By gaining important life skills and experience, working in high school can sometimes be a challenge depending on the customer, job, and time.
Food service jobs can be more rapidly paced and require a lot of regulation because of the Food Safety Modernization Act. This ensures protection from contaminating food by wearing hair nets and to be consistent with cleaning.
“When I’m working in the dining room during busy hours I have to make sure everything is clean and stocked. I’ll do laps every 15 minutes to make sure the dining room is stocked, the bathroom is good, and the outside dining room is good too,” said Keegan Conroy (12).
Conroy is a store associate at In-N-Out with a variety of tasks to complete. These tasks include refilling the drinks, lids, cups, straws, picking up the floor in the kitchen and dining room, taking out the trash, ensuring bathrooms are clean, and interacting with customers.
“Throughout the day, I clean up and stock again and just make sure everything is clean, while taking people’s orders and delivering their food,” said Isaac Ramirez (12).
At Jalapeno’s in Ladera Ranch, Ramirez is a cashier who has similar responsibilities to Conroy. In which he maintains a clean space and restocks while being a cashier.
“I have to make sure the tables are clean and if we have enough utensils, napkins, and the trash is thrown out. If all of that is good then I can help my coworkers by taking orders,” said Ramirez.
Retail jobs require a lot of restocking yet not as much cleaning as food service jobs do.
Katherine Cuevas (12) works at Target, having different roles on weekdays versus the weekend. Some days she is a “Pusher” and other shifts she is in Guest Services.
“For pushing, I mostly focus on stocking up the place and helping guests with whatever questions they have, or even if they want to use the restroom because we have a code.”
“For the weekends when I’m in guest service, I help with returns and scanning items when guests arrive to pick up their orders and walk it out to their car,” said Cuevas.
Lidia Muniz (12) works at Laura’s House in San Juan Capistrano.
“I work the register throughout the day as other people begin to come in or leave, and I organize clothes, pricing, accessories and help with the fitting room and keeping them clean,” said Muniz.
“It’ll be a lot of clothing that has to be organized when it’s busy, so I prioritize it before anything else,” said Muniz.
“Sometimes, it’d be super dead in the store, like in the middle of March, no one is coming in. It gets kind of boring. Then during holidays or summer, it’s really busy,” said Ella Finken (12).
Finken was a former employee at Journey’s for the past year an a half.
“The first year and five months, it was just minimum wage. So $16.50 then $16.90, then I got promoted so I got $17.40,” said Finken.
“Normally, they’d have me in the front. So that’s going up to customers, bringing them shoes, pitching stuff to them and maybe for half an hour they’d have me in the back,” said Finken.
Although different types of jobs, both can agree the people are more difficult than the workload.
“The workload is the people,” said Finken.
“The management, everyone is friendly there. I have no problem. Sometimes customers tend to have an attitude towards you when they see you’re lower than them, like younger,” said Cuevas.
“My managers are really nice. Every once in a while there are rude customers, but that’s to be expected. For the most part all the people I work with are nice and the customers generally have a good attitude,” said Conroy.
Whether tough customers or great ones, there are going to be obstacles no matter what and it teaches to be the bigger person in these situations.
“There’s definitely been times where people are really rude to me and forget that I’m literally a teenage girl selling you shoes,” said Finken.
“This one time a person was ordering a taco plate and I kept asking what kind of tacos they like, and they just kept yelling at me that he wants a taco plate,” said Ramirez.
“Dealing with people can be harder because of their allergies. They come back and tell us they’re allergic to something. Which is weird because we have the nutrition facts and a card that says everything,” said Samantha Jamie (12).
Jamie is a Shift Leader at Palmetto Superfoods at the River Street Marketplace.
“I clock in and make sure everyone is set up for the day. Then, I make acai bowls and smoothies,” said Jamie.
Being promoted has bumped her pay to $20 an hour where prior it was $17.25 an hour.
Cuevas is currently getting paid $18.59 at Target and at Laura’s House, Muniz $17.35.
“It’s a good amount because it’s more than minimum wage. Even though it can be stressful at times, I’d say it’s a pretty easy job compared to fast food restaurants,” said Cuevas.
Fast food restaurants are more high maintenance and other food service jobs have the same roles but less pay than fast food restaurants.
Ramirez shares that he gets paid minimum wage for having similar responsibilities to Conroy. Within the food industry, it varies, although fast food places have the minimum wage of $20 per hour.
Many skills come from food service and retail jobs such as communicating, patience, multitasking, time management, and de-esculating conflict.
“Being able to handle multiple tasks at once, especially when it’s busy. I get easily overwhelmed by work but now I’m able to manage it better by adapting through different things and asking for help,” said Muniz.
“At first I was pretty nervous because I don’t like hearing my own voice sometimes. I’ve gotten more comfortable with it and it has helped me be more confident at work and school,” said Conroy.
Both job industries give students a push to adulthood and dealing with the hardship of not getting paid enough for the work they do. Yet there are many upsides like improving people skills, better patience, and comfortability within yourself.
