If one were to list the distinctive experiences characteristic of Duke undergraduate life, Duke Dining horror stories do not come immediately to mind. Yet, for a striking number of students, the frequency of these bad service experiences has been startlingly consistent over time.
Indeed, the service problem at the Marketplace, and to a lesser extent the Great Hall, has been around as long as most people can remember. To be sure, the majority of Duke Dining employees do an excellent job. Some are true models of character that students could benefit to learn from and emulate. Still, there seems to be a disproportionately high concentration of persistently rude (if not outright insulting) employees in a few campus eateries (primarily the Marketplace and, to a lesser extent, the Great Hall). That these are union eateries does not appear to be a coincidence.
According to Duke Student Government Chief of Staff Mike Lefevre, a junior, who served as last year’s DSG vice president for athletics and campus services, the annual dining survey has consistently shown student appraisals of overall service quality as “disgusting.” The service problem, he said, consisted in student reports of being outright “harassed and mistreated” as well as unsanitary conduct by employees. Several sources report students being yelled at or insulted by employees for asking simple questions. Sophomore Pete Schork, the current vice president for athletics and campus services, noted that this year’s dining survey reflects similarly poor reviews of the service quality in these eateries.
So by “horror stories,” I don’t mean the petty complaints you sometimes hear about employees being less-than-exuberant towards every student with whom they interact. What for a student is just a passing moment may be what an employee does all day. That reality qualifies the intensity of student complaints somewhat, and upfront, is something with which students should (and by all accounts it would seem, do) sympathize.
Nonetheless, as most any student can tell you and the survey results show, the kinds of service complaints most students bother reporting are instances of behavior which would be inappropriate in any situation involving other human beings, not just a student-employee interaction. A basic problem is that there is little to no accountability for underperforming employees, since managers have few tools for disciplining employees and the required evidence threshold to take action is unreasonably high, Schork said.
“It’s unfair to have any situation where you can’t be held responsible for behavior that is in most venues very inappropriate,” Schork explained. “I’m not saying we should have to fire people. In my experience… the [Local 77] union hasn’t even been proactive in addressing any of our concerns. They haven’t even said they’ll take proactive steps, to say that we’ll talk to those people, and I think that’s the very least we deserve as students.”
Currently, students can report complaints by filling out comment cards after their meal. But identifying employees by name can be difficult, since it is common for employees to switch name tags, according to multiple student sources. Moreover, Lefevre said, the union will “go to bat for employees every time” without exception, creating an enormously high burden of proof for student complaints. This situation, in addition to a significant problem of employee absenteeism (which former Chronicle columnist Elliott Wolf alluded to in his February 2008 column, “Attention, Duke Employees”), led to the installation of 12 surveillance cameras in the Marketplace and a monitoring screen so that employees know where their behavior can be observed, Lefevre said. That the situation has deteriorated to this point reflects the extent to which administrators are fearful of engaging the union on these issues. Director of Dining Services Jim Wulforst could not be reached for comment on this issue.
Schork and Lefevre were keen to point out that they have no problem with unions in general and believe that they can serve a valuable role against a bad employer. But Duke, both observed, is far from a bad employer, with its payment of a living wage and numerous employee benefits.
If students were being systematically disrespectful towards employees, then perhaps cases of employee misconduct would be more understandable. However, although there are surely exceptions, students generally go out of their way to be polite and respectful to employees, Lefevre said. Positive student-employee relations is a two-way street, and it’s not unreasonable to expect that an effort be made by all parties involved.
High-performing unionized employees lose out under the current system as well. Existing union policies base promotions and raises on seniority rather than performance, whereas non-union eateries utilize merit-based performance reviews, Lefevre said. It’s not hard to infer how these different incentive structures might contribute to an explanation of the variation in service quality between union and non-union locations.
One problem, Schork and Lefevre both suggested, may be in Duke-Durham relations overall. No doubt, the political sensitivity of these issues restrains how administrators can deal with it. Recognizing the intractability of this problem, Schork offered the partial solution of creating more dialogue between students and employees at these facilities in the hope of generating greater mutual understanding. For his part, Lefevre suggested that students should be more diligent about submitting comment cards rather than venting privately.
Fair enough. But although such efforts certainly couldn’t hurt, I am less optimistic about how far they will go. The problem here is not the union per se, but particular factors in the University’s agreement with the union that limit the accountability of employees. Until that is addressed, it seems that little will change.
Absent a commitment from administration to address students’ service grievances when they confront Local 77, these provisions will continue to neuter the effectiveness with which student complaints can be remedied. And that is a real disservice—both to students, and those employees who take their jobs seriously and excel in them.
Vikram Srinivasan is a Trinity senior. His column usually runs every other Thursday.
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