Abby McHenry
While still in school, senior Ryan Pask works with Publix at the corporate level as the Utility Expense Analyst having already done an internship with them over the summer.
The business administration and accounting major interned at Publix’s Expense Payables Department and worked with the utility bills. He was later offered a full time position doing similar tasks that he did for the internship.
Pask looks at the invoices and analyzes them. This requires him to guess how much the company owes, how much hasn’t been paid yet, or how much they will have to pay next month.
After doing his internship for the summer, Pask got hired for his corporate position analyzing the garbage invoices.
“I get anywhere from 5 to 1,000 invoices in a day,” Pask said. “I just look at them, I process them, and then I analyze whether we’re overpaying, underpaying, whether we should change vendors, etc.”
Pask reports these findings to his supervisors at month end, quarter end, and year end. Over the summer he worked full time, 40 hours a week. Pask said these hours can be split up in different ways.
During the school year he works part-time, so no more than 32 hours a week. An hour before his afternoon and evening classes start, Pask clocks out in order to have time to relax.
“It’s hard to go straight from one thing into another thing,” Pask said. “My brain just has to have time to transition.”
Pask does not find himself utilizing his kitchen or buying groceries often because he takes advantage of Publix’s cafeteria. He said this has saved him a lot of time and money.
Having never experienced the private sector of accounting was the most challenging part for Pask of his internship with Publix. Now being accustomed to this, he said the amount of papers he goes through each day is a challenge.
Pask said he has six different stacks on his desk right now.
“The biggest stack is probably well over 1,000 and well worth half a million dollars just sitting at my desk that I have to analyze,” Pask said. “Trying to get through that as a part-time [employee] is pretty difficult right now.”
On Jan. 28 Pask got a promotion to be a Real Estate Accounting Specialist starting Feb. 17.
