Sandwiches are piled in neat pyramids before me. As students order their food, my hand gravitates straight toward the item without any thought on my part. After all, I made this food, I carted this food upstairs, I unloaded, labeled, wrapped, and stacked this food. I should know where it goes in the cooler.
As much as I like knowing everything about everything in this kiosk, the monotony does get to me sometimes. Every day is the same menu, the same pre-packaged, shelf-stable sides, the same array of carbonated beverages. The variety seemed immense and enticing when I first started working here, but now it’s mind-numbing. If I couldn’t do homework while here, I might not last another shift. It doesn’t help that my Monday night coworker is silent as a rock and apparently not much more intelligent.
The food in the dining halls has lost all flavor. While it’s free and I save loads of money on groceries, I can’t help not enjoying it. I need a change of scenery.
So, with four weeks left in the semester, I’m applying for a research job in China. Yup, little old Anne who’s never been further east than North Dakota could potentially be leaving the country. Fingers crossed.
But in these last few weeks, I need to do something to keep myself from passing out. So I’ve taken to analyzing customer’s behavior. Many customers can be divided into distinct categories: the charmer, the mumbler, the disappointed weeper, the vegan, the calorie-counter, and the indecisive one. Of course, there are subsets of each group, and not everybody fits so easily into these niches. But it’s amazing how the frequenters of the Lickety Split can be subdivided. And it’s amazing how annoying the quirks of each can be.
I must now leave the pen to stock the cooler (something I could do in my sleep, if only my supervisor weren’t here). I will muddle through for the free food and that shining, biweekly paycheck. And who knows? My next shift could be halfway around the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment