Archive for Jason Kirby
University of Victoria – Village Greens and Carboro South
Hits the spot with great prices and enough choices to keep even the most finicky rabbit happy
It’s somewhat fitting that en route to Village Greens, the all-vegetarian cafeteria at the University of Victoria, one must navigate herds of plump bunnies. While the resident rabbits mow down on the campus’s lush lawn outside, the rabbit food being served inside the student residence building is a pleasing introduction to the fare on offer at the school.
The featured item this day is a spicy red Thai stir-fry, and it doesn’t disappoint. A nice variety of fresh vegetables are cooked up and presented on a bed of noodles. The sauce is full of flavour, even if the ramen-style noodles are uninspired. One can chose a protein of either tofu, soy beef or prawns. (A word of warning to carnivores: the one-inch cubes of brown tofu can be intimidating.) At $3.50 (plus $2 for protein) this is one of the best values available.
Upstairs, the Cadboro South Dining Hall is the main food option for most UVic students. Those with a taste for the exotic will be disappointed: pasta is the chef’s favourite ingredient (with alfredo sauce, tomato sauce, or for added zing, linguine with prawns). The only Asian dish on offer, prepackaged sushi wrapped in plastic, should be avoided. But there are some cafeteria staples that come out ahead. The majestically named Baron of Beef sandwich from the grill should satisfy any hungry meat eater, especially when dipped in the accompanying jus. The featured item is chicken Parmesan; the side of veggies was well-prepared, and the breaded chicken got it right with a blend of crispiness and tenderness. Tons of cheese and sauce made this a standout.
The dining hall does offer pre-made sandwiches wrapped in plastic that are both dry and, at $3.50, overpriced. For an extra dollar, go to the Caps deli for a delicious, freshly made sandwich that would make Dagwood Bumstead drool.
Despite some rough spots, UVic’s residence eateries hit the spot with great prices and enough choices to keep even the most finicky rabbit happy.
Evil at work: Bad bosses
They’re not just incompetent, they really hate you
They holler, throw things, scheme, connive, lie, cheat and generally make life miserable for untold millions of workers. They’re bad bosses. And by some estimates, half of all managers fall into that category. But what exactly is it that makes this scourge of the workplace so harmful? As it turns out, it’s in their nature.
For five years, Marilyn Haight, a business consultant in Arizona, studied scores of companies to see what makes lousy bosses tick. She found that truly bad bosses are not just incompetent — they purposefully set out to harm employees. With that in mind, she classified the men and women she studied into bad-boss “types” so employees would know what to look for, and realize who they’re dealing with. Using some of the classifications from Haight’s book, Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Boss?, we took a look at what makes both fictional and real-life managers so awful.
Also online:
• How backstabbers, evil bosses and dumb rules taught our top firms what not to do
• Diversity or death: Some firms are slowly realizing they’ll need minorities to survive
The Bully. When most people think of bad bosses, this is what comes to mind, says Haight. They’re loud, insulting, and frequently threatening. There’s no shortage of candidates who qualify as bullies, but one stands out: Albert “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap became famous for axing tens of thousands of jobs as a corporate downsizer in the 1990s. He ruled by instilling fear in underlings, until he himself got the axe from appliance maker Sunbeam. When asked once if successful managers could be friendly, he reportedly replied, “You want a friend? Buy a dog.”
The Pilferer. Pilferer bosses, as the name implies, funnel company assets into their own pockets, and convince employees to turn a blind eye to their schemes. Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco, is a typical example. At one time, he was best-known for his $6,000 shower curtains and a life-sized ice statue of Michelangelo’s David that dispensed vodka at one of his parties. Now he’s serving an eight-year sentence for stealing millions from his own company. He reportedly got away with it for so long because he spread the bounty around to others in the executive suite through million-dollar “relocation perks” and “special bonuses.”
The Suppressor. Haight says this is the most common type of bad boss. “They constantly put down the achievements of other people and don’t want others to look better than them,” she says. These bosses are often ruthless, like Miranda Priestly, the magazine editor who terrorized her employees in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada (the character was ostensibly based on real-life Vogue editor Anna Wintour). Suppressor bosses demand reverence and subservience, says Haight, and working for one often makes you feel invisible.
The Pretender. Michael Scott, the boss played by Steve Carell on the popular TV show The Office, is clearly in over his head. In a recent episode, for example, he held a meeting with his employees to introduce a new office diet plan. He came in the room dressed in a “sumo suit” and proceeded to put up pictures of Jabba the Hutt in an effort to demonstrate the perils of overeating. But to be a truly bad boss, a pretender must also be evil. On that front, there’s no finer example than the Pointy Haired Boss from the Dilbert comic strip. Completely clueless, yet up to speed on the latest useless corporate buzzwords, he’s every employee’s worst nightmare. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes him, “He wasn’t born mean and unscrupulous, he worked hard at it.” It’s always a mystery how such bosses climb to their exalted posts, but Haight has a theory. “The more tenure you get, the less you keep your skills up, the less employable you are elsewhere, the more likely you are to be lord to the dark side,” she says.
Canada’s Top 100 Employers
SPECIAL REPORT: Where you should be dropping off your resume
It wasn’t long ago that tech companies were seen as the vanguards of what great employers should be. An ideal working environment circa 1999 was measured by the number of foosball tables on offer, while business attire consisted of jeans and T-shirts. Few appreciated the reality: techies dressed that way so they could easily flop out under the nearest foosball table after 16 hours at the keyboard.
These days, that won’t cut it. Take Next Level Games, a small but fast-growing Vancouver video game developer that appears for the first time on this year’s Top 100 Employers, as compiled by Mediacorp. In an industry famous for chewing through workers, Next Level tries to strike a balance between work and life, offering some of the most lucrative parental benefits around and attractive vacation time to start. This is what it takes to be considered among the best employers in Canada. And the bar is only getting higher.
Thanks to the tight labour market, quality workers are now asking not what they can do for their bosses, but what their bosses can do for them. Hundreds of employers are answering the call, as this year’s list attests. But what it also reveals is just how fast and dramatically the modern workplace is changing.
Over the past year, Richard Yerema and his team at Mediacorp pored over thousands of pages of material from more than 1,800 organizations to identify the very best. This is perhaps the most in-depth analysis of human resources trends in Canada’s public and private sectors available anywhere. It’s not a ranking, but a compendium that aims to shed light on what the best employers are doing to retain talent. Mediacorp will publish its full report of the Top 100 employers in book form this coming spring.
Since Maclean’s first partnered on the project seven years ago, remarkable trends have begun to emerge in the benefits employers offer. True, a competitive paycheque remains paramount. But Mediacorp’s analysis shows it takes creativity, more than big budgets, to be the best. “There are smaller employers you might never have heard of who are trying things and realizing that they can offer industry leading benefits,” says Yerema. “You don’t have to be big to be good.”
Some of the biggest changes have been in the benefits offered to new parents. In 2000, when Ottawa doubled maternity leave to a full year, only a handful of companies topped up payments to help out families. Now the majority of employers on the Top 100 kick in, with some covering as much as 95 per cent of an employee’s benefits while on maternity leave. It’s not just moms getting a better deal either. Today half of all employers on the list top up payments to fathers, double the figure just two years ago. Helping matters is a sea change in the way employers view the virtual workplace. Many leading organizations now accommodate staff who wish to work from home by tapping into the boom in telecommunications. Fully 82 per cent of employers on the list let people do some work from home, up from 65 per cent in 2004.
Capilano University – North Shore Campus Cafeteria
The building, heavy on exposed concrete, has all the charm of a hospital cafeteria with food to match
You might think the dining area at Capilano College’s main campus, nestled in the forested hills of North Vancouver, would offer a feast of first-class views. But while towering windows let in plenty of light, the scenery outside is pure parking lot. The building, heavy on exposed concrete, has all the charm of a hospital cafeteria, with food to match. There’s no mistaking what you’re here for: to stuff your face and get out as quickly as possible.
At peak feeding times, you’ll need sturdy elbows to fight your way through the crowded serving area. That is, except for the salad bar, which was suspiciously wide open. We loaded up, but were soon disappointed. The lettuce was wilted, while the pickled beetroot was barely pickled. Drenched in vinaigrette, it was passable.
Not so the vegetarian pizza. Frankly, anytime toppings include zucchini, artichoke hearts and brittle spinach leaves you’re asking for trouble, but this slice was particularly unpleasant and was quickly discarded.
The Cap College chefs must have got a big order of spinach in, because there were long strands of it in the meat lasagna. It was hard to tell where the pasta ended and the cheese began, but the portion was large and accompanied by garlic bread.
Another featured entree was perogies and sausage. At least that’s how it was billed. The kielbasa turned out to be a grilled hot dog, while the perogies had developed a hard outer shell in the deep fryer. In a food fight, these puppies would be lethal.
Equally sturdy was the football-sized Italian panini. Lots of bread, lots of meat, lots of vegetables and tomato sauce. Pound for dollar, a good deal.
The stir fry, which incidentally drew the longest line of hungry students, was by far the best dish on offer, with a full selection of u-pick veggies, meat, sauces and noodles or rice. We sampled the Thai chili with chicken, which was quite spicy. The noodles were rubbery, but the flavour overcame the texture.
Conclusion: starving students on a budget can stuff themselves if they pick the right dishes. Look for the longest line.
University of British Columbia – Place Vanier Dining Hall
The recently renovated Vanier feels more like a restaurant at a ski lodge than a greasy slop house
“Has it been a while since you’ve tried residence dining?” asks the website for the University of British Columbia. Don’t be scared off by bad memories, it implores, “residence dining has come a long way.” It’s never good to make a promise you can’t keep, but astonishingly, the dining hall in the Place Vanier residence delivers.
Right from the moment you walk into the spacious food service area, the recently renovated Vanier’s feels more like a restaurant at a ski lodge (complete with a cozy stone fireplace) than a greasy slop house exploiting captive first-years. There’s plenty on offer, from Asian and fusion to a grill and sandwich bar, and the prices are reasonable.
To see whether the food lived up to the decor, we started with an entree of meatballs in tomato sauce and cheese with a side of steamed vegetables, a dish that could easily have gone oh so wrong. The cheese was stringy and hot, the meatballs and sauce packed with flavour. Likewise, an order of chicken balls with spicy Thai sauce kept you wanting more.
Another nice touch was the pizza. We tried a vegetarian Hawaiian served on a thick, whole wheat crust—great for filling the gut when the meal plan money is running low. Possibly the most memorable dish was also the simplest to make. A good old ham and cheese grilled sandwich that was done to perfection, with slabs of real cheddar. There are breakfast joints in Vancouver that could take a cue from this place.
There were disappointments, though. The pasta bar offered a spaghetti dish with roasted vegetables and chicken that looked as good as anything mom would make. While there was plenty of chicken served up, though, the pasta itself was too oily. An apple crumble dessert also failed to live up to its appearance, and was way too soggy.
But these were exceptions. Vanier’s lives up to its billing. This isn’t your father’s university dining hall.
Simon Fraser University – Residence Dining Hall
A banner reads “Welcome to Paradise.” The artist must be majoring in sarcasm
The first thing that catches your eye upon walking into the concrete and wood dining hall at Simon Fraser University is the banner, hung among others painted by students, that reads “Welcome to Paradise.” The artist must be majoring in sarcasm.
The dining hall is the closest cafeteria option for the 2,000 students living in SFU’s residences, and so it’s often the convenient, if not preferred, first choice for chow. The posted menu near the entrance seems to bear little resemblance to what’s actually on offer. No vegan pan-fried pot stickers, as promised—the guy behind the counter just shrugs when asked. So the only option is to muscle through the throng in the cramped serving area, where packed-in students uncomfortably bump trays while lining up, and see what else is available. It’s recommended to stroll, no, run, past the pizza, where a woman is chasing a slice of Hawaiian across a greasy heating tray. It was hard at the edges, with congealed pools of grease between the pineapple chunks.
The entree this evening was teriyaki chicken, served lukewarm, with a dollop of overly garlicy mash and steamed vegetables, which were admittedly decent. Alas, the chicken leg was left half uneaten after the discovery of a firm, but fatty substance.(Brain tissue? A tumour?). We ordered a baked potato that was several minutes shy of done. A zingy salsa helped us muddle through. Meanwhile, the alleged winter garden and beef soup would have made for a great French onion soup were it covered in cheese—it was salty enough, and there was no beef to speak of. We tried to wash it all down with a sparkling raspberry drink that claimed to be 100 per cent juice—tasty, if you like pure tonic water sprinkled with sugar and food colouring.
This being the West Coast, an order of the pre-packaged California roll sushi was in order. The expiry date, three days hence, should have been warning enough. Instead of the usual avocado, sweaty cucumber was used. There were no discernible grains of rice among the mush. Thoroughly unappetizing.
One highlight was the Black Forest ham wrap. The vegetables were fresh, and the Swiss cheese was a nice touch.
Across the board, food in the dining hall was too expensive for the quality on offer. The chicken dish was $8.54; a banana sells for 75 cents.
Overall, a disappointing experience.
