Muffled voices and clinging of dishes fill the steamy, thick air. Customers laugh and enjoy their meals in content as waitresses and server assistants quickly move around. They serve with a bashful smile in the dining area, but when they return to their stations in the kitchen the smile disappears. Actually, the kitchen is more hectic than the full dining room. The craziness of this restaurant might be caused by the fact it is run by teenagers.

Juniors Morgan Killen and Maddy Nelson are co-workers at the 50’s diner Leo’s Grill & Malt Shop in downtown Stillwater. Junior Brooke Espelien works at Joesph’s Family Restaurant off of Highway 36. They both experience the constant busyness of working in the food industry. Their employers expect a lot out of their employees by maintaining great customer service and working hard during their shifts.

“Our managers expect you to work 100 percent all the time. You can never sit down or stand around. I’ve actually been talked to for standing and not doing something before,” said Nelson.

Nelson’s position is a server assistant. Her main duties include making the malts, shakes and sundaes, cleaning, washing dishes, taking out the trash, stocking food and products, serving at the side window in the summer and assisting the servers in the dining room. Killen and Espelien are both servers. Their duties include waiting on tables, cleaning tables, bringing food to all customers, washing dishes when necessary, cleaning their food areas and preparing drinks.

“I like Joesph’s because I like the people I work with. I like making friends with our regular customers and learning them by name. Most of them are old and really nice people,” said Espelien.

Working with food, however, is not always the cleanest job. Most of the time the employees have to deal with unsanitary conditions.

“Sometimes work can be really gross, like your shirt gets sticky with ice cream. We have to have our hair up in a ponytail for girls, but hair still gets everywhere and it’s so annoying,” said Killen.

Worse than being covered in food or smelling like dishes, students who work with food have to handle impatient, rude customers in a positive way.

“The customers can be really rude. They don’t understand how much we do. For example, one night we got a group of 14 and 8 within 5 minutes of each other and there was only one server. They were all complaining and being really rude. Also if we’re really busy and it takes 20 minutes for people’s food to be made, they freak out. They just don’t understand that we have limited amounts of people working and serving them all at once can’t just happen,” said Nelson.

Some of the benefits that accompany food businesses are employee discounts and the ability to eat food whenever you’re working. At Leo’s, the discount is 50 percent for employees off and 20 percent off for family and friends.

“An advantage is sometimes you can sneak food. Everybody takes a spoonful of ice cream every once in a while. It depends on what manager is working, but if we accidentally mess up on an order we can eat it back in the kitchen. Also, along with your paycheck, you get tips every time you work,” said Nelson.

While making food is messy and demanding, employees can enjoy food at a great discount. Working together with other teenagers can be fun and productive if everybody knows their place in the restaurant. The food industry is a great example of teamwork and builds character for young teenagers, while earning minimum wage and tips. Most restaurants also will hire students starting at 15 years old, like Leo’s. It’s a great first job and teaches students how to be productive and the money worth of hard work.