Many students on campus rely on the school cafeteria for their everyday meals. The cafeteria workers, both students and staff, put in effort to distribute food to everyone. Student nutrition lead cook Siu Yuen said she wishes more people understood the time and energy this effort takes.
“To be honest, we [are] really working very hard, because I start [cooking] from five o’clock until one,” Yuen said. “So we want to let them know we really use our heart to cook the menu for all the students. So [we] hope that they will enjoy.”
Freshman Lucas Chang is one of the many student workers at the cafeteria who distribute food to students. For Chang, the job helped him get to know other students better.
“When I started, it was really welcoming when I first applied to it, and it just became more routine, and I felt I got to know more people from the school,” Chang said.
Chang noted the experience was valuable for learning to work in a professional workspace and managing money.
“It’s a really good way to first experience a job as a starter job. I feel I get the sense of how to use your money and when you get it,” Chang said.
For junior Emily Zhang, who has worked in the cafeteria since her freshman year, being able to provide for herself in a welcoming community was a notable benefit.
“Honestly, you don’t have to do too much, and it pays pretty well for the type of work you do,” Zhang said. “Also, the other people are very nice and helpful, so if you have any problems, you can always ask them for help.”
Senior Kevin Zhu manages the pizza section and has been working in the cafeteria since his sophomore year. Though he enjoys working alongside his co-workers, Zhu expressed concern about the students’ aggressive behavior in the lunch lines.
“I don’t know what it is about the lunch line, but I feel like when people are in the lunch line, they have less self-control,” Zhu said. “Because I feel like people don’t really see the cafeteria workers as, I guess, fellow students, and they treat them more like employees, so they’re more inclined to do stupid stuff. Like in the line that just, I mean, I guess it doesn’t really trouble me, but it does kind of annoy me. I do think that they should not do that.”
Because of the large number of students the cafeteria staff needs to serve in short timeframes during brunch and lunch, Yuen hopes to bring on more student workers to speed up the process.
“We serve 12,000 [meals] a day, so they should have the [patience] to wait for it,” Yuen said. “So we try as fast as we [can], and I’m trying to employ more student [workers] to work in the cart or in the cafeteria so we can make the serving times… more fast.”
