{"id":179105,"date":"2010-01-14T03:02:15","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T08:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanforddaily.com\/cgi-bin\/?p=1037094"},"modified":"2010-01-14T03:02:15","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T08:02:15","slug":"kings-of-the-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/179105","title":{"rendered":"Kings of the Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dining hall workers hash it out with The Daily<\/h3>\n
\"(ANNE<\/p>\n

(ANNE PIPATHSOUK\/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

At 5:15 on a Sunday afternoon, a quarter of an hour into the dinner service at Lakeside Dining, things begin to stir. Greg Torres-Lopez leisurely places a single burger patty on the grill and a couple of potatoes through the slicer. The dinner-time rush won\u2019t hit for another fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n

Average height and stocky, Torres-Lopez appears to be well into his twenties, but in truth he\u2019s just 18. He is a recent high school graduate from East Palo Alto, taking a gap year before pursuing a degree in mechanics at the College of San Mateo next fall. Torres-Lopez has been working the 5 to 9 p.m. dinner shift at Stanford five days a week since his sophomore year \u2014 first in the dish room of Ricker Dining and then settling as a hasher at Lakeside five months later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my first time doing the grill,\u201d he said with a bashful chuckle, pulling open steel drawers under the counter to give the ingredients another once over. It must have been the third time in the last half-hour.<\/p>\n

Burgers: check \u2014 beef, veggie and black bean. Cheese: check.<\/p>\n

Torres-Lopez has already assumed responsibilities in what may have been the honors track for hashing. The student manager, Jose, took him under his wing when Torres-Lopez arrived at Lakeside from Ricker Dining.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just started teaching me all the things he does,\u201d Torres-Lopez said. \u201cOn Sundays, they would just let me do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within only two years of starting at Lakeside, Torres-Lopez was promoted to head hasher. He sometimes jokes about how much easier being a head hasher is, as most of his duties revolve around directing other hashers and leading the service in the buffet line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s chill but you do have to check on the workers and everything, make sure they\u2019re doing their job and not horse-playing,\u201d Torres-Lopez laughed as he described some of the privileges that come along with his new title, between student orders of grilled chicken and a cheeseburger.<\/p>\n

Hashers are jacks-of-all-trade in the Stanford kitchens, assisting in a variety of tasks from food preparation to clean-up to cold and hot runs to manning the cash register. They are usually non-University affiliated workers employed by Stanford, many of whom are still in college. But Stanford\u2019s current cohort of hashers is a relatively new breed \u2014 over 30 years ago, Stanford students used to be served by their peers. In fact, many prominent Stanford alums \u2014 including Vice Provost John Bravman, \u201879, MS \u201881, PhD \u201885 \u2014 used to call themselves hashers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of camaraderie,\u201d Bravman said, reflecting on his interactions with the students he used to serve. \u201cI think students appreciated that [the hashers] were their peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bravman worked as a cook\u2019s assistant in Wilbur Dining for all four of his years as a Stanford undergraduate. Working up to 15 hours a week on the dinner shift, Bravman forged a strong friendship with his former supervisor, Saul Cardenas. Even as Provost, Bravman still made regular visits to see Cardenas at Wilbur until the chef retired almost five years ago.<\/p>\n

Bravman\u2019s class became one of the last to have Stanford students as hashers, but he found hashing to be an unparalleled learning experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt responsible,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a sense that what I was doing was important even though I was just feeding people. It helped cement my notion that it really doesn\u2019t matter what you\u2019re doing, you can really bring a sense of quality to almost anything you do. If it\u2019s worth doing, then it\u2019s probably worth doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Droves of students casually sauntered into Lakeside, many of them eager to go through the bread line as quickly as possible. All were polite but few were openly friendly. Torres-Lopez didn\u2019t seem to notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just say hi and be nice to them,\u201d he said as he handed a tall student in a San Jose State sweatshirt the double cheese burger he did not order, completely oblivious to the slight scowl on the boy\u2019s otherwise good-natured face. \u201cThey do respond more often than not, unless they\u2019re in a bad mood or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversations between hasher and student are not always so cursory, however, said Henry Jackson, a part time hasher at Ricker Dining. Perhaps it\u2019s Ricker\u2019s removed location or smaller dinner population, but Jackson can list off the food preferences of almost any given resident of Sterling Quad when it comes to the grill menu. More often than not, his interaction with students is only limited by his current workload.<\/p>\n

Jackson had been doing odd jobs for warehouses before applying for the hasher position at Stanford in 2006. He was \u201ctired of going from job to job\u201d and wanted to do something that served others. He found his calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomer service is important,\u201d Jackson said. \u201c[So,] if I\u2019m not busy, I talk to students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Torres-Lopez, Jackson has quickly risen through the ranks, despite only having worked at Stanford for three years. Now he trains new employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve basically trained most of the people that come through,\u201d he said. \u201c[It\u2019s] not really challenging. Actually, to me it\u2019s kind of fun to show them you know to make sure that the job gets done because that\u2019s where I started. It gives them aspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s emphasis on helping others has also extended beyond just his day job \u2014\u00a0 he spends his free time volunteering at Palo Alto\u2019s Opportunity Center, a nonprofit group to serve the needs of the homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how it used to be,\u201d Jackson said calmly.\u00a0 \u201cI was homeless myself at one point.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was only for two years \u2014 1996-1997 \u2014 a time when Jackson was struggling with bouts of substance abuse. He knows all too well that being homeless is difficult and dangerous, so he does what he can to help others in the same dilemma make changes in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Whether] they need a change of clothes or [help] down the right direction,\u201d Jackson said, \u201cit\u2019s just helping somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former hashers like Bravman appreciate Jackson\u2019s and other hasher\u2019s commitment to service \u2014 both in and out of the dining halls.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part the staff [now] take their jobs very seriously and they really like serving students,\u201d Bravman said. \u201cI think they feel really privileged to be working here and they derive a real sense of satisfaction from serving their students well. I have really high praise for them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dining hall workers hash it out with The Daily (ANNE PIPATHSOUK\/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER) At 5:15 on a Sunday afternoon, a quarter of an hour into the dinner service at Lakeside Dining, things begin to stir. Greg Torres-Lopez leisurely places a single burger patty on the grill and a couple of potatoes through the slicer. The dinner-time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2917,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}