disclaimer: this is all from a scholarships point-of-view--most of the wage students do work longer, but in my experience do less in four hours than the scholarships do in two.

College students need money. Some college students, myself included, may even need help paying off tuition; a work study position sounds like a good idea, huh? Get those in need of some extra money to do some of the menial tasks around campus--wash dishes, keep the dining hall clean, help serve food, things along those lines. Let's concentrate on the dish-washing portion of that. If the work study hierarchy is shaped like a ladder, the dishroom is the lowest rung. It's where they stow the freshmen. "Hey, they're just freshmen, they don't know any better--they'll do basically anything we tell 'em to." Even that's fine by me; it's just washing dishes: no biggie. This, however, is where Radford falls out of my good graces.

Let's start at the top: the first thing you have to deal with is scheduling. Seems to me they find through some archaic means the time that completely goes against the student's lifestyle. Most of the people I've talked to who work breakfast shifts are night owls who have a horrible time getting up for work that early. Myself, I work evenings, and, of course, that always conflicts with shows that my band is playing, and, since I regularly go to concerts anyway, I have to suck up and swap with people who don't work on the nights I need off. I would love to work breakfast--I can get up early without fail, and it would completely compliment my class, extracurricular, and social schedules. While making out my schedule this semester, I asked the guy helping me with it if I could switch from evening to breakfast....and he laughed. You heard me: laughed. He said, and I quote, "Nice try." Wonderful. Let's talk about morale boosting here. Then about two weeks into the semester I hear him complaining with a manager about the number of people who are quitting the dishroom. Three guesses why. "Nice try." (I know what some of you are saying, "Come on, it's only two hours a night, you can handle that." I dare anyone who feels this way to try and make it from here to a club they've never been to in the heart of Roanoke in a vehicle packed full of sound equipment and drums to play a show in about fifteen minutes.)

This is a logical follow-up to the previous point: the wonderfully friendly and vibrant people who make my job such a joy. We're expected to keep busy and working in the dishroom the whole time, and yet on evening we are in charge of cleaning up the kitchen (where apparently they like to keep us on our toes so they make messes that just keep progressively bigger and bigger). In order to get everything finished in the dishroom itself, we leave sweeping and mopping to about fifteen till seven every night, which angers the kitchen staff, That obviously doesn't give them enough time to finish randomly throwing crap in the floor, and they take it out on the person sweeping by sneering or saying something along the lines of "Can't you wait? We're not done out here yet," or my favorite "You'll just have to do it again--and right now you're just getting in the way." Clean up your own mess then! I've got plenty of other stuff I could be doing at that point in time. I swear, the last time I swept, one of the cooks growled at me! I was terrified. Not just the kitchen staff sneer and growl, the dishroom staff does just as well. I was pulling glasses off trays one night, and apparently there had been a water related accident that no one informed me of in my path of travel. I lifted up the large tray of glass, turned around to take it to the dish machine, took one step, and found a rather large, uninviting puddle of water awaiting me. Needless to say, I took a dive, dropping the tray and smashing near 36 glasses. As I jumped up checking myself for injury related to shards of broken glass (only a couple small cuts and a nice sized bruise on my knee) I hear "Watch where you're going! If you break too many of those we'll dock your pay!" No, really, I'm okay; thanks for your concern. I'd appreciate a little warning when I have to cross the great dismal bog while carrying a bunch of extremely fragile glass. Or maybe the time I left the room to sweep on one person's request only to be chased down by the other and berated for leaving 'unannounced'. Choice personnel, here.

Finally, let's discuss the student body. Just a couple general complaints here.

Number 1--if you don't agree with something, don't leave a note on your tray. It doesn't change anything, just bugs the people who have to clean your tray.

Number 2--I love ketchup with french fries, much like many other people, so I don't mind if people get ketchup. Use common sense: a half-plate of fries doesn't necessitate a bowl of ketchup. If you do get a bowl of ketchup, use all of it, in the name of all that's holy.

Number 3--don't overestimate. If you're only a little hungry, only get a little food. Don't get a full tray; that's just wasteful and annoying. If you do, however, get more than you can eat accidentally, don't try and cover it up. Chances are we'll figure it out sooner or later.

Number 4--turning your half-empty glass of soda up into the bowl of whatever you were just eating might have played well in high school, but here and now it's just bloody aggravating. Along these same lines, don't stick one bowl into a bowl full of pudding, ketchup, or anything else for that matter. We really, really don't like prying that stuff apart. (Convenient rule of thumb--if you wouldn't want to clean it up with your bare hands, don't do it.) I think that's about all.

Hell is a punishment for those who lived wrong. It has become painfully clear to me that working in the dishroom is a punishment for those who would like to continue their education but can't exactly fund it well enough.