Reach Out And Eat Something

You have reached Harvard University's Dial-a-Menu. Today is Friday, September 24. For lunch: cream of celery soup, Italian sausage sub, sub sandwich bar, shrimp fried rice, fruit salad, salad bar, and brownies. For dinner: sirloin steak, baked ziti, O'Brien potatoes, zucchini rings, long French carrots, salad bar, and ice cream. Bon Appetit.

Although this answering machine does not give you time to leave a message, it certainly provides food for thought. It is the daily greeting to students from Harvard's Dining Hall Services, the recital of that day's menu.

And somehow, the two people who switch off the duty of recording the message always manage to make the menu--whether it be Pupu Platter or Chickwichs--sound exciting.

John Shaffer and Maria Gomes, however, are no actors but employees of Harvard's Dining Services and their lines leave little for imagination.

The hotline, which began operating in June and can be reached at 495-5700, provides callers with 30 seconds of facts about the food and requests that callers "have a wonderful day" in oddly sincere tones.

Shaffer, who makes the recordings from Wednesday through Saturday, is the meat and potatoes of the hotline. However, Shaffer, a food service supervisor at the Freshman Union, refuses to take credit for the idea.

"The hotline was suggested years before I came [to the Union] by my manager," Shaffer says. He adds that there was no need for the hotline at that time because not many students called the Union to find out about the day's menu.

But in the past few years, Shaffer says, calls have increased dramatically, typing up food service employees at their busiest time. So, Shaffer says he submitted a proposal for the hotline to his superiors, who agreed that the dial-a-menu's day had finally come.

Shaffer speculates that students have become more interested in knowing the menu before arriving at the dining hall because they "are lazier today." He adds, "If they are studying in the library, they want to know whether it is worth it to leave the books."

But Shaffer says it is not just laziness that created the demand for the hotline. Freshman proctors are partly to blame.

"In the past, proctors were more interested in supplying information to freshman. They used to post menus," Shaffer says. "That's not happening now."

Regardless of what prompted the creation of the hotline, Shaffer says, it has been a big success, and he estimates that the line is "heavily used."

When the hotline was first started, in the summer, it was not frequently used because "the majority of students at the freshman dining hall in summer were English as a Second Language students," Shaffer says. Now, however, the line is often busy, he adds, and plans are already being drawn to add a second telephone line.

Even though 30 seconds may seem too short a time to describe the menu in depth, Shaffer says he does not plan to lengthen the recordings.

"Long messages would encourage us to put a lot of garbage on [the machine]," Shaffer says. Garbage, in Shaffer's book, includes messages such as "no interhouse" or "special menu," and, he says, "before you know it people will forget why they called."

Shaffer has worked at Harvard for 14 years and at the Union for the past four. Before coming to Cambridge, he worked in the Navy and as a cook at Brandeis. His current duties as supervisor--besides, of course, his daily studio recording--include ordering food and equipment and scheduling.

When Shaffer is not around to make the dial-a-menu recording, Gomes, who is also a Union supervisor, takes his place. The Portugese native came to Harvard seven years ago after working in Boston's clothing industry. The need for a more comprehensive health insurance plan forced Gomes to look for a new job.

"Harvard offered better coverage," she says. "And it was very close to my home." Gomes worked at the Business School first, and then moved to Adams House and finally to the Union.

She says she likes her job because "it's very exciting. I get to meet a lot of different people." Working at the Union makes Gomes "feel good that I can be of help [to others] with little things." Which is really what Dial-a-Menu is all about.

Gomes says she was wary when Shaffer asked her to make a recording for the first time because she is not a native speaker of English. "You'll notice my English is terrible," says Gomes, who speaks perfectly good English.

Her nerves were so bad, she recalls that "the first day was a wreck. I had to [say so much] in 30 seconds, it was a nightmare."

But Gomes was not going to let a little embarrassment get in the way of her duties. She says she has overcome her initial fear of recording. "It's part of my job," she says, adding, "I'm glad to do it."

Gomes, who has lived in the United States for the last 21 years, hopes to improve her recordings by bettering her English. Working with students has "helped improve my vocabulary," she says.