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Name: Kate Gallagher
Class: Sophomore
Major: Accounting
Hometown: Richmond, Va.
You're working as a waitress at the Rockaway Athletic Club (Rockaways) and the Pizza Man in Columbia to help defray some of your college expenses. Tell us about those jobs. I needed a job to cover my car payments. I'd eaten at Rockaways and liked the atmosphere so I applied there. It's a nice place to work with a simple menu and a laid back atmosphere. I can wear a t-shirt and jeans to work and didn't have to go through a lot of training. At Pizza Man, it's even more laid back because it's more of a college crowd. It's more fun because you can joke around more with the customers instead of being completely professional all the time. I actually don't work there as often as I do at Rockaways, but make more money when I do because Pizza Man only has one waitress.
Was working as a waitress hard at first? Yes. Walking up to complete strangers and trying to impress them with what you can do and being nice was hard at first. But I can tell I'm getting better at it because my tips are getting better. I've gotten to the point where I know what I'm talking about instead of not really knowing about menu items or about drinks. We have a lot of different kinds of drinks and I don't drink that much, so sometimes in the past when customers would ask about them I wasn't always real sure about what they wanted to know. It also takes a bit of time, at first, to become accustomed to the menu because I went to work right away after being hired.
How much do the jobs pay? The hourly wage is $2.15, so the salary is only about $20 a week. Ninety-five percent of the money I make is from tips.
Do people tip well? On Friday and Saturday nights people tip well, but on nights like Shrimp Night at Rockaways (Mondays, which feature a 25-cent shrimp special that fills the restaurant) the bills tend to be smaller so the tips are smaller, even though I'm working just as hard.
So, would you like people to remember that when they leave a tip they're helping to fund your college education? Yes, definitely. You can get people to throw in a little extra by telling them that you're in college, but I choose not to do that because I don't want to pressure them, though I know some others who do mention that they're in school and working for their money.
Do you feel like you make enough money waiting table for it to be worthwhile? Yes, it's totally worthwhile if you can handle the stress, especially in the beginning. Rockaways is less stressful because it isn't a chain restaurant. It's family owned.
What percentage of your semester's expenses are you able to meet through your jobs? The only thing I didn't pay for with the jobs was my tuition. I also paid for half of my books, but could have paid for all of them. I also pay for all of my food and still have money left over. There's no other way to make that kind of money. It's a hard job, but the money makes it worthwhile.
What else would you like customers to know about your job from your side of the table? The main thing is the alcoholic beverages and the fact that I can't control what we have or how fast they come out because the bartender makes them. I can tell when the drinks aren't coming fast enough, but if the bar is backed up or if we're out of something, that's out of my control. Other than that, people usually are nice, order quickly, and I can understand what they're saying.
1/07
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Kate Gallagher, sophomore
