Your Comments:

Dave, First of all I just finished eating at couch and not only was the food excellent the service was outstanding. Mary, the lady at the register was very friendly. It’s always nice to see such a bright smile. Not only was she nice when I came in, but I was unable to locate my back pack as I was leaving and she helped me find it. Also while I was enjoying my meal I decided to read the kitchen comments. I was shocked to see so many comments about burger king. As a patron of food services for the past two years I have not had any problems with the service or staff at BK. I think that people should realize that the workers at BK are mostly students who have other things on their minds and that accidents happen. I wonder how many of the students that write to complain about burger king ever mess up at their jobs, I am sure that they, themselves, would appreciate a little patience, but they are unwilling to offer the same respect to the workers of burger king. Thanks, An OU SOONER

Quite true, almost 75% of our employees are students.  That in itself is not an excuse for bad service when it happens, where ever it happens.  I think when a student is at work they should have their mind on work.  First and foremost they should be taking care of the customer.  Now, if they don’t know how to do that because we have failed at training them properly, or given them bad tools or bad supervision I can see where they might not be completely at blame. 

You are correct though, a little patience goes a long ways.  Heaven knows I make mistakes every day HOWEVER, it’s how we learn and recover from these mistakes that is important.  Letting the manager of an operation know when you have a problem can be very helpful too.

I don't consider myself the complaining type, and I love reading all of the positive kitchen comments people write.  Unfortunately, in this case, I feel like I had to mention something.  This afternoon at about 1:15, I went to Burger King and ordered a tendercrisp cheesy bacon sandwich, without lettuce or tomato.  There were 4 or 5 people ahead of me, but I'm perfectly fine waiting.  I watched each get their food, and waited for mine.  Slowly people behind me started getting their food.  I inquired as to why mine was taking so long, and got the response "it'll come soon."  Another 15 minutes go by, and I finally see my sandwich being put in a bag.  Unfortunately, I'd watched that sandwich sit there at least 15 to 20 minutes, so needless to say I was a little disappointed in the service, but nothing I couldn't deal with. I took the food back to my room, at which point I opened it to find a piece of chicken with mayo on it.  Considering my order doesn't even come with mayo, I figured they had put the wrong order in my bag, or some other mix-up had occurred.  By the time I had my food back in my room, it was approximately 2:00, 45 minutes after placing my order.  I went back to the counter, and a very friendly employee named Tiffany apologized and said she'd make sure my order was taken care of.  There was another male employee who's name I didn't see, who was doing the bagging behind the counter.  She told him to let them know I needed a replacement order.  He yelled it back, but failed to mention no lettuce or tomato.  I managed to get his attention, and he corrected it.  After hearing fast food horror stories, I've always paid attention to the area where the food is made.  I waited for another 20 minutes, and finally mine was made.  I was rather disgusted though, when I watched as an employee (without gloves) took two pieces of tomato and lettuce off of the sandwich with his bare hands, threw them away, and wrapped up my sandwich.  I don't know about you, but I'd rather not eat a sandwich made that way.  So, after placing my first order at 1:15, I went back to my room for a final time at about 2:45 and threw my sandwich away.  Like I said, I don't like to complain, but this was just too disgusting for me to ignore, even if it puts me down a few meal points. Thanks for taking the time to read, Andrew  P.S. - On a sidenote, Couch Express has some of the friendliest staff I've encountered here at the university - please tell them to keep it up!

Thanks for letting me know what happened.  I forwarded your e-mail to the BK owner and I know he has responded to you.  I need to hear from you whenever you are not receiving the quality of food and service that you deserve at any Food Service location on campus.

Dave, Normally, I'd be the first to reccomend the Cafe, but today I went there and a horrible thing happened.  Every day I get the normally awesome yogurt.  Sometimes it's low or out, which though bothersome is understandable becuase I eat at the cafe during peak lunch time.  Today, Monday, March 12th at 12:34 PM I spooned a bite of vanilla yogurt into my mouth.  I was expecting a delicious taste of vanilla and a creamy texture.  I instead got a rancid flavor and a chunky texture!  It had gone bad!  Did someone make a mistake!?  This is only the second time in four years of living on campus that I've gotten food that had gone bad, but even once is one time too many. Get on top Dave, get on top.  Otherwise the curdled vanilla yogurt will cause the student body to mutate into a horde of kitchen-staff-eating zombies!  And we ALL remember how bad the last time that happened was.  I still can't get the zombie goop stains off of my Louisville Slugger...-Adam

Would you like a list of kitchen staff for the zombies to start with?  No, No, that would be too gruesome, almost as bad as eating out of date yogurt.  Adam, I apologize for that, things like that should never happen and I am always embarrassed when they do.

I hope you told someone at Couch so they pulled the yogurt right away and some other unsuspecting student didn’t get the same shock as you did!  I also hope that they gave you a wooden nickel (good for a free meal anywhere on campus) or refunded your meal.

Taking a break from studying.  I came down stairs to get a chai latte.  After ordering and paying, they soon discovered they were out of the tea.  A little disappointed, settling for my second choice, the last bottle of apple juice.  It is aggravating as a customer and as an employee to be out of stock of many goods.  Staff was very friendly.

We order the chai tea once a week from our supplier.  Usually we can do a pretty good job of guessing how much we will use each week.  It’s not an exact science though and every once and awhile we will guess wrong.  I’m sorry we were out and I’ll make sure that our folks understand (remember) that we use chai tea at numerous places across campus and a phone call can probably get more to them in a matter of minutes.

Museum-The staff very nice and efficient.  Love the atmosphere and ability to get away from my office.

Shhh, very few folks have found the Redbud Café at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.  If you keep saying nice things about it more people will go down there and it won’t be “our little secret” anymore.  I mean what will happen when students find out that they can use their meal points and exchanges there?  What will the staff do if they discover you can have a quiet business lunch “get-a-way?”  They might eat there!

I think the coffee shop here is excellent.  To make it better:

1. Serve artisan/Panini sandwiches instead of just bagels.

2. Have more of a selection & maybe a coffee of the day w/discounts so people will try new drinks.

3. Move the toaster to a less cluttered location

4. Have light music.

Thanks for your suggestions, I’ll have our manager take a look to see what we can do.

Yeah for more juices in Odwalla!  I love the lime pomegrant.

Hamburger Helper singles and cheesy Lasagna.

White Crunch bars.

Dave, I see you've made good on your promise for better vegetables in the cafeteria!  I went in this evening and was amazed to see tray after tray of crisp, delicious vegetables.  The broccoli was a bright, joyful green, with a definite crispness.  Even the cauliflower (another favorite, and also very easy to overcook) had an excellent texture.  You have no idea how happy this makes me!  Thank you so much!  And a big congratulations to everyone at Couch, too!  It's wonderful to see how much you care about our experience with the food here.

Hey Dave, The sandwiches at Crossroads suck because there aren't any of the nice dressings to choose from (like at block and barrel) and I can't walk all the way to Cate in the short break that I get for lunch.  If said dressings do infact exist at Crossroads, they never ask you what kind you would like.  (I guess if you look on the bright side of my comment, it means that Crossroads gets me my food quickly during the lunch rush).

Well, I’m glad to hear that.  It has been awhile since I paid much attention to the Crossroads sandwich selection.  Let me ask about what is available.  I tend to think that besides some very basic spreads (mayo, mustard) we probably are not offering much else.

Dave, Can more people other than Tim be trained to properly operate Roscoe's?  In Tim's absence this coffee shop runs horribly.  I arrived at 8:40 this morning thinking that would be enough time to make a mocha before my 9AM class, but I was wrong.  I didn't leave until 9:05.  There were 3 espresso drinks in front of mine when I ordered, and it took over 20 minutes to make 4 espresso drinks.  Can we please get some training in Roscoe's?  I missed my 9AM class because of their tardiness.

I talked to Cathy who was helping out in Tim’s absence and she told me that we did fall behind a couple of times.  She also told me that she thinks that in your case there was a mix-up and someone behind you got your drink dropping you out of the queue.  We will try to make sure that we cross train a few more people OR we just won’t let Tim take any more time off.

Dave I am watching Man Vs. Wild on Discovery right now, and he just said pound per pound termites have more protein than beef or fish.  We need to get termites served in the caf, I would get them grilled to order.  Maybe add them to some cookie crisp and milk, it would be sweet.

That may be true but I don’t think I’ve seen termites listed in any of the big “protein” diets like Adkins or South Beach.  I don’t think we should get greedy, let’s leave the termites for some other time and place.

let's get certified humane organic eggs!

I’m not even sure where we would find those in quantities large enough to sustain a program here on campus.  We are going to be starting our cage free egg program this week at Crossroads.

I would appreciate it if i could come back from work every night and be able to get something to eat during spring break.It suck having to come home at 10pm and not finding a single place on campus to eat, thats ridiculous. I cant eat off campus because i dont have money, if i did i wouldnt be working throughout spring break and i'd be eating some actual good food. Im sure there are alot of other people who stayed here too that feel the same way. I guess we're just supposed to waist our weekly meals because we cant get off work before 3 to go eat?

I understand what you are saying but let’s be practical, we can’t keep an operation open that late when very few students are on campus.  It is spring break.  We have a continuing problem.  We used to turn the meal plans off over spring break but since housing now allows you to stay over the break we felt we needed to have some operations open.  So we left the meal plans on, effectively giving you 17 weeks of meals for the same price you were paying for 16 weeks before the change.

Last Sunday night students flocked to BK, Cate, Couch Express, and Crossroads trying to use up their weeks “allotment” of meals.  I am sure that I will have many complaints from students about this.  In your reality you will complain about how we are ripping you off and what slugs we are for charging you for something you can’t use.  My reality is just the opposite. 

I’m not sure what we should do, I really don’t.  I want to provide you with as many services as we can, but why when it only results in complaints.  I’m inclined to turn off the meal portion of your plan again over spring break and allow you to use your meal points and sooner sense during that week.  Maybe we just add a meal or two to the plans to get you through the Sunday night you come back.  I think what we need to do is get a student committee together to discuss this matter.

As a parent I am concerned about the fairness of your meal plan which requires the students to have weekly meal plans, which we were told was a way for the University to have a better planning as to the number of meals being served weekly as opposed to having large number of meal points to exchange at the end of the semester.  That sounds very realistic, but then to have meals included during the Spring break when I am certain very few students were around seems more like a way for the University to make money.  This part of the equation does not seem like a decision that is in the best interest of the student.  Mike

Mike,

I’m sorry for the delay in getting back with you, I just got back from a conference.

We do have a problem concerning our services over spring break.  I certainly understand your comments and perspective on the issue.  My perspective is a little different.

We used to turn off the meal plans over spring break.  The students were gone and our facilities were closed.  We charged for 114 days of meals in a 122 day semester.  Then two years ago Housing decided to keep the residence halls open over spring break.  Since we had students on campus we felt we needed to keep the meal plans turned on for the few that stayed.  We added the week to the semester but did not change the price of the meal plan.  We knew there wouldn’t be a lot of students around to use their plans so we “bit the bullet” for the benefit of our students.  From our perspective we are “giving” the students additional days of service and meals.

I know there is no reason for you or other students and parents to know this.  From your perspective you are paying for something your student isn’t using.  There in, is my dilemma.  Do I turn off the meal plan over spring break and deny the few students that are here service?  If I don’t, I will continue to receive complaints.  There may be a middle ground:  We might turn off the meals but leave the declining balance on.  There will of course be students that don’t like this either.

I intend to get Housing student leaders together to discuss this issue in the next few weeks.

Check out Crossroads!

Now serving Cage Free Eggs and a Natural Beef Hamburger option

along with their line of

Organic and Free Trade Coffee