Kadian Daley & Katie Zabronsky

Staff Writer & Managing Editor

The Westword interviewed Bridget Fields, the cafeteria site manager, about the cafeteria staff’s responsibilities, as well as required food safety guidelines and what comes along with cook-ing and serving lunch for the en-tire student body.

The Westword: What does your job entail?BF: I am the Sight Manager, and my job entails the overseeing of the kitchen, the cooking, and the staffing. I order the food, set up the schedule, see that jobs are be-ing handled correctly. I handle the money aspect as well. I do safety training with the staff every week and schedule time clocks. I cook at times, but we have a chef. I make sure he is following the rec-ipes because we have a guideline to follow.TW: What are the safety guide-lines you must meet and how do you meet them?BF: Cooks have to take the tem-peratures. [The food] has to be cooked between certain tempera-tures. If it’s not, we have to cook it until [it’s fully cooked]. When holding the food, after it is cooked, we have to measure its tempera-ture each [lunch] wave. It has to be

140 degrees [Farenheit] or above. If it’s below, we must put it back in the oven and heat it up to where it needs to be. Even the cold food must be the right temperature, 40 degrees or below, so that has to be checked every day. Even when wiping the table, we have to use a special sanitizer [so] if it comes into contact with the food, it’s not harmful.TW: What jobs must you cover as cafeteria staff?BF: In high schools, we have a cook and a manager. The cook’s job is to come in and prepare the food. He prepares all the main dishes and prepares for the special sandwiches, which are meatballs, chicken cordon bleu etc., and the regular stuff that’s done everyday, like the hamburgers, chicken pat-ties, and pizzas. We have people in place; we have one lady, Rose, that does the pizzas. We have a lady that does all the hamburg-ers and chicken patties. We have another woman, Mildred, that comes in to do the salads. We have a person that slices the meat for the deli and the ready-made sandwiches. When we have food that comes in, everyone is help-ing out with snacks and filling the shelves. With that process, you follow the guidelines in safety. TW: What specific measures does the cafeteria staff take to keep the cafeteria clean?

BF: All of our materials come from the company Ecolab. They are environmentally safe and safe to use in a food environment. We use Multi-Purpose Sanitizer 146 to sanitize dishes, wipe down tables, and then clean everything. TW: How often is food thrown away?BF: As far as throwing food away, yes, we do throw food away be-cause our salad bar is self-serve, so [that food] has to be thrown away

even if it’s not used because it’s in the open.TW: How often and when do you clean the cafeteria and the cafeteria equipment? BF: We wash dishes, all the trays, and everything [else] we use ev-ery single day, as well as the ov-ens. We have a “clean as you go” policy, so we clean throughout the day. At the end of the day, that’s when we do our full cleaning. I keep a rotating schedule, and each team does a different task every day according to the schedule. [The tasks include] cleaning the dishes, the exit line, the front line, the fridge and freezer, the kitchen, the teachers’ café, the stock room, and sweeping and mopping.TW: When is food stocked?BF: We get a delivery almost ev-ery day. We get the bulk deliver-ies on Mondays and Fridays. The chips also come in bulk deliveries on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays, we [get the] produce delivery. Wednesdays and Thurs-days, we [get] the drink delivery. So, almost every day we get a de-livery here. This school is one of the largest—we serve more than Stamford High does. We serve about 900 students a day, and that’s not just considering the hot lunch, that’s the deli, the snacks, and then we cater to the teachers.TW: What does the cafeteria look like after each lunch wave?

BF: The mess the kids leave is like they have no home training. They leave food on the table. They drop something and they don’t pick it up. They treat the cafeteria work-ers and custodians like servants. It would take less time to just wipe the tables if we didn’t have to pick up [the students’] trash. There is a “don’t care” attitude. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do this at home. We all need to work together to keep this place clean and it’s hard sometimes when you have the kids that don’t care.TW: What can be done to clean the cafeteria in between waves so it’s as clean for second and third waves as it is for first?BF: We try our best and clean to the best of our ability. There isn’t a lot of time [in between waves]. The students could look around their own area and throw their stuff away. [That] would save a lot of time for us. I worked at a middle school and the tables were very clean. It had a lot to do with the administration and security, who made sure the kids threw their stuff away.TW: Does the administration here do that?BF: They do tell them, but I don’t know what else could be done. Once kids are in high school, they feel more mature and that they shouldn’t have to do these things that they had to do in elementary school and middle school.

SuPPlEMEnT February 2011www.thewestwordonline.com24

What’s cooking?

Lauren Pollack / Photo EditorLunch Leftovers Food is often left on the cafeteria tables after each lunch wave. Students sometimes fail to use the many trash cans present, leaving the mess for cafeteria workers to clean up.

Lauren Pollack / Photo Editor

Investigating daily food preparation on the Hill

DIvIDe AnD conQuer The kitchen staff has an assembly line set up in order to be efficient in making the food required to feed the student body.