[Rick Lee]

When I was making such low wages in summer jobs, my dad joked that it made life easier on them because I ate so many of my meals for free or nearly free at the restaurants where I worked. And when I was a day laborer at a moving warehouse, the driver who took us for the day always fed us, sometimes got beer for us too. If you work in a restaurant, you probably can live on less than $5 a day for food.

Back then at Wendy's employees got a 50% discount, but if you opened the store on the morning shift, your lunch was free. That was before they had the "value" or "combo" menus. So it was actually cheaper to go across the street to BK and pay full price there than to pay half price at Wendy's.

And in my experience working in restaurants in the DC area, all the servers from the neighboring restaurants knew each other and hooked each other up when dining or having happy hour at the other places.