Less of a Job: Students feel that working with their peers makes work more enjoyable

While student employees get ready for work, they’re excited — work doesn’t feel like work since their coworkers are other East students. They feel that working with people they already know makes for a more enjoyable and comfortable work environment and allows them to become better friends with people they go to school with who they may not have become friends with otherwise.

Seniors Ashton Emley and Jilli Foley both work at Torchy’s Tacos and find that working together has strengthened their friendship, through countless hours of wiping crumbs off tables. When racing around the restaurant during rush hour, they find some comfort in assisting each other when taking orders or dropping off some chips at a table.

“It makes you want to go to work. It’s not a struggle and you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to work’ but then I’m like ‘Oh I’m working with Ashton or I’m working with someone I know, this will be a fun shift.’”

“This summer me and Jilli were working together one day and Jilli was training me because she had already been working there for a while, and that was really fun because we got to spend the whole day together just working and talking.”

When working busy summer days at Chill in the Village, Juniors Grace Meyer and Kasey Nelson know they can depend on each other and their other East peers to make the workday feel less dragged-out.

“In the summers, it’s definitely a really good time to work with [people I work with from East], and winter can kind of be slow when working [at Chill], so in the summer, it’s a really fun job to have and to be working with people who you know.”

“I think it’s really fun because I’ve met a lot of people who I work with who’re from East that I wouldn’t have met otherwise, since it’s such a big school. I really like that I meet new people from that, and then I also get to work with a lot of my friends who I already know.”