Employee of the Year thrives at Pizza Ranch

What began as a part-time job at Pizza Ranch for Robert Terris has blossomed into so much more in just three years, earning him not only the smiles of regular customers but also the restaurant’s Employee of the Year award.

Terris began working with a job coach at Progress Industries in 2008, and after a year of one-on-one sessions covering everything from building a resume to the interview process, he landed a job at Pizza Ranch in Newton.

“I was with my job coach looking for jobs and I’d been putting in applications for a long time when she said, ‘Let’s go put an application in at Pizza Ranch,” Terris said.

“I got the application and filled it out, and they called the very next day,” he said. “They were very impressed with my interview and hired me on the spot.”

Terris worked in Pizza Ranch’s dishroom for nearly two years before making the jump to where he is now — in the dining room, interacting with customers.

“I just stuck to dishes for awhile but Rodney (Hollinger, Pizza Ranch’s general manager) came back to me and said, ‘I want to move you out of dishes,’” Terris said.

“Prior to that they’d have me bus and I was good at it,” he said. “Rodney thought I was awesome at it too, and planned to move me out of dishes up front in the next month.”

This promotion is something Terris’ employment consultant, Angie Wells, feels fits his personality well.

“Robert is very social, very polite, and very helpful,” she said. “Robert was very hesitant about going up front — he liked being back in the dishroom because he knows it well, and he was a little nervous about trying new things but he had been encouraged multiple times to move to the front.”

Terris soon discovered, as Wells had suspected, that working in the front of the house better suited him.

“Sometimes I’ll go in the back and see dishes, and I’m like, I’m glad I’m up front,” he said with a laugh. “Dishes are stressful sometimes, you gotta be quick back there.”

But Terris is great at doing just that — quick work with a friendly smile no matter where he’s working within the restaurant. It’s these qualities that, according to Hollinger, earned Terris the Employee of the Year Award last year.

“At the end of that year, we have the Christmas party and we take all the names and the managers do a little vote on it, who deserves to be Employee of the Year?” Hollinger said. “Robert went up and above this past year. He always comes in and helps, he’s always happy and he’s always got a smile on his face.”

In addition to earning him the annual award, Terris’ personality and dedication to customer service ultimately earned him the promotion to the front of the house at Pizza Ranch as well.

“Dishes are a waste of his time,” Hollinger said of Terris. “He does a great job with them, and we can throw him back there to help out anytime, but one of the things that I do here is that I try to move people if I feel they could do a good job elsewhere.”

“Robert had gotten some really nice comments in the dining room, like that guy is really nice, he’s really polite,” Hollinger said. “Anybody can do dishes, but not everybody can greet customers with a smile and take care of them — it takes a special kind of person to work front of the house.”

Luckily for Hollinger, Terris enjoys his position just as much as diners enjoy his customer service.

“I really like my job, there’s friendly people, everybody is awesome around here, and Rodney is one of the nicest guys,” Terris said.

This is perhaps because Hollinger can relate quite closely to many of the people P.I. helps to employ.

“I’m 100 percent dyslexic, and I’ve never let that stop me,” Hollinger said, adding that the employees he’s hired through P.I. have been some of the hardest workers he’s managed.

“I was teased all my life for getting things mixed up or using the wrong words, but I don’t let that stop me,” Hollinger said. “If I did, I wouldn’t have been a GM coming up on two years now.”

It’s this spirit of determination that Hollinger along with Terris hope to inspire in, not only those who have been placed at Pizza Ranch through Progress Industries, but every employee across the board.

Nicole Wiegand can be contacted at (641) 792-3121 ext. 422 or via email at nwiegand@newtondailynews.com.