"Depending upon the person, we work on special skills. Some are very, very disorganized. In fact, most of them are. So we work on techniques that will cause you to have your work done when you do arrive. Putting tickling reminders in your calendar, teaching yourself to check your calendar at least twice a day in the morning when you get up and in the afternoon before you go home, so that you can take with you things you need for tomorrow.

"When the student shows up he's got his knapsack, his schedule book is in it, his work that he's supposed to have done is done. If it's on disk, he has the disk with him, that sort of thing, and a pencil. At night after dinner, he (should) check his calendar. And he got reasonably good after four or five false starts at checking his calendar, and all of a sudden he starts showing up with stuff accomplished and books gotten out of the library, and floppy disks ready to go, stuck into the computer, that sort of thing. 'If you want to be successful, then you are going to have to start, you know, holding your end of this bargain up.' And occasionally we've had a conversation, which is my standard patented, 'This is a business we are running here and you are an employee, and if you had treated your boss down at the (fast food restaurant) this way, you'd be fired right now.'"

Mentor describes planning a work schedule with his intern. "We made a list of things of what needs to be done each day, the things that we had that were specific to certain days. We made a list of those and we kind of made a calendar. 'Ok, these are the things that need to be done on these specific days.'

"Then we would point out and we would decide which are the ones [the youth] is going to be responsible for. And then we sat down and made a general list of other things that could be done on a sliding basis on the other days, and the things that I had already taught him, the things I still needed to teach him, and (we) kind of made a plan as to what we were going to eventually hand over to him. What his work load would cover, as an end result after he had been taught how to handle all these things."

Mentor asks the youth in what order he is going to prepare parts of a dish. In cases where this is not the most effecient order, the mentor explains why another sequence would accomodate some items that take more time.

"We teach him techniques as far as how to prioritize orders. There are different items that take 10 minutes to cook; other items take 5 minutes to cook. So if an order comes in that has a variety of these items on it, of course we want to have him start the items that take 10 minutes and while they're cooking or doing whatever they need to do, then he can put together the items that take lesser time to prepare, with the goal of everything coming together at the same time, ready to go out to the table all at once."

Mentor shows the youth how to efficiently organize rate quotes and papers on a computer file. "We taught them how to do a filing system, where we batch things and everything is filed not by name or not that each client has an individual file, but they actually get filed by month, by the transaction dates. If something took place in January of 1999, we will be able to find it in the January 99 file. And so we do a monthly filing program, and we taught them how to do that.

"We [also] taught them how when you figure up a rate quote for an individual and speak to them about it on the phone, how to save that rate quote in our computer system and have a paperless file basically started, so we don't have all these papers and rate quotes laying all over that we can't find.... Just by typing the client's name, be able to locate the information that he provided them, or what I did.... We're trying to show them the importance of organization and that the office needs to run when you're here as well as when you're not here. 'We want to be able to find things in case you're not here.'"

Mentor also advises mentees about the importance of a clean work space. "Office organization allows you to remain with a clean work space. We don't have stacks of paper documents all over our desk and things out; it's pretty much all filed away, and we know how to go locate it and get it."

Mentor suggests that youth set up folders so that they can be seen clearly and help keep up with daily work. "I'd ask them first, 'How do you think you could make sure that this is organized so that you can see it clearly and help you to keep your work on a daily basis?' And just kind of help them, maybe guide them. If they say, 'Well this is how I do it,' and they're not giving that much information, just say 'Well this is another way you could do it.' Give them more examples."