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Do any other schools except for Vanderbilt offer this awesome valet service for students?
VU Medical Staffers Get Help From Valets
Tennessean - 12/25/04
By BILL LEWIS
Staff Writer
After wrapping 3,000 Christmas presents, negotiating a deal on a new car for a nurse and sending a batch of cookies to Miami for a forgotten birthday, the valet service for employees of Vanderbilt University Medical Center is proving its value, supervisor Debi Tarrant said.
And thats just a sample of the past months worth of chores.
It takes care of all the stresses of everyday life, Tarrant said of the service, called Vanderbilt Valet, which is available at no charge to the medical centers employees.
Vanderbilt Valet is operated by a private company, Errand Solutions. Vanderbilt pays the company a fee for running errands for its employees. The Chicago-based company opened in 2000 and has customers in several states, Tarrant said.
About 3,400 of the medical centers 10,000 plus employees are using Vanderbilt Valet. It works like a concierge service in a hotel, obtaining movie tickets 2,000 of them this month alone picking up and delivering dry cleaning or arranging jewelry repair among other services. In one case, that meant finding a restaurant that offers ballroom dancing.
Employees pay for the goods and services they receive, but the convenience of having someone else do their legwork comes free of charge.
When medical center employees are busy at work, the service will even send someone to their homes to meet a plumber or accept a delivery, Tarrant said.
Vanderbilt Valet also wraps Christmas presents lots of them. Throughout December, it wrapped 200 presents a day, she said. Each medical center staff member was allowed to bring in five a day.
Vanderbilt Valet is part of an effort by the medical center to help its staff balance their work and personal lives, said Susie Lyons, manager of employee programs.
We have so many people who work so hard, so many hours every day, and when they leave here they have so many things they have to do. Now they can let the valet service do that, she said.
When Lyons remembered her nephews birthday at the last minute, she called on Vanderbilt Vale for help. The service arranged for cookies to be delivered to him in Miami. I just made one phone call, she said.
To avoid such emergencies, Vanderbilt Valet offers to maintain a file of dates that are important to each customer and provide a timely reminder, Tarrant said. Birthdays and wedding anniversaries need never be forgotten again.
Overpaying for a car also could be a thing of the past. Tarrant said a nurse asked for her help finding a good deal on a car.
I negotiated a deal cheaper than he had quoted. All he had to do was pick it up, she said.
That kind of service is especially valuable to care givers at a medical center where the work goes on around the clock, said Chief Nursing Offer Marilyn Dubree.
She used Vanderbilt Valet for an important assignment of her own finding a reliable bookbinder to repair her grandmothers Bible.
This has alleviated some of the stress that busy clinical staff feel at this time and throughout the year, she said.
Vanderbilt Valet began in July and handles an average of 1,500 customer requests per month, Tarrant said.
VU Medical Staffers Get Help From Valets
Tennessean - 12/25/04
By BILL LEWIS
Staff Writer
After wrapping 3,000 Christmas presents, negotiating a deal on a new car for a nurse and sending a batch of cookies to Miami for a forgotten birthday, the valet service for employees of Vanderbilt University Medical Center is proving its value, supervisor Debi Tarrant said.
And thats just a sample of the past months worth of chores.
It takes care of all the stresses of everyday life, Tarrant said of the service, called Vanderbilt Valet, which is available at no charge to the medical centers employees.
Vanderbilt Valet is operated by a private company, Errand Solutions. Vanderbilt pays the company a fee for running errands for its employees. The Chicago-based company opened in 2000 and has customers in several states, Tarrant said.
About 3,400 of the medical centers 10,000 plus employees are using Vanderbilt Valet. It works like a concierge service in a hotel, obtaining movie tickets 2,000 of them this month alone picking up and delivering dry cleaning or arranging jewelry repair among other services. In one case, that meant finding a restaurant that offers ballroom dancing.
Employees pay for the goods and services they receive, but the convenience of having someone else do their legwork comes free of charge.
When medical center employees are busy at work, the service will even send someone to their homes to meet a plumber or accept a delivery, Tarrant said.
Vanderbilt Valet also wraps Christmas presents lots of them. Throughout December, it wrapped 200 presents a day, she said. Each medical center staff member was allowed to bring in five a day.
Vanderbilt Valet is part of an effort by the medical center to help its staff balance their work and personal lives, said Susie Lyons, manager of employee programs.
We have so many people who work so hard, so many hours every day, and when they leave here they have so many things they have to do. Now they can let the valet service do that, she said.
When Lyons remembered her nephews birthday at the last minute, she called on Vanderbilt Vale for help. The service arranged for cookies to be delivered to him in Miami. I just made one phone call, she said.
To avoid such emergencies, Vanderbilt Valet offers to maintain a file of dates that are important to each customer and provide a timely reminder, Tarrant said. Birthdays and wedding anniversaries need never be forgotten again.
Overpaying for a car also could be a thing of the past. Tarrant said a nurse asked for her help finding a good deal on a car.
I negotiated a deal cheaper than he had quoted. All he had to do was pick it up, she said.
That kind of service is especially valuable to care givers at a medical center where the work goes on around the clock, said Chief Nursing Offer Marilyn Dubree.
She used Vanderbilt Valet for an important assignment of her own finding a reliable bookbinder to repair her grandmothers Bible.
This has alleviated some of the stress that busy clinical staff feel at this time and throughout the year, she said.
Vanderbilt Valet began in July and handles an average of 1,500 customer requests per month, Tarrant said.
