During the TOKTW day, I had the opportunity to  not only experience one work environment, but two. In the morning I went to my moms work which is at Lunch Lady’s and in the afternoon, I experienced my dads job at his office where he works as a manager of imports at Hardwoods distribution inc.

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Lunch Lady

Interview with mom (Jenny): 

Job title: Food prep & Cook

Responsible for preparing daycare to elementary hot lunch and snacks.

Duties/Tasks: Prepare food such as chopping food, measuring, mixing food, sometimes delivery, etc.

What qualifications do you have for this job in the following areas:

training: anything related to cooking and baking.

education: Math, food/kitchen safety

experience: Baking 

skills and attributes: Time management, food/kitchen safety, communication

What are some of the things you like about this job?
“I like cooking, keeping me busy while still looking after my own kids. This job is ideal for me, I can take a day off on the same day with my kids holiday/Pro-D as a result of the daycares and elementary schools also being on break. The work is flexible.”

Is there anything you dislike?

“It has very physical tasks like when you cook a large quantity of food that requires lifting heavy, hot pots. Working in a fast pace in order to finish all the orders that have to be delivered. 

How do you anticipate this job changing in the next 5 years etc.?

“In my opinion it honestly depends on the order quantity for schools in the future. If schools start ordering more than the business may expand more into a bigger kitchen.”

other questions:

How long does it take to prepare the food and delivering the food?

Depends on the menus, some menus take longer than others to make for example: pasta, rice, mashed potatoes. We then deliver the food at lunch time.

Student reflection:

Give 3 reasons why you would like this job:

-Cooking and Baking would be very fun to do daily. Things such as cutting vegetables (like I helped with today) and fruit, baking deserts (cookies, muffins, etc.) and cooking food like I saw my mom doing today (shepherds pie, sushi, etc.)

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-Delivering the food and meeting the little kids would be fun. I feel like delivering would feel kind of like one of those food delivery video games which makes it sound like even more fun!

Give 3 reasons why you would not like this job:

-Standing all day can become very irritating and can even make you sore if you didn’t get enough sleep.

-The pressure of a time limit as a result of the orders that are being placed one after another from daycare to elementary.

-Even though schools also requires you to wake up very early, I feel like in the future I wouldn’t want to wake up very early for a job that requires me to stand for most of the day.

Is this job for you?

Personally I feel like this job would fit my interests but, I don’t think that I would e interested to work in this job full time. I don’t feel like this job reaches my peek interest but I do definitely could consider it being a part-job. I also feel that I wouldn’t want to be standing all day, I personally enjoy both sitting and standing (of walking around like a waitress) if I were to work somewhere instead of staying in one area.

These are photos of the things I helped out with today. Cutting cucumbers, Packaging carrots, apples and cucumbers.

 

 

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Hardwoods Distribution Inc.

Interview with dad (Cory): 

Job title: Manager of Imports (HDI)

Responsible to develop and manage global supply chains in the wood industry 

Duties/Tasks: Source wood globally and make sure that its legal, the right price, good quality, delivery time and to satisfy all costumers.

What qualifications do you have for this job in the following areas:

training: Overseas practical/on site

education: Math, University degree, Graduate, Multilingual (he knows Indonesian, English and Japanese), Geography

experience: Travel, wood product(ion), logistics, manufacturing

skills and attributes: Communication, Negotiation, work across cultures and time zones.

What are some of the things you like about this job?

“I like to travel around the globe and developing new products and vendors. I like how challenging the job.”

Is there anything you dislike?

“It requires working 24/7 which can limit personal time with family and friends; even personal time to go on holidays. Working across time zones also affect family time and my health (considering the change in sleep schedules are very frequent).”

How do you anticipate this job changing in the next 5 years etc.?

-Market conditions and consumer needs considering things around the world (global issues) that might affect our wood supply.

-Force wood industry to re-invent itself (as a result of global issues and wood supply)

other questions:

Has the war in Russia and Ukraine affected the wood industry (HDI):

“We were forced to discontinue business with Russia and diversify our supply chain and develop new products. Meeting managers from the Baltics (Lithuania and Tallinn)”

Has Covid-19 affected your job?

“People were forced to spend more time at home which led to people wanting more home renovations and buying new houses; this resulted to record year money. Our office was also closed for some time so we had to work from home.”

Student reflection:

Give 3 reasons why you would like this job:

-Traveling around the globe to do business with other company’s would be a very interesting and cool experience. Variety of different cultures, people, ethnicity’s as a result of traveling around the globe. 

-I would like negotiating in this job, I feel that (even though it looks stressful while negotiating) would be very fun at the end of the day in my opinion.

-In the same category as traveling, I feel like it would be very interesting to expand my knowledge and learn things overseas such as the cooking, culture, language, etc.

Give 3 reasons why you would not like this job:

-In this job it is very important that you know your math. Personally I wouldn’t find myself as a math expert, I feel that this isn’t the best job considering that (adding onto the fact I’m not the best at math) I don’t really like math that much. ex. Product specifications (measurements)

-Knowing 

-As I said in my mom’s job I would not like to wake up very early considering that this job requires you to wake even earlier than my previous job experience. “Even though schools also requires you to wake up very early, I feel like in the future I wouldn’t want to wake up very early for a job that requires me to stand for most of the day.”

Is this job for you?

Personally I wouldn’t want to work in an office building for my future. Although it was a very cool experience the ways that the wood industry works, I feel that it doesn’t fit my interests very well. Working here to help out or even as part time (if it is possible) could be an option because it does sound like an interesting job that I do have some interests in such as the traveling aspect of this job (even though the time zones change a lot and I’m pretty sure you need to have a higher position to do so). 

These images are from his new office building that I had a tour of

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Explain the value of the TOKTW experience to your ideas about your post secondary plans (education?, travel?, work?):

I feel that this experience is a very good experience to find out a path that suits your interests in the future very well; it is important to not only follow your path, but to also try things out of your comfort zone once in a while to expand your flexibility in future career paths. This experience is also very valuable to see your areas in which you should improve in such as time management, attention span, skills and attributes that need work on before heading onto a path you may regret in the future. I and grateful for the fact that I had the chance to go to two completely different types of jobs that day, it really showed me two differences someone can take in their future plans and it was very interesting to see.