Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Work: Part II

I am yet to meet the person who would rather talk about their job rather than their vacation. With ten weeks at my disposal, and in the shadow of the amazing things I’m experience here in Chicago, I did want to take some time to reassure everyone that, yes, I am working as well.

PepsiCo continues to fulfill the glowing compliments I gave to it a few entries back, especially as I observe some of the details in certain situations. The recent flooding in Iowa has left extensive damage across the state, not excluding the city of Cedar Rapids and the Quaker plant therein. Several of my supervisors have been asked to turn the scope of their attention to the Cedar Rapids Plant and those Quaker employees that have been affected. The internal communications for the Cedar Rapids plant was turned over to my supervisors – a challenging task, no doubt, undertaken by people clearly fitted to handle such a situation.

Thus, my responsibilities have changed slightly. I am now writing many more articles for the three internal newsletters: Pep-line Corporate, Pep-line QTG and Chicago Communicator. Additionally, I am sitting in on, and contributing to, the PR meetings for the opening of PepsiCo Chicago’s Sustainability Center. The PepsiCo Chicago Plaza is in the process of constructing a Sustainability Center in its western wing. The center will be a self-sustaining first for corporate buildings, showcasing the sustainability efforts made by PepsiCo and offering ideas and suggestions to the Chicago community and other corporations as well. It will open later in the summer, well after I have left Chicago, but I’m enjoying making contributions to these meetings. My role in these meetings is to, first and foremost, be the secretary and take notes on everything that is said or suggested, and from what I’ve seen, you’d be very impressed with this Sustainability Center.

Sustainability Center aside, one of my more interesting responsibilities so far was to compile and construct the binders used by the top communications and management leaders to use when they visited the damage to the Cedar Rapids Plant. Though I did not write any of the information (that’ll come after taking a few more PR classes), simply compiling and glancing over the information was fascinating. Every loose end was tied down, every problem was ready to be handled and all of the right people were listed. It was a little intimidating to think that one day in the near future it will be my responsibility to make sure that everything possible is covered in a one-inch binder. Simply compiling it was menial maybe, but I really felt as though I was part of the team handling that disaster situation.

As you can see, it’s not all free grits and orange juice. I am being put to work, and I am enjoying that work. These were just a few things that I am involved with right now, and as more comes along I will certainly let you know, especially the United Way Facility Campaign Toolkits (I’ll explain more later). The compliments I receive on my writing style, and the thoroughness of it, only motivate me to keep it up. The work here is certainly work, but I enjoy it.

Oh, and I wanted to share this with you. It making the rounds on the internet and is a big success for Gatorade’s marketing team, so mad props to them.

2 comments:

Amy said...

It looks like everything is going well for you in Chi-Town! Good luck and keep us posted on all the happenings.

Brandon said...

Hi, I am trying to reach someone at the PepsiCo Sustainability Center in hopes of getting some questions answered regarding the new windmills and solar panels that they recently installed. I noticed in your entry that you did some PR work for them, do you think you could possbily help me out or if not point me in the right direction of someone who would be able to answer my questions?

I would greatly appreciate it.

Brandon Thompson
brandonfsu@hotmail.com
(954) 495-3451