2008 Woodie Awards
Editorial: Dining Services needs to step up inventory control
Issue date: 4/10/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion
04/10/08 - When you're dealing with food, even a 1 percent error rate can lead to dangerous health consequences. While luckily dodging a potential health problem, Dining Services came close during the past few months as it found dozens of cases of expired packets of condiments at the Ram's Den.
The incident set off a chain of events that led Associate Director of Dining Services Steven Mello to acknowledge that Dining Services cannot always immediately check the expiration dates of food received at its warehouse.
The condiment packages appear reflective of a larger system of sloppy checking that allows products close to their expiration date, and received in a rush, to sit untouched for months in the warehouse.
Sometimes staff discover the products and toss them, but other times items slip by and go directly to dining halls. We can only wonder how long food products that do not contain so-called code dates are allowed to sit in the warehouse and collect dust.
In an age of computers and sophisticated inventory-control software, Dining Services workers still use paper on clipboards to manage the inventory for three dining halls and numerous satellite operations.
And some management appears unwilling to accept responsibility for the problem. Product could get by if "unaware students didn't catch it fast enough," Mello said.
The defense is bizarre. It was Mello and his administrative team that hired these employees. Mello and his team are supposed to oversee these employees. A failure by the student employees is a failure by Mello and Dining Services Director Kathy Gianquitti.
Instead of blaming student employees that likely receive little training, Mello and his managers need to fix the problem. There is no excuse for not inspecting deliveries fully. The university sets itself up for a major loss by signing for items whose quality it has not verified.
The problem is exemplified by the fact the product handled by Dining Services is eaten by thousands of students each day. We are not talking about the URI Bookstore selling worn books to students, we are talking about a department where mistakes could equal real and serious health consequences. It's clear that the Dining Services' inventory management system is expired and a review is needed to fix the problem.
The incident set off a chain of events that led Associate Director of Dining Services Steven Mello to acknowledge that Dining Services cannot always immediately check the expiration dates of food received at its warehouse.
The condiment packages appear reflective of a larger system of sloppy checking that allows products close to their expiration date, and received in a rush, to sit untouched for months in the warehouse.
Sometimes staff discover the products and toss them, but other times items slip by and go directly to dining halls. We can only wonder how long food products that do not contain so-called code dates are allowed to sit in the warehouse and collect dust.
In an age of computers and sophisticated inventory-control software, Dining Services workers still use paper on clipboards to manage the inventory for three dining halls and numerous satellite operations.
And some management appears unwilling to accept responsibility for the problem. Product could get by if "unaware students didn't catch it fast enough," Mello said.
The defense is bizarre. It was Mello and his administrative team that hired these employees. Mello and his team are supposed to oversee these employees. A failure by the student employees is a failure by Mello and Dining Services Director Kathy Gianquitti.
Instead of blaming student employees that likely receive little training, Mello and his managers need to fix the problem. There is no excuse for not inspecting deliveries fully. The university sets itself up for a major loss by signing for items whose quality it has not verified.
The problem is exemplified by the fact the product handled by Dining Services is eaten by thousands of students each day. We are not talking about the URI Bookstore selling worn books to students, we are talking about a department where mistakes could equal real and serious health consequences. It's clear that the Dining Services' inventory management system is expired and a review is needed to fix the problem.