Shorty shoots for her goals

Born into a Norththeast Washington, D.C., Phyllis Woods has led a life of trials but also great triumph – one few of the American University students she serves at the campus Chick-fil-A would have any idea about.

“It’s been tough but I’m going to keep going,” Woods said on a recent Tuesday afternoon while taking a break from cooking chicken sandwiches in AU’s Chick-fil-A

Woods, no taller than 5’2”, wears a baggy chef’s uniform covered in chicken grease, and at 11 p.m., she is five hours into her shift, which won’t end until midnight. She’ll then head home to Baltimore, an hour’s drive.

Woods’ life plan did not include being a short order cook in a fast-food restaurant on a college campus.

Raised primarily by her grandmother, Woods said that she learned everything from her and her close neighbors in D.C.

“My Grandmother was basically like my mother…I learned a lot from her, I learned a lot on my own,” Woods said. “The only thing I would have changed was if my mother had been around,” she continued.

Nicknamed ”Shorty” since her successful high school basketball days, Woods blazed a trail of athletic success in basketball and softball. After junior high school, Anacostia and Durham High Schools fought to get her on their teams. She first went to Anacostia, then transferred a year later to Durham.

“The coach at Anacostia worked me real hard and I learned a lot, but he had me high when I needed to be low and he just wouldn’t listen,” she said. “Me and him didn’t get along real well at all.”

At Durham, Shorty found her stride. Over three years she amassed eight trophies — two of them MVP honors — in softball, basketball and track. She took a basketball scholarship to St. Paul’s College, a small community college in Lawrenceville, Virginia.

But soon afterwards — athletic disaster. Shorty tore ligaments in her knee after falling down awkwardly in practice. The college revoked her scholarship, forcing her to leave before finishing her associates degree.

Always one with grand dreams, her knee injury was her first major setback.

“I had always wanted to play basketball professionally, but you know, with the injury I just didn’t have the money to try and ride it out.”

Shorty quickly moved onto her next goal — opening her own restaurant.
Enrolling at ATI, a technical college in Virginia, she received an associate’s degree in the culinary arts. Since then, she has been trying to save money to pursue that vision.

Once out of school, Woods began looking for odd jobs. A temp agency assigned her to work at AU, and after a week spent cooking in the Tavern, the university offered her a job. She jumped at the chance.

“When the temp agency sent me here I never thought that I would be working here three years from now,” she said.

She has worked in several on-campus eating establishments, including the Tavern, the Terrace Dining Room and now Chick-fil-A, which is the one she likes best.

“I get to work in the back by myself and just cook by myself, that’s the way I like it,” Shorty said.

To capitalize on her skills as a chef, Woods started a small, unofficial catering business called Shorty’s Catering, which provides lunches to newspaper offices in Baltimore and downtown Washington, D.C. The money isn’t great, but every little bit puts Shorty closer towards her goal of opening a unique restaurant.

“All the money I get from the dinners that I’m selling I’m putting to the side to open up something small that I can work out of,” Woods said.

“I was thinking about doing something different, you know jazzing it up, like having an open-mic night or something. I don’t want it to be like any other place,” she said.
“It would be standard American stuff, wings, burgers but real good,” Shorty said.

Funding, she said, could also come from grants and loans.

“I’ve been trying to get all the things I’ll need to open a place up,” she said.

Until then, Shorty will continue cooking chicken sandwiches for college kids. But, in the meantime, she’ll also be working on her dream.