Things I Love About Working at Terra Byte and Berry Cafes

1.    Free food/ bevs – Absolutely key to my life as a college student.  Campus Dining Jobs are the best. I save literally hundreds a year by not buying groceries.  On days I work I am guaranteed at least one meal, sometimes two, so working 5 days a week reeeaaallllyyyyy helps.
2.    Making coffee drinks is fun! Until mid-July when this job fell into my lap, I couldn’t tell you what a latte was if my life depended on it.  Oh how that has changed.  
3.    Working in the library forces me into an academic environment/ mindset for an additional 4+ hours a day.  Theoretically I could go to work early or stay late and actually get some work/ reading done.  We’ll see how my schedule for this quarter plays out.  While the Science and Engineering Library, so near and dear to my heart freshman year, now seems like old news, working in the new library is still pretty cool.  
4.    Meeting new people/ interacting with customers/ peoplewatching – I’m a social being.  I like humans, generally.  And I like running my mouth for hours at a time to strangers/ coworkers.  I always have something to complain about.  As for how much other people like working with me, I can’t say for sure.  Oh well.  
5.    Money.  
6.    Good managerial experience – Somehow I ended up in charge of closing and opening several shifts.  A former trainer/ supervisor at Mirror Lake Café (what is currently Mirror Lake Grill and Creamery), I find this no trouble at all.  I like delegating tasks.  I am hoping to be promoted to manager soon and very soon…and start getting manager pay for doing basically everything I am doing now anyways.
7.    So much less messy/ stressful than working at Mirror Lake – At the cafes, we deal with no food prep.  No hairnets.  No hats.  I don’t even always wear an apron because one size does NOT fit all.  No splattering chili.  No breakfast rush when the swimmers get out of practice.  No bacon grease.  No switching from breakfast to lunch to dinner. There are 1,000 fewer dishes at closing time.  Everything is brand spankin’ new and squeaky clean.   Love it.
8.    Open over the summer – HUGE factor in determining my summer plans.  Summer jobs are a must and this one literally crashed down upon me at exactly the right time.
9.    Forces me to manage my time down to a pinpoint, meaning I spend less time doing stupid things, procrastinating, going out.  I value my time a lot more when I don't have to work, and am generally a more organized person than when I don't have a job.  Even just having to be on campus at a certain time every day for something other than class motivates me to get as much done as I can while I'm in the 'hood.  Good times.

Things I Don’t Love About Working at Terra Byte and Berry Cafes

1.    Working weekends – The schedule for this quarter has me closing on Fridays (8:30), working 11:15 on Saturdays, and opening on Sundays (7:15am).  Joy.  What’s even better about that whole situation is that I’m in charge of literally opening/ locking up and counting the drawers.  However, at this juncture, there is only one set of keys for the cafes, which means people are constantly having to track them down, run around, meet up after work, drop them off, etc.  It’s a pain in the butt.  At some point between Berry’s close at 10pm Saturdays and Terra Byte’s open at 7am Sundays, I have to locate and obtain the set of keys.  This is going to be tricky if I want to have any form of a social life this quarter.  Also, I lack an automobile.  Boooo.
2.    Working – I mean ideally everyone would love their job and be super pumped to show up every morning.  Such is not the case.  I don’t hate it.  I don’t dread going.  But at the end of the day, it’s just somewhere I have to be standing/ potentially getting messy for 4+ hours that I’d rather probably be sleeping, hanging out, working out, “doing homework”.  Granted, they do pay you to work.  Money is prrreeetttttyyyyy important in my life at this time.  Esp since I just blew 200 bones at Target on basically cleaning supplies for my house and two pairs of jeans. I digress.
3.    The smell of steamed whole milk.
4.    Not being able to bump music due to the library setting – I can barely function one minute of the day without jamming.  Not kidding.  I sit around in class and get excited to listen to my iPod for the three minutes it will take me to walk to my next class or work or wherever.  Working 6am at Mirror Lake wasn’t so bad when I could blast the Daft Punk and have a non-stop dance party for the ensuing 7 hours.  Moral of the story, time tends to crawl without my tunes.
5.    The potential to permanently stain everything I own – Coffee stains operate on an “easy come, not easy go” format.  Let’s just say I wear a lot of black to work.  Emo.
6.    I snack nonnnnstopppp at work.  On the worst things.  The amount of whipped cream in my life has also drastically increased with the introduction of this job into my life.  But alas that is what the RPAC is for.

Generally though, the new job is one of the best parts about this year.  All my stomping grounds have changed.  New house, new job, new everything, and it feels good.  So stop by the SEL sometime for a mocha or a frozen hot chocolate or any of a variety of baked goods, and you’ll probably find me yamming to my coworkers and customers alike about something stupid.  

GO BUCKS!