Life in the fast food lane

In the fast food business, service lines are meant to be fast. A person may turn away once they see the long lines and think about the minutes that are about to be spent creeping toward the register. So is it hell for the employees? Marketplace cashier Daniel Aguilar, 21, has worked there for a year. He talked about what it is like to be a fast-food worker in the SUB.

Daily Lobo: How do you like working there?

Daniel Aguilar: It's all right.

DL: What do you get paid, and do you ever get raises?

DA: I get paid $7 an hour, but no raises yet.

DL: How many hours a week do you work?

DA: Six hours a day, five days a week - that is 30 hours a week and 120 hours a month.

DL: Do you get any breaks?

DA: We get a half-hour break for lunch and no others.

DL: What is the busiest time of day?

DA: From about 12:30 to about 1:45 p.m. is our busiest time of day.

DL: What do you think when you see those long lines?

DA: I like it. Time goes by a lot faster when you are serving a bunch of people, because when you aren't, it really goes by slow.

DL: What does your salary allow you to do in your free time?

DA: I spend a lot of time with my family. My salary really does not allow for anything else. Because I only get paid about $840 a month and about $10,080 a year, it limits me to a lot of things. It's really not anything.

DL: Has anything funny ever happened to you while working here?

DA: People in general are just too funny, just some of the stuff that they do. Some people just display a lot of ignorance. I mean, they may have book smarts, but they don't have any common sense.

DL: For example?

DA: Yeah, for sure, there have been several events where a student or someone will come up to the bars we have around the shop and see that we are obviously closed and ask us, "Are you guys closed?" What do they want me to do, jam a sandwich through the bars for them?

DL: What do you think about college students?

DA: They're cool. College students are college students.

- Cristina Campos