Oh, the college life. Filled with stress, freedom and, of course, the fear of going broke. There are two types of students: those who painfully work for money during the year, and those who are lucky enough to get an allowance even from miles away. As a representative of the former group, I would like to give you a snapshot into the tragic, yet, semi-rewarding life of a student employee.
Struggle One: Remembering to shove every part of your uniform into your already over-packed backpack in the morning before your shift is always a struggle.
Am I wearing closed shoes? Damn it, I can’t wear these even though they’re cute with my actual outfit. Should I bring an extra pair? Nope that’s too heavy. OK, looks like leggings it is today. Wait are these clothes easy to change out of if I’m late? No, well whatever. I’ll just be late. Just kidding I need the money. You’re constantly double checking that you have everything, yet you still manage to forget something every time.
Struggle Two: Evaluating whether or not to buy something solely based on how many hours of work it’s equal to.
Did you find a cute shirt at the mall? $20? Is this shirt worth two hours of work? Probably not. Amazon has become your best friend and your worst enemy, but that pineapple corer was definitely worth it. Speaking of pineapples, the only exception to this struggle is food. No matter how much it is, food is always worth the hours of work. It’s so worth it in fact that most of your paycheck goes to food anyway.
Struggle Three: Customers.
This is a public service announcement to all customers. Please do not come ten minutes before closing. We understand you’re hungry. We are also hungry. We're also tired, and we definitely will not put effort into making your meal the way you expect it to be. We're students too; so please understand that we just want to close and go home too. When we see you approaching we all pray together to the food gods that you won’t order anything, but sadly our prayers go unanswered and we have to make it anyway. For all of our sakes, come in a little earlier, or if you are going to order something, at least order something easy to make.
Struggle Four: Hours of work.
Working opening or closing shifts is tough, but going to school at the same time just makes every shift tough. After a long day of classes, you just want to go home and sleep but you have work instead. Friends want to have dinner or hang out and you remember that your very inconvenient shift at 7 p.m. and decline the offer. Working multiple long hour shifts just so that you don’t have to work later in week, totally worth it.
Nonetheless, our struggles aren’t so bad when you have amazing coworkers that feel the same. You guys work together, laugh at orders you mess up together, and clean everyone’s gross mess together, but it’s all OK. You meet some of the most hardworking, honest people by working on campus and you make some great friends as well. The people you work with suddenly make the minimum wage, energy sucking job a lot less tragic. And of course, money is super great as well.
