With the continued semester of online classes, students from the college are hardly visiting campus. Buildings like the Classroom Laboratory Building (CLB) that used to be filled with people daily are now empty. Due to the low flow of students in the halls during this past Fall semester two of the three coffee shops had to close, and food court hours of service were reduced. Leaving part-time workers unemployed and other workers with fewer hours a week.
“I used to work at one of the coffee shops at school called Encore,” Shai Phillips, former college employee and student, said. “I was a part time worker and every week I worked from twelve to fifteen hours. I was not fired completely from the college. I was just not given hours to work this semester. They said that whenever the regular flow was regained in a way I could come back to work. However, I can’t not wait for several months for the other semester to start and maybe get my hours back, so I decided to leave this job behind and try to find a new one because I still have bills to pay.”
The college used to have two more coffee shops open in the Midwest Trust Center and the CLB, the third and only coffeeshop that is still open is located in the Student Center. Cafe Tempo, a restaurant located in the Regnier Center, has been shut down as well. The food court closed two of their popular options, Firehouse Subs and Sushi Gusto. While Chick-Fil-A, Pizza Hut and the buffet are still open. Hours of service have changed as well. Originally the food court was open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. but they are only available from 8a.m. to 3p.m..
“We tried our hardest efforts to let everything stay open with a regular schedule during the Fall semester, results were not as expected and students were vaguely in the halls, so our sales went down drastically,” Jason Arnett, Manager Food Court and Coffee Bar Operations at the college said. “By closing down several of our shops the part time personnel we had working with us had a drastic cut down in hours or not hours at all and our part time regular employees are vaguely accomplishing their 20 hours a week. We hope next semester students have a bigger presence in campus so that we can reopen all of our closed shops.”
The food court and coffee shops were not the only places that had to cut down their staff. The college restaurant Café Tempo, a place that was known for its unique recipes and mind-blowing flavor closed its doors for almost a year now and their staff was either relocated or let go.
“From approximately 30 people working in our staff, we went down to five,” Andrew woody, manager of Cafe Tempo and Catering said. “Since the Fall semester, our relocated staff has been working at the Cav-Express delivery and food services. Sadly, we do not need as many people working, but whenever things pick back up people that used to work for us are the first ones who I will call.”
For the remainder of the Spring semester, every shop that closed is going to stay out of service and the food court will not reopen their closed restaurants. The job losses that occurred over this past year left and even bigger gap in the college hallways.
By Mariana Figueroa