If your office has ever had a window replaced or new carpet installed, four-year U. of I. employee Jerry Dinnin likely had a hand in it.
Dinnin is the service office supervisor at Facilities and Services and he knows more than almost anyone where the daily creaks and cracks on campus are.
“If you need an elevator repaired or a pipe fitter to fix the heating system, the work order comes here first,” he said. “This job has me interact with a lot of people.”
And good customer service is a part of every interaction.
Dinnin’s pre-university career involved phone sales, which helped him develop excellent customer-service skills and a belief that serving customers well is the best sales tool in the belt.
“I do my best to make sure we treat every customer fairly and make them happy,” he said. “A positive approach is everything because the customers just want their work done. If we do the best job possible, I see it as job security.”
Dinnin, originally from West Virginia, was hired at his first sales job at the age of 19. He quickly rose through the ranks and became a regional manager, which led him to Kentucky and then to an office in Urbana in 2005.
Dinnin’s route to F&S was circuitous as well. He started as an extra help employee at the U. of I. Large Animal Clinic in 2009 and then became a lab animal caretaker in the Division of Animal Resources.
He said prior experience in West Virginia breeding golden retrievers had made the clinic job a natural fit and something he greatly enjoyed. He had the added benefit of working with his wife, Sara, who also was an extra help worker at the Large Animal Clinic. The two started dating after high school.
“I really enjoyed working with the people there and it was nice working near my wife,” he said.
Dinnin said he was a little overwhelmed when he first took the work-order job at F&S. He said the challenge was in learning the job codes and keeping track of the never ending flow of in-house work orders from all across campus.
“There are just a lot of things you need to know to make this job work well,” he said. “We can see as many as 195 orders a day, but it was only about 150 when I first started.” To move that workflow along, Dinnin oversees three other full-time employees and one extra help employee.
“Most of the people I work with are awesome,” he said. “They just want to do a good job and they’re willing to do what it takes to get a positive result.”
He said the initial mistakes he made on the job turned out to be learning experiences that he continues to use today.
“Those kinds of mistakes happen a lot less often than they used to,” he said. “After a while, some of it becomes second nature.”
After work, you’re likely to find Dinnin and his two boys, ages 10 and 15, plotting gridiron strategies or practicing with the youth football league in Rantoul, where the family resides. He’s a coach and has played the game most of his life.
“Between the organizational meetings and the travel, football takes up a lot of our time,” he said. “I’ve always played or been around football.”
When practice is over, he and the boys like to go fishing.
If there’s still time left and the weather is warm, Dinnin will slip onto his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and ride – far away from the work orders that capture his daytime thoughts.
