They say you can’t understand how someone else feels until you have walked a mile in their shoes. After walking for three hours in the shoes of a waitress, my feet were covered in blisters; my legs felt like they were about ready to fall off; and my head was spinning.

Last month I started working at the new cafe in Princeton, Four and Twenty, as a waitress. I helped to get it ready by painting and doing some training, so to be all set the first day. When the first day came, it was crazy. I was supposed to work from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. I am used to waking up at 9 a.m., so the 5 a.m. alarm was shocking.

After I got there, everyone was doing the prep work. This involved checking the bathrooms, filling the butter dishes, making the coffee, cleaning the door and tons of other small tasks nobody thinks about. The doors opened at 6:30 a.m. We were expecting a slow crowd that morning, so those new to waitressing could shadow the experienced ones. Around 7:30 a.m., things got really crazy, really fast. I wasn’t able to shadow anyone and was just thrown into doing it.