Sonali-Liu Yifei

A “holiday” sometimes means falling vapid. I just watched a TED talk about virtual community and felt that this meaningless online wandering is continuingly swallowing all my interests and aliveness. So I grabbed a book and went to the Mc-Donald to have some “fun”.

The girl who usually stands at the counter wasn’t there. Instead a woman, dressing like the manager served me a coffee. After the girl came back, I told her quietly that her manager did not make coffee as well as she did. She laughed out loudly and proudly said: “sure! She hasn’t been professionally trained!”

There were no more customers so we had a long chat. I always thought selling coffee was the most relaxing work in Mc-Donald since there was never long queue in front the counter. Surprisingly I was wrong. The girl said most waitresses would choose not to work at Mc-Cafe even they could get 50 more dollar a month. She needs to wash the coffee machines, sell coffee, work on data reports and other chores that I did not follow. She firstly was set to work in the afternoon and she successfully gained some constant customers. However, she was later adjusted to serve in the morning so all her constant customers left. Now she regained some morning constant customers but tomorrow she would be again readjusted to the afternoon roll. Unfortunately, if the monthly turnover did not achieve the expectation, she would be scolded by her manager, who switched her again and again.

“I regret I came to experience life here at the first time!” she continued, “the first time you join work, you will definitely feel unable to blend in. Some colleges will try to push you aside and your boss may scold you for no reason! So you must learn to be tough and strong, or they will think you are easily bullied. You are lucky you are now in school! But you will have to stay here for 6 years!!!”

Her words and stories were really scary. But nothing is certain unless I experience by myself. Every thing can be changing in the next 4 years. I am still looking forward to my university life and my further future.

After I came back, I received a message from one of my classmates in high school saying he just wanted to talk to someone. I felt surprised, firstly because he chose to text to talk (even though I admit sometimes people tend to tell the truth when not having a real conversation, but texting means having the time to organize, thus means speaking like the person one want to speak like but not one himself), secondly because we only became classmates for about 2 months after a temporary class adjustment and after that we nearly never met again. But I became the one he asked for help. I guess he just felt the future unpredictable so he blocked himself in the past memories.

The future will definitely become tougher but will also become more interesting as long as we have the courage to face it. Recalling the past is sometimes cheering and fine, but can never be fascinating. Wallowing in the recollections cannot create a glorious future.

It is amazing that these three things happened in one morning. Unpredictable though, I believe every thing happens for some reason. The reasons can only be found after experiences.