Late Night Pizza at South Quad is shutting down. Silver lining? It will not be gone forever.
“Due to labor shortages, we had six vacancies in the beginning of the school year between cooks and kitchen laborers,” said Christopher Coffey, who runs on-campus dining at Eastern.
Three of last year’s 23 cooks– roughly 13%– left Eastern while three of 10– 30%– kitchen laborers also moved on. A kitchen laborer is a person who moves crates of food and restocks.
With a turnover rate of that proportion, the dining department had to scramble over the summer. They had to find services to cut, else lunch and dinner wouldn’t be properly staffed, said Mark Hudson, executive director of the university’s housing and dining department.
Unfortunately for the student body, one of those cuts happened to be Late Night Pizza.
Coffey said the search for replacement workers has been underway since the end of last school year. Due to Eastern being a public university, hiring cooks or kitchen laborers is a longer process.
“These are called civil service positions, meaning it’s a state hiring process,” said Hudson. “We can’t just say, ‘Oh, you want to work here? Good, come on in.’”
New civil service workers, Hudson said, must apply, be evaluated as to their skill level and be interviewed before EIU makes an offer. After that, they must do a background check and a physical before officially being hired.
The university is currently in the hiring process for additional staff. They are at the background check and physical stage. Once those checks are completed, Late Night will re-open. According to Hudson, the background check is what makes predicting when Late Night Pizza will return difficult.
“If your name is Smith, it might take a long time,” said Hudson. “If your name is Ish-ka-bibel, it should come back pretty quick. The more unique the name is, the easier it is to do the check.”
The last background check housing and dining completed took a month. Before that, it took three days. Coffey said the human resources department at Eastern expects the background check for the Late Night cook to return in a week.
“These are positions of trust,” said Hudson. “They have keys, control inventory and serve food. We have to make sure they don’t cause problems and do our due diligence for sure.”
If all goes well, Late Night should be back open by Sept. 3. If someone quits or the dining department experiences a setback, the re-opening could be moved back. That being said, if the new cooks physical and background check comes in early, Late Night could be launched earlier.
“The bottom line is: No, no, no, no, no. [Late Night] is not going away,” said Hudson. “It’s just temporarily on hold until we get these positions filled. Believe me, it is the first thing that’s coming back.”
Aidan Cusack can be reached at 581-2812 or at atcusack@eiu.edu.
