This summer, I had my first job ever at the Little Engine Eatery in Buena Vista. This restaurant is a nonprofit business that believes in providing work experience for teens and young adults with learning disabilities. They provided me with support while I worked there, including even giving me a ride everyday to work in BV all the way from Salida.
Communities often lack job opportunities for young adults with learning disabilities such as autism, ADD/ADHD and nonverbal learning disabilities. The benefits of a job like this are that employees get to learn business skills such as handling money, customer service and social skills. This will help them gain confidence to hopefully continue on in life with work experience.
Initially, I was nervous about going to work there, mainly because it was my first job and I didn’t know what to expect. As a cashier, I was worried that I might not be very good at counting money. Since this business is a food truck, it seems that more people like to pay for their meal with cash rather than credit or debit cards. I always felt so anxious about counting change in front of the customers because I was worried that they would judge me and think that I shouldn’t be working at the register. But no one really judged me at all and I felt like everyone was very understanding.
Something else that I learned at work this summer was how to push myself to stay focused and get my job done, even when it gets super hard. My most challenging days this summer were when it would get very busy and I would find myself getting very stressed out trying to prepare one person’s food while there were more orders piling on top of eachother. But I never gave up because I loved what I was doing. I feel like I really learned how to keep myself from getting too anxious in the heat of the moment.
This was my first job and it really helped me meet new people and improve my social anxiety. My first day on the job I had a customer that complained about our food. The woman was very loud and obnoxious. I think that the whole issue was really just her problem and we hadn’t done anything wrong. The customer complained about the food to my manager and even spit it out on the ground in front of her. I think she just didn’t like it. We tried our best to help her the best we knew how, but she still complained and just left. At times like this, I learned to just understand that some people are just going to be unhappy and I can’t let that bother me.
Not everything about my job at the Little Engine Eatery was always focused on learning challenging life lessons. One time, my boss, Jenny, invited us to Mini-Blessings in Buena Vista, which is a ranch that has horses. We got to walk the tiny horses around with our friends, and I got to know this mini-horse named Aurora. We all had lunch together and we all were allowed to pet the big horses and learn about some of them. It makes such a difference spending time with your work colleagues in a space other than the food truck.
At the end of the summer, Little Engine Eatery closed down the truck until next summer. I have fond memories of my time at this job this past summer, and I will always remember the way that the owners made me feel when I worked there. I recommend that people should go try their food next summer because the food is great and the owners are good people.
