What makes Saga employees smile?
By Chloe Ross Collegian Freelancer
When it comes to the dining experiences of Hillsdale College, the slogan of the town holds true for both employees and patrons: “It’s the people.”
A strong culture focused on community and the attitude of the students makes the Knorr Family Dining Hall a enjoyable place to work.
Kelly Syllaba, a cashier who works during breakfast and lunch, said she has worked part time in Saga since 2019 and went full time in 2021. She said her experience working at Saga is more positive than her previous jobs in customer service.
“I’ve worked in a lot of places where you get a lot of angry customers,” Syllaba said. “And here, mostly, it’s very positive. I love seeing the smiles of the students and staff here. It’s just a much more positive work environment, and that makes coming here a lot nicer.”
Syllaba said coming to work is a joy because she loves seeing the students all day.
“It brings tears to my eyes how nice everyone is,” she said. “Everyone says, ‘How come you’re so positive?’ It’s because I just get these smiles back. It’s the love I feel for you guys, and that really makes my day.”
Syllaba said when things become slow in the dining hall, she usually cleans her station or tries to hop in the
food service line to help out.
“I love how busy it is here and how busy it keeps me most of the time,” she said. “When it’s slow, I don’t like that very much because I get a little bored.”
Syllaba said her favorite part of her job is the encouragement and positivity from both the student body and her colleagues. She said on days when she’s been noticeably upset, several people have
Danielle Sparks, a foodservice worker, works at the Pure + Simple station that was added at the beginning of this year. She said she appreciates how open and friendly the students are when getting their food.
“They tell me when they’re having a bad day, they tell me when they’re having a good day, things that are going on in their life, like big football games or volleyball games,”
“It brings tears to my eyes how nice everyone is. Everyone says, ‘How come you’re so positive?’ It’s because I just get these smiles back. It’s the love I feel for you guys, and that really makes my day.”
stopped to ask about her day or how they can pray for her.
“I feel very blessed to work here. I usually try to keep a smile on my face, a happy face. But, of course, there’s days where things go badly or I feel a little discouraged, and I’ve always felt lifted up by the students and staff here,” Syllaba said. “I love the faithfulness of the students and the staff here, and how they’re not ashamed to stand and pray with me up here in public.”
Syllaba isn’t the only one to have a positive outlook concerning the dining hall work culture.
Sparks said.
When asked what tips or tricks she had picked up working in food service, Sparks said that the thing that makes her life easier is being outgoing and willing to learn.
Sparks said she recognizes certain students and their orders and that the students make an effort to cheer her up on days when work or her personal life are not going well.
“One of the days I didn’t have a good day, and one of the students said, ‘It’s OK, smile. You’re always smiling, and you always make me
smile. So I’m trying to make you smile,’” Sparks said. This affirming relationship between the students and the staff is found in every area of the dining hall.
For Donna Thorton, a housekeeper who has fulfilled multiple roles in Saga over the course of five years, there’s nothing she would change about her job. Thorton maintains the dining room area, making sure that the eating areas are clean. She said she especially appreciates the kindness of the students she talks to and has become friends with some of them.
“I have a friend, Noah, and he really makes me feel special. He tells me what a great job I do. His comments make me enjoy it,” Thorton said. “It’s really nice. Because sometimes when you get a little bit older, you’re kind of nervous being around younger kids. But they are so friendly.”
Syllaba emphasized how much of a difference the community of Hillsdale College truly makes on her work day.
“The smiling faces of the students, the staff here — they are all such wonderful people,” Syllaba said. “It really gives me a lot of hope for our country with everyone that’s going to school here with how nice they are.”
Compiled by Christina Lewis Assistant Editor
In this Quick Hits, Associate Professor of German Stephen Naumann talks about dreaming in German, being a baseball player, and traveling.
What first drew you to the German language, and what keeps you passionate about teaching it?
In my family, we grew up with German heritage. My parents didn’t speak it at home, but they both knew the language a little bit. It was just something that surrounded us — songs, prayers, recipes, things hanging on the wall, things like that.
How many languages do you know?
Naumann
tales have to do with a journey, and it’s just really part of the German consciousness.
What are your hobbies?
I love to travel. That’s very German. My wife and I love to travel any chance we get. I love sports — playing and watching them. We have a two-year-old son — almost two next weekend — so we just love spending time with him, reading to him, and playing with him.
Do you have a favorite German word that doesn’t translate well into English?
Campus Chara C ter Mercy Franzonello Quick Hits with Stephen
Compiled by Elijah Guevara Assistant Editor
Mercy Franzonello is a junior history major and dance minor from Chelsea, Michigan. She works at Mossey Library, is a member of the Tower Dancers, and is co-head resident assistant in McIntyre Residence.
What’s the best dorm besides McIntyre?
I’m probably Simpson’s biggest fan. I think that all of the dorms are great, and they’re all good for the different people that live in them, but Simpson has a unique and fun culture that drives the rest of campus culture. In McIntyre, we try to live up to Simpson culture, so really, it’s a driving force for us.
After a busy day of work and classes, what’s your favorite way to unwind?
My roommate and I have recently been reading bedtime stories. We go to the children’s section of the library and pick out the randomest books — sometimes they’re really weird. One of the ones we read recently sounded like it was put through Google Translate and made no sense at all.
What’s a good piece of advice you received from someone at Hillsdale?
Director of Academic Services
Christy Maier once said that homework will expand to fill whatever time you give it and shrink to fill whatever time you give it. And I think that’s so true, because somehow everything always does get done, even if you have a limited amount of time. So sometimes it’s always better not to give yourself all day to do something that you probably could squeeze into less time.
What advice do you have for freshmen?
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Sometimes it’s good to take yourself seriously. But if you come to Hillsdale, you’re probably a driven person and want to do well academically, and that’s really good. But sometimes it’s also good to take a step back and have fun.
What do you love about the history major?
We have the best professors ever. You can’t take a bad history class. The profes sors just know ev erything about the sub ject that they teach, so regardless of what class you’re taking, you’re gonna get expert knowledge on it.
The best thing is that Michigan is the best state, but also the Great Lakes. My family loves to go to Lake Michigan in the late summer, because then the water is warm and there are fewer people if you go at the very end of August when people are going back to school. It’s peaceful and the water’s warm, which is so amazing. Ironically, the worst part of living in Michigan is all the rain — which is probably also because of the lakes.
What’s your comfort film?
The four-part “Little Women” BBC series. I tend to like a lot of BBC film series because they’re longer, and that lets them stick closer to the book. If you have more time, you just get more details from the story.
What’s your favorite hobby?
I love to dance ballet. Here, I’m a part of Tower Dancers, so I take dance classes and also perform. It’s been a lifelong journey — I’ve been dancing since I was 4 and danced pretty professionally in high school, and then started with Tower Dancers as soon as I got here.
What’s the best and worst thing about living in Michigan?
If you could fluently speak any foreign language, which would it be?
Italian. I’m Italian, so I feel like I should know how to speak it. I don’t at all, but I think that’d be pretty cool. I would love to go to Italy someday and be able to speak it.
What’s a favorite childhood memory?
Getting lost in the woods with my goats. My best friend grow-
ing up who goes here, junior Evelyn Shurtliff, would come over to my house, and we would put my goats on leashes and walk around in my woods and would keep going until we felt like we got lost. The thing is, we never got lost — I live on five acres, which isn’t that far. But we’d scare ourselves into actually thinking we were lost and letting the goats guide us back home, which was fun.
Do you have a favorite musical?
“The Sound of Music.” I really like the music. Growing up, I would always watch it with my mom on Dec. 21. I don’t know how it ended up being that date specifically, but I know for sure that it’s that day because one of my brothers was born on Dec. 22 and so one year, we didn’t get to watch it together, because she was in the hospital. So I watched it at home while she watched it in the hospital while she was in labor.
What’s your favorite thing about being co-head RA of McIntyre?
I love being an RA because you get to know the freshmen as friends. I think that a lot of juniors don’t, especially women, because it’s harder to get to know the freshmen when you’re not living in the same dorm as them. I’ve already become friends with some of the freshmen in ways that I just don’t think I would have, at least not as quickly, if I was living in an upperclassmen dorm. I also just love this year’s RA team. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but they’re amazing. We just all get along so well, and we’re all close friends.
English, German, and Polish I know well, and a little bit of Spanish. In college, I studied Biblical Greek and Hebrew and classical Greek and some Latin too. My Greek, I have hung on to — I keep that polished every day — but I’m not as sharp with my Latin and Hebrew anymore.
What is one misconception a lot of people have of Germany or the German language?
Sometimes German gets this sort of cartoon reputation as being very guttural and harsh. I think a lot of that has to do with American cinema, in part, but really it’s a beautiful language and very conducive to poetry. If you read some German poetry, I think it won’t take long before you do away with that preconception.
What did you want to be when you were a little kid?
A baseball player. I got to play baseball in college and a little bit after college in the summer league.
If you weren’t teaching, what’s a career you would like to try?
I would be a writer. I think that’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing and never did full-time. I would love the chance to embrace that — to write fiction or creative nonfiction.
What’s one thing about German culture that you wish more people understood?
I think the Germans are the world champions of travel. The Germans are the people who spend, per capita, the most days outside of their country in the world. They absolutely love to travel. Not just internationally, but the Germans have this healthy balance of being out in nature, in the outdoors, traveling, exploring new places, and then coming home and enjoying where they live and where they’re from. You see that in literature, you see that in fairy tales. So many fairy
My absolute favorite is the word Fernweh. There’s this word Heimweh, which means a pining for home, like homesickness, and that concept we have in English. Fernweh is a pining for being far away. It’s really your heart tugging because you need to be somewhere else, you need to explore. Part of exploring, part of traveling, is you really appreciate some of the things that you have at home — your own culture, your own language, all those things about yourself and where you’re from. I think you don’t gain that appreciation if you don’t go abroad. So Fernweh is absolutely my favorite word. I love its meaning, and I love how you can’t say it in English without using a whole sentence.
Do you ever dream in German?
Yes, I do. I tell students, that’s a big moment, especially our students who go abroad. I say, ‘Hey, sometime this summer, there’s a good chance you’ll wake up and you’ll have a dream and realize you were just dreaming in German.’ You can kind of jump up and get really excited. That’s a cool thing. That means it’s becoming second nature to you. What advice would you give to a student who is intimidated by learning a new language?
I would invite them into my office, and we could sit down and have a cup of tea and talk through it. I would tell them that learning a language is a humbling and humiliating experience, but it is also so rewarding, and you have to learn through mistakes. No one expects you to be competent when you start.
What is the best piece of advice you would give students graduating from college?
Keep your eyes open for an opportunity that you don’t expect. You might think you have all these things planned out in terms of a career path, life, and some of the best things will come. There’ll be blessings that come to you, opportunities that come to you that you would never have thought of, so be open to those.
Junior Mercy Franzonello enjoys reading bedtime stories. Courtesy | Mercy Franzonello
One-year-old Naumann in Hemlock, Michigan. Courtesy | Stephen Naumann
