Many of the positions I’ve previously held offered at least a shred of predictability, but not my current one. That’s why I decided I would share a week in the life instead of the more typical day in the life.

Although my days are unpredictable, I have managed to reign in some of the chaos. If I take the time to lay out my main goals for the day and make a to-do list, the day goes much smoother. Between the time I get to work and the time I leave, I am faced with what seems like 100 decisions and (perceived) crises. If I don’t have a layout for the day I will spend all my hours putting out fires.

A to-do list doesn’t get rid of all the unknowns, but it does help me come back to my high priority items instead of just reacting to situations all day.

A week in the life of a food service dietitian:

Sunday, January 20th.

Normally I have the weekends off, but this time I was a diet aide for 8 hours. Between vacations and sick employees, our coverage options ran out, so I ran in. It was a busy, chaotic day spent doing dishes, collecting menus, prepping cafeteria food for the week, and delivering meals. As much as I don’t like work encroaching on my days off, I was glad to get more comfortable with the roles of our weekend diet aides. I also managed to clean up my office a bit, which helps keep me sane.

Monday, January 21st.

This time it was a dishwasher we were missing, so we all tag teamed it and did without a dishwasher. Between myself and the clinical RD (who was filling in for a diet aide) we got most of it taken care of, and everyone else pitched in where they could.

I also had an evening catering on Monday. I needed some ingredients from the store, but I had to wait until after work because I didn’t have a car with me. A story for another time. After getting the car in working order I did my shopping and headed back to work for another hour to take care of the catering.

Tuesday, January 22nd.

Tuesday is the day our freight truck comes in, so I am busy for a good 2-4 hours checking in freight and putting it away. I don’t have someone on the schedule to help me with freight right now, but the dishwasher (thank goodness we had one Tuesday) helped me all he could.

Tuesday was also the day of our monthly director meeting, which takes a big bite out of the morning. Depending on what else I have going on in the day, I usually really enjoy the meeting. It’s a great chance to catch up with other departments and refocus on the bigger picture of the hospital. Of course some days I have so much going on that it takes everything I have not to squirm through the whole meeting. This was one of those days.

Wednesday, January 23rd.

I was also asked to help decorate a table for a banquet the following weekend, so on Wednesday I got busy assembling the centerpiece. It turned out lovely.

We are in the process of implementing room service (which is majorly stressing me out), so on Wednesday I had a meeting with our Clinical RD and someone from the room service software company.

I also finally took down my Christmas decorations!

Thursday, January 24th.

Since I worked on Sunday, I made Thursday a short day. My primary goal was just to go through inventory and order food for the next week.

Friday, January 25th.

Friday was a day to wrap up loose ends and also (thankfully) get home a bit early. I added some items to the food order, put together gift bags for the banquet, and helped out in the dish room.

We have a guy that comes out and services our soda machine twice each week, and this time he managed to cut himself on the machine pretty badly. So I added incident report to my list. Thankfully it was nothing a bandage couldn’t fix.

I was planning to end my Friday at about 11:00 AM, but then I was invited to attend an auxiliary potluck with some other leaders. We had a really good time chatting with the ladies hosting the potluck.

I love that my job offers so much variety. Part of what I get to do involves catering events, planning parties, and ordering decorations for banquets. These things feed my soul, and really make me feel like I am in the right job.

Of course I have the less-favorite parts of my job, but I try not to focus on those things. Every job comes with unfavorable components; I am lucky that I have a job that comes with really good parts too.

Food service directors and RDs, I would LOVE to hear about your week in the life!