MsSonnetMarwood
Posts: 1898
Joined: 2/10/2005 From: Eastern Shore, Maryland Status: offline
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Depends on how much money you need to make a week, and if you can work with it varying. I go to college full time, and I work part time in a decent waterfront restaurant. I make more working part time there than I made working a full time admin assistant job AND a part time job combined, which is what I did before I went back to school. In summers, I usually work two jobs and manage to pack away a LOT of money (summer is also our "busy season" since we're waterfront), enough so that I have not had to take out any kind of loans for tuition. The trick is getting a job in a higher-end restauarant where the tips are higher, and being able to get enough tables turned over. I work with all sorts of people - most are educated, or at some point in their education. We have a lot of people with bachelor's and master's degrees working there so they can work part time around their families, rather than work full time. Every spring it's a big deal to see who is graduating this year. (Last year we had about 6 graduate; this year I think it's 4) That said - there are lean weeks where shifts are scarce, tables are scarce, and money is tight. There's no medical and no paid vacations. Sometimes it's tough to juggle work scheduling, classes, and school activities (I'm very active in student life). You work a lot of nights and you work every weekend and you work every holiday. Being under-tipped is sometimes an issue, although the better the restaurant, the less that's a problem. (Under-tipping is less than 18% on good service; keep in mind that servers have to tip out between 15-25% of their tips to busers, bar; restaurants typically do not pay servers more than $3 an hour, so less than 15% tips REALLY HURT). You do have to learn to bank money when you have good weeks so you have a reserve to draw on during the slow weeks. Overall, for me, it works while I'm in school. Even on the slow weeks, I make more money that if I had a "regular" job that paid by the hour. I'm fairly healthy so I'm winging it for a while without health insurance (knock on wood). I bank a lot of money so it doesn't kill me to take a week off once or twice a year even though it's unpaid.
< Message edited by MsSonnetMarwood -- 4/24/2007 5:11:05 AM >
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~Ms. Sonnet Marwood~ Deja Moo: The feeling you've heard this bull somewhere before.
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