Work We Do: Stephanie Gross, Peconic Landing

My name is Stephanie Gross. I am the dining room supervisor at Peconic Landing. 

I have worked here for 12 1/2 years. I started out as a server here and eventually learned how to become a hostess and then learned to train our incoming servers.

A normal day as dining room supervisor, I usually come in, I get ready for our daily menus.

During lunch and dinner, during our busier serving hours, I’m always out in the dining rooms trying to check in with our residents and our servers to make sure that they’re enjoying their time here.

We have five dining rooms here, not including the bistro. There’s a good amount of prep work that goes into getting the day started. It is very similar to a regular restaurant setup. I fill dressings, fill creamers and warming up rolls. With the five dining rooms, probably on a normal dinner service, we serve average 135 residents and probably 40 or so in the bistro. I currently have 29 front-of-the-house staff.

My favorite part of working here at Peconic Landing is working closely with the residents.

We have the advantage where we get to serve them every day and so we really develop a close relationship with them and get to know them for who they are. I always love meeting and learning about the new residents who come in. I love hearing what they’ve accomplished in their lives. It gives me so much respect for what they have done and can really motivate me to do the best that I can do.

We sometimes have to sort of valet walkers and scooters to keep them out of the way for safety purposes, which can sometimes be a challenge. But it’s the little extra steps we make sure to take to keep them safe.

It’s definitely a family environment and that’s, I think, what makes it so easy to work here and to work with our members. We get to work with them so often, we really have a great rapport within each other. We’re always smiling and laughing.

It’s really not a job to try and make each other smile. It’s just automatic.

“The Work We Do” is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos every Monday on Instagram @thesuffolktimes.