By Czarinah Galve, staff writer
Trying to balance school work & working part time can sometimes be overwhelming and stressful. But having friends as your coworkers and your schoolmates, makes things a lot more fun, and eases the workload.
In the middle of the summer, my friend Juliana referred me to work at Icicles, an ice cream shop downtown, because they needed workers, and since I was bored with no plans for the summer, I agreed, thinking it would be just another summer job.
At first, Juliana and I’s schedules never aligned, so we never got to work much together so it was pretty lonely. But once I officially became an employee, I started befriending the other workers and our group just clicked.
As I started hanging out with my co-workers more, the biggest coincidence was that all of the main workers at Icicles also went to school at Galileo. Although it wasn’t a big deal to know we all went to school together, it contributed to tightening our bond.
It also helped our friendship that our work environment was fun and light, and given that we are all the same age, it didn’t take long for us to get close, especially with the amount of free time we had during the summer.
We would plan to go out during our off days and if not that, we’d have a spontaneous night out after work. I mean, you can’t hang out with people and not form a bond. And after all the time we spent together as a group we got a lot closer.
Everyone going to Galileo only helped further strengthen our friendship. Since the beginning of the school year, our daily routine consists of hanging out with each other during and after school, which is of course, at work.
The backroom of Icicles has become our hangout spot. You’ll always find us hanging out there, even during our off days. We do homework, projects and play board games while on the clock. There is never a dull moment at work with them.
It may sound like we’re unprofessional at Icicles by hanging out there, but we always make sure our tasks as workers are done and our customers are helped before we do anything non-work related; and we have permission from our boss.
Going into Icicles,I didn’t expect to gain life-long friendships from rolling ice cream. However, sometimes controlled chaos can be too much. I think as a whole we all give time for one another to recharge and understand that it’s needed. It’s not always just having fun and working together, we help each other grow and be successful. We can rely on each other and be there for one another.
