Organizational Culture

Internship Reflection 6/17

Organizational Culture

My internship site is definitely a lot different from a formal internship setting, which has actually been very interesting and fun for me throughout these past two weeks. I am not in a formal office all of the time. Instead, I have been going to different venues in the Dover Group and helping them out wherever they may need. I have mainly been at one of the restaurants and helping with office work such as scheduling all of the employees, giving them time off on the days they requested, making sure they all get their paychecks at the end of the week, taking inventory on all the food products and alcohol to make sure they are fully stocked for the upcoming week, etc. This site is very interesting to work at because there are two very different kinds of employees. One is the full-time adult worker who is here year-round on a salary such as the managers and chefs; then, there is also the part-time college or high school student who is just working for the summer and gets paid by the hour. This is a very interesting dynamic because you can easily see how the full time workers who take it very seriously get very annoyed at the students. In fact, the students are often very intimidated by the full-time workers because they are not always the most welcoming. The younger student employees are often expected to automatically know what they are doing even though they have only been there for this summer. The general manager and I talked about this and are trying to look for ways to change this hostile culture between the two. In addition to office work, I actually am the one who is the first person these young employees meet. I help interview them with my manger, I give them an application, and I train them. When training them I explain to them the dynamic between the full-time and part-time workers and I think it has actually helped them actually try and talk to the full-time workers more and befriend them rather than just making friends with coworkers the same age. In the past two weeks I think this has helped the dynamic and changed the expectations a little bit.

The company has a very hardworking attitude. The owner never takes a day off and all of the managers work six days a week for whatever their venue’s hours are. For this particular restaurant the hours are from 10am-10pm. Therefore, the general manager who I work closely with told me that he works every day except for Wednesday, twelve hours every day, sometimes more. I was shocked when he told me this because I could not even imagine doing that every single week. When I asked him how he did it, he explained that he did everything for his two daughters who are young and who he is looking to put through college. He then told me that he moved here from Mexico when he was younger and is looking to find the American dream for his two girls. Because of this, it is easy to see how he has high expectations for every single one of his employees. Although the attitudes and values are very strict and the jobs require hard workers, which some part-time employees do not like for a summer job, I think that it helped me be more motivated to do all of these tasks as an intern because of his story. It also helped me better understand why he can be so intimidating and determined sometimes.