That is one thing I will try to add to my cover letter for the mock-interview.

While nothing really surprised me about the articles (with the exception of the hand-written post-script), I feel like they made some really good points that I may not have come up with on my own. I'll definitely be referring back to these articles and the cover letter checklist as I write and edit mine! They provide a good reference for writing a solid cover letter.

Interview Article Responses

For this blog, I decided to read "How to Answer the Toughest Interview Questions" by Caroline Levchuck and "Six Common Job-Interview Questions" by Tom Musbach. Both articles are very helpful to anyone seeking a job and provide useful information regarding preparing for interviews. Preparation is key to any interview, and these articles provide helpful tips for preparing answers to various interview questions that are likely to come up.

The articles provide numerous questions that will, more likely than not, be asked in any given interview. Additionally, they provide strategies for the best ways to answer these questions. Thinking about your answers to these common questions before the interview allows you to go into the interview with more confidence and feel better about your responses to the questions.

I believe these articles can and will help me and others in preparing for job interviews. Instead of going into an interview feeling completely unprepared and surprised by every question, I feel like I can prepare for the questions that commonly arise in interviews and be ready with answers that I can feel good about.