Have you ever wondered what happens before the chaos of lunch? Alongside the adult lunch staff, many students take part in helping out in the cafeteria. Whether it be serving pizzas or preparing the foods, students play a big part behind the scenes of the lunch rush. Aaron Wong (11) and Lauryn Lige (10) are just a small portion of the student staff helping out in the cafeteria.
“For morning[s], [we] generally [get here] an hour before school [starts]. I get there around 7:30 and I work until a few minutes before the bell rings,” Wong (11) describes. “We do more prep a lot of times. If you would get the bars or the conchas and they’re in the bags with cranberries, we put those in the bags and seal them.”
These students start the school day before most, coming to Mills an hour early to set up for breakfast. Although some might think the brunch bags come pre-packaged, students must manually put together each one to help set up morning brunches. “When I leave ten minutes before lunch and brunch to prep, I normally organize the food for people to eat or I put the brunch and lunch up for people to grab in the cafeteria,” Lige shares. “Sometimes I work in the pizza station and I normally do this every other day. This consists of grabbing pizza boxes from the heater and putting them in trays along with carrots for students to grab.”
The cafeteria students are able to leave classes a bit early to help prepare food before all the commotion during lunch and brunch. This includes placing all the food on the trays for students to conveniently grab during brunch and lunch.
Although this is a paid job, there are definitely many differences between an outside-of-school job and being a cafeteria staff member. “Generally, it’s a lot less stressful than getting a normal job because you don’t have to [do] an interview,” Wong explains. “I would definitely say that the workload is less because we’re not actually cooking anything. We have the cafeteria ladies, they’re doing that and we’re just preparing food and packaging it.” He also shares how being a student cafeteria staff is unique compared to other jobs, as it is less demanding, making it a more relaxed environment for the students. Lige finishes, “Overall, working in the cafeteria is a really amazing high school experience and it’s a great way to make extra money!”
