Details
Office Administrator, Metz & Associates, The J.M. Smucker Company
Orrville, OH
Age: 22
Education: Certificate in electronics and computer technology from The Wayne County Schools Career Center, Smithville, Ohio
Years at organization: 3
Why Selected?
Cavin Sullivan, general manager for Metz & Associates at The J.M. Smucker Co., says: I hired Tyler in March 2008 as a dishwasher. I interviewed him as a favor to his mom. It didn’t take long for me to realize that we could depend on Tyler in the dishroom, so we slowly started giving him more responsibility. As our business grew, I noticed Tyler had excellent computer skills and was into electronics. I promoted him to the office where he was taught to make daily signage and some of our register programming. Tyler is now in charge of all our signage, accounts payable, payroll, credit card transactions and does daily cash deposits.
Tyler has grasped everything that we’ve thrown at him and is well on his way to a promising future in foodservice. We will gradually get him more and more exposed to the food side of it.
Get to know
When I was asked to help open another account. The account had just started, so I made all their signs for them, got them organized and set up their orders. They were starting from scratch so I helped with everything. It was great because out of all the people here, Cavin suggested me to go.
Q. What would you say you excel at over more seasoned colleagues?I’d say it’s easier for me to pick up on technology and computers.
Q. What's the best career advice you've been given?Probably just to be myself and do what’s best for my future. A couple of weeks ago my hair was kind of long and my boss asked me to cut it. I did it, not that I wanted to, but I did for my job.
Q. What's been the biggest challenge you've had to overcome?Earning my fellow coworkers’ respect since I am so young. That’s still a challenge, actually.
Q. What would you like to accomplish in your career in the next two years?I’d like to get more involved in the culinary aspect of the job. I went from being a dishwasher to working in the office, so I don’t really have any culinary experience. I’d like to help out at each station and get a feel for everything.
Q. What's been your funniest on-the-job disaster?When we worked in an older building we used to get soda deliveries on skids. We would have to take them to this other building and put them downstairs. One time I had a pretty big skid of soda and I was trying to get it off the elevator when it got stuck and all the soda came off the skids. That was a pretty big mess to clean up.