Truer words were never spoken. I feel like a sucker every time I walk into my job. Hustling, earning, working for someone else, putting in numerous man hours to make money for someone else. I’ve been waiting tables as my main source of income for quite some time now, and I gotta tell you, although I do walk out of my restaurant with a decent amount of money every night, I still feel like I got taken. I’m sure a lot of you out there are servers as well. It’s a very common job for college students because of the good hours, quick money, little responsibility and so on.

Do you realize that these establishments that employ us get themselves a bargain? By law, restaurants in Florida are only obligated to pay their servers a minimum of $2.13 an hour, because essentially, we are working for tips.

So, for $2.13 an hour, the price of one soft drink, they employ dozens and dozens of hard working college students. Every cocktail, appetizer, entree, dessert, and everything in between that we sell for them, they only give us two bucks and change in return. It’s the customers that really get us by, as much as we hate to admit it.

The slobs and snobs that we are accustomed to serving are ultimately the ones who pay us our wages, even though we still have to abide by the rules of the restaurant that employs us. It’s a nasty game that’s hard to simply walk away from because the money is quick and relatively easy.

Then of course, there’s the other option, A REAL JOB. The three words every college student fears. Compared to sitting behind a desk from 9-5, waiting on tables is a cake walk. I mean, how hard is it to write down an order and punch it into a computer? Not hard at all, especially when you compare it to the alternative.

The so-called “real world” scares me and personally, I’d rather take a job getting pelted in the nards with golf balls than become a desk jockey. As the inevitable real world and real job approaches, all I can do is appreciate my restaurant job more and more each day.

The point is, work sucks no matter what you do for a living; that’s why it’s called “work.” If it was supposed to be fun, they’d call it “play.” For college students it could be much worse. I, for one, appreciate the fact that I don’t have to get up early for work and commute during rush hour to get to my job.

So, be miserable at work- you’re supposed to be. It’s the American way. Then take the money you make from working and spend it on something that makes you happy, whether it’s a candy bar or a pack of smokes. Then go to bed and get ready to do it all over again the next day.