Right before break last semester I witnessed a reuniting in the Emporium. I was paying for my breakfast when all of a sudden the lady scanning my Frosted Flakes stopped dead in her tracks.

A student had just entered the Emporium exclaiming the name stretched across her name tag. The woman just stood there, eyes wide open and jaw dropped, staring at this guy like she had just seen a ghost. 'I haven't seen you all semester!' exclaimed the boy. 'Mr. (it was early I can't remember his name),' the woman cried. She ran around the counter and the two embraced as she asked him where he had been and told him that he 'still looked just as handsome as ever.'

As this was occurring I thought to myself, 'am I ever going to get to eat breakfast'? But more importantly I realized the people who work in food services here at UD are some of the nicest people on campus.

Think about it. How many times have you been at Marycrest or KU and the person ringing out your lunch asked you how your day was and seemed generally concerned? My day always gets a little brighter when they sneak a peak at my ID and add a, 'have a nice day, Stacey!'

They don't have to do these things, they don't have to comment on liking our new sweatshirt, or ask us if our weekend was enjoyable. They are just generally nice people. Its pretty amazing they can wake up early to fix food, deal with college students all day long and still be kind enough to ask us how we are.

We wake up and are in a bad mood because we maybe had a pop quiz, they work all day and always seem to be smiling. My friend, Nick, jokes around how he winks at the women at VWK so they will make his wraps extra big. But I'm pretty sure the ladies give the special treatment he gets to everyone.

The people who work in food services are kind of like our parents away from home. They always want to know how our day was, they want us to get a good sized portion and be full, they want to make sure we stay clean (it is impossible to name one time your napkin basket wasn't full) and seem to generally care. Even if you are having the worst of days you can't help but smile when they ask 'do you want me to cut that in half for you, baby'?

I honestly couldn't tell you how much these people make, but whatever it is it's not enough. We pay a lot to go here and I'm sure they don't see enough of it. To me it seems like same people are always working. The same person that rang out my late night snack will be ringing out my cereal before my early class.

Do these people ever go home?

They definitely deserve a raise, a vacation and some thanks from the many students they serve each day. Maybe we can all try to ask them how their day is for once. When it comes down to it, its simple acts of kindness that show how lucky we are to have such great food services employees.