camp kitchen staff

[GKlose]

shortridge offered this:

 

"Seventh, be kind to the cooks and kitchen crews, if you have a dining hall program. Lend them a hand from time to time, and hang out with them when you get a chance. When you're out doing the glamorous stuff like putting up the flags in the morning, they're sequestered inside slaving over eggs-from-a-bag and mixing the umpteenth vat of bug juice for hundreds of (usually ungrateful) campers. Never complain about the food! Thank them for what they're doing, and maybe suggest to your boss that you open up the pool late one night or early one morning just for the support staff. Or, if it's OK with everyone's supervisors, offer to work a shift for someone during your free period so they can sneak off and shoot a round of archery. (In addition to being Scoutlike, this behavior can get you an inside track into the commissary or kitchen for late-night PB&J sandwiches or ice cream sodas - always a bonus.)

"

 

As a two-year veteran of a camp's kitchen staff, I'd like to thank Shortridge for noticing. From my point of view, it was fun and interesting (and very low-paying) duty, and I didn't fully appreciate the job until one night when an SM approached me and said that one of his scouts had gastro-intestinal issues. I didn't really know how to respond at the time, but thinking back, we didn't have problems like that (other SMs reporting "issues"), and we'd passed both camp inspections and county health inspector inspections, and had some national BSA records to keep, on things like walk-in refrigerator and freezer, and milk cooler, temperatures. But if you turn out low-quality food, campers and staff have a lousy time, and it impacts everything.

 

Oh man, did we work long hours. We were up maybe an hour and a half before the rest of camp, had maybe an hour break between breakfast service and lunch service, maybe a 2-hour break between lunch and dinner services, and were routinely in the kitchen and dining hall until about 8pm or 8:30pm. I'd use some of that time for my paperwork and ordering (while there was a cook hired, who did a pre-season order to stock the warehouse and the first couple weeks of camp, in my second year I took care of all that).

 

The staff time at the camp pool ran from 4:30 until 5:30pm, but we were starting dinner prep at that point. The archery or rifle ranges? Nope, we couldn't get there, except during those break hours, which happened to be the time that MB classes would run.

 

Sometimes the cook gave us a break, maybe by prepping some things the night before, so we could sleep in a little; sometimes we gave the cook a break -- if she prepped dinner, we could sometimes run service by ourselves. Cleanup was all us, but she would do most of the large pots that the short guys couldn't reach.

 

I've matured a lot since then (thankfully), and I cringe at the thought of one incident I handled poorly. Late one night, during a stretch of severe weather, everyone was brought into the dining hall. At about 10pm, the camp director essentially asked me to bring out snackage and beverages. I wasn't happy about that at all. He wasn't considering that we'd still be there an hour after everyone left just in order to clean the place (again) and that we'd still have to be up an hour earlier than everyone else in the morning in order to get breakfast prep started. That late at night, I was already running on empty, and was fairly snippy to boot. He was patient with me, and eventually we worked out a compromise situation where we did bring out stuff, and the stuff that needed to be cleaned sat until morning. We had to get up a half hour earlier to run the dishwasher and have everything cleaned before breakfast.

 

So thanks, Shortridge. Not everyone notices the kitchen staff, and unless they're doing a poor job, there is very little feedback.

 

Guy

[Eagle92]

Oh heck yeah you need to take care of the cook crew. One thing I liked about the first camp I worked at: cook crew got one nite off per week. All the directors come in to cook and clean one nite per week. Also the cook crew got out before the rest of camp, usually friday after campfire. Any staff member who complained got assigned to the dining hall for a week, and usually there were no complaints afterwards

 

 

[TheScout]

Never heard of that. As a director I was busy every night during the week! I don't think I would like a night in the kitchen.

 

Also never really liked staff heading out to other program areas to shoot, swim, etc. Some of my young Ecology staffers would want to go away often.

 

I reckon staff should stay in their own areas and provide the best program/services to scouts and scouters.

[Buffalo Skipper]

During the first weekend of Wood Badge, we ate in the dining hall. Before every meal, we chanted a hearty chorus of "God Bless the Chefs!" The same applies to the summer camp cook staffs, in fact even more so!

 

I may drop a bug in our SPLs ear before camp to have some special treat for the cook staff.....

[GKlose]

"Also never really liked staff heading out to other program areas to shoot, swim, etc. Some of my young Ecology staffers would want to go away often.

 

I reckon staff should stay in their own areas and provide the best program/services to scouts and scouters."

 

I understand, but the camp where I worked (and the camp my son goes to), built in a staff rec time from roughly 4:30 to 5:30pm every day. Scouts would migrate back to their campsites, and staffers were free for this one hour. Staff swim time, or range time, was arranged on request.

 

The problem was that the kitchen staff didn't get the same rec time as everyone else. No use of the pool, etc.

 

You can argue, of course, that staff doesn't need rec time like that, but I'd argue differently. No matter how you slice it, you're talking staffers that are 16-17 up to college aged, and they aren't necessarily prepared to work 9am all the way up to 9pm every day with only breaks for meal times. For me, running the kitchen at age 18, I was putting in better than 8 hours a day, six days per week.

 

The only "down time" at camp was from Saturday just after breakfast, when camp broke, until the next day at noontime when a new group came in. That Saturday night was the only night off at camp. After I left, a new camp director (my old SM) changed everything around, from when parents night was held, to providing staffers an extra night off per week. I wasn't there, so I don't really know how it worked.

 

I had one non-Saturday day off that summer, so I could go to my college orientation day. Luckily, I had a good assistant (he took the kitchen over the next couple of summers) and he was able to take care of everything.

 

Guy

[TheScout]

When I worked at camp we didn't have a staff rec time. There was a siesta when all the scouts returned to their camps after lunch, but all the staff did too.

 

Staff could get out to other program areas during open program time with the approval of the director. I worked as a young man as you mentioned, three summmers 17-19. I never really participated. Especially not the last two summers when I was the Ecology Director. I had work to do in that area. I didn't let my staff get out much either. Most of them didn't really care too and enjoyed being at Ecology. One would always pester to go shoot and I would let him go on occasion as the range was just down the road.

 

You should not sell young staff short. If you expect them to be at their place of duty, doing their job during program times they will be there. We all worked many 9am-9pms and more.

[sk84sv]

ill make sure to to show a lot of respect to kitchen staff. i hated when i washed dishes at my prior job

[shortridge]

GKlose, thanks for the thanks.

 

The closest I came to working in the kitchen or on support staff was doing service patrol duties, and during my CIT summer when I was the backup trading post guy. I was a program instructor and later area director. But I have a tremendous amount of respect for the kitchen and commissary crews. They worked their behinds off daily, and I only hope they got some extra in their paychecks for it. It's grueling, sweaty, hard work, and all of it behind the scenes. I don't think I could have kept up that pace.

 

Some of the craziest, most creative guys I worked with were two fellows on the cook crew. They got some well-deserved downtime during our three-day mid-summer "retraining" (retooling from Boy Scouts to Cub Scouts), and boy, did they play hard. It was a lot of fun working and bouncing things off them.

 

Several of the fellows I worked with had started out as CITs, and found themselves shunted into support services the next year because the available program slots were filled. (We almost always had a need for 18-year-old area directors, but instructors were a dime a dozen.) To my knowledge, they never complained, and kept coming back, despite having definitely not joined Scouts for the privilege of eight weeks of running a hot dishwasher or packing food crates.

 

On a tangent, it's interesting hearing about how other camps do "time off." At my camp, everyone had one night off a week, from about 6 p.m. - 11 p.m. or so., plus the 24-hour period from Saturday noon to Sunday noon. Everyone got a one-hour daily "siesta" period right after lunch... but of course the program staff could usually be found hanging out in their areas prepping for the afternoon programs, and the kitchen staff was cleaning up from lunch, so no one really got to siesta.

[John-in-KC]

TheScout,

 

The first thing I learned in leadership in the Army was never ask my men to do a job I wasn't willing to do myself. I trust you were out working from 5AM to 11PM while your staff kids were working 9-9.

 

We pay Scouts a bloody pittance for the work we get out of them. If a Camp Director/PD are thoughtful enough to give them a bit of time to have some fun, well... from all my experience as a customer and as an adult commish, our staff youth deserve more than we can ever pay them.

[TheScout]

I assure you I was always there at least as much as they were.

 

The CD and the PD gave the area directors the discretion on how to allow time off. I saw many areas abuse this privilege. If you cultivate in your staff a pride that in their program area and the fact that they are doing things better than the other ones, they do not mind and even brag about it.

 

I do not like the idea of staff swimming and shooting while scouts are in program areas.

[GKlose]

"I do not like the idea of staff swimming and shooting while scouts are in program areas."

 

At least at my old camp, that didn't happen. Which was the foundation of my complaint. There was one staff break time, from 4:30pm to 5:30pm where staff could visit those program areas -- campers were in their campsites, or at the trading post. My complaint was the kitchen staff didn't get equal treatment, while putting in longer hours.

 

My son's present camp (and I'll be there for a week this coming summer) has a "siesta" time also in the late afternoon. This year, I heard the description that this isn't so much because campers need downtime as it is to give the staff an hour break. Program areas are open from early morning through evening, except for meal times and this one-hour break. Troops are encouraged to use the downtime for their own activities.

 

Guy

[Kudu]

Wood Badge, the Uniform Police of Leadership Development, really should do more to honor camp kitchen staffs, without whom it would be impossible to lure Scouts indoors away from the Patrol Method to sit side by side over meals cooked by adults of character.

 

Kudu

[Rythos]

As someone who is responsible for all aspects of a year round camps food service operation (Not a scout camp admittedly) I always appreciate it when the Program Directors and other staff actually remember my staff is part of the team. All to often my employees go to great lengths to make sure a program has what it needs, and it goes unappreciated.

 

Also I make sure that the staff that bothers to help my department out from time to time gets taken care of however we can.

 

Never hurts to remember that they do a much work as the rest of the staff, and usually the campers have no idea who they are.

 

Ry

[SR540Beaver]

Kudu, either contribute something useful to the topic at hand or take your hate of the current program elsewhere please. There was absolutely nothing constructive in your comments.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

Last summer our council overbooked a session of Cub Resident Camp. They put out a call for help. I took three days of vacation to come help in the dining hall so the dining hall youth staff could assist in the program areas. We had so many campers and adults that we had to run double shifts for each meal. Now, I sit at a desk all day in air conditioned comfort and I had not worked like that since I was a much younger man. I'm 51 and have a few more pounds than I need. I was up at 5:30 and in the kitchen by 6:00. Other than about an hour and a half in the middle of the day where I went and collapsed into my bunk, I was there until 8:30 PM each evening. It was a real eye opener to me as to what kind of work the kitchen staff has to go thru. I will say that we did have some WOOD BADGE trained leaders who "got it" and they themselves along with their boys would stay behind after meals and help get the dining hall cleaned up in the 15 minutes we had between shifts. I now don't go to any event where the dining hall is being used without offering my services. Not because I enjoy it, but because I know how hard it is and that they can use the assistance.(This message has been edited by sr540beaver)

[Kudu]

SR540Beaver,

 

It is YOU that should take your personal attacks and your hatred of Scouting's traditional values elsewhere. There was absolutely nothing constructive in your comment.

 

Kudu