part time job before and after NS

I realised I haven’t really written about the other part-time jobs I did, so I decided to dedicate this post to my part-time job journey.

I’ve done quite a few part-time jobs before, mostly in bars and similar places. But most of those were short-term, so I don’t think they’re really worth writing about.

One job I did for a much longer period was at a café, where I worked for about two years before going into NS, and then continued again after I finished NS.

What I liked about this job was that it was a simple café. We rotated between roles such as cashier, serving food and coffee, or doing antipasti (basically salads). Nothing too fancy, but very straightforward.

Another thing I liked was the location. It was just one bus ride away, which made commuting easy, even though the journey took about an hour each way. This was also where I got to meet a lot of new people from different walks of life and genuinely enjoyed my time there.

The pay wasn’t bad either and if I remember correctly, it was around $11 on weekdays and $12 on weekends. More importantly, this was where I met people who would later become future business owners, including some of my web development clients. It really helped me expand my network beyond just school.

During this period, especially before NS, I tended to work full shifts. I would start at 7am and sometimes end at 10:30pm, just to earn every bit of money I could. There was a cap on the number of hours you could work, so I tried to optimise around that.

I worked across different outlets of the same café just to maximise my working hours, rather than staying home to play games. Because of the hour cap, there were times when I had a few hours of “free time” between shifts and I would literally spend those 3 hours sleeping in the toilet before my next shift started.

One more perk of working in F&B, especially closing shifts, was being able to bring excess food home since it was considered wastage. This was also the period in my life where I drank way too much coffee.

That said, I never really drank coffee for school or studying, since I didn’t do overnight work.

All in all, it was a good job. I met new people, experienced life outside of school, and learned things that I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise.