Life In A Day

This is my first piece for features. I had to write a 700 word feature on my own life before I started University, in the style of The Times Sunday Magazine. It's been tweaked a little, it was marked so I've built on what was said. Here goes... 


Life In The Day: The Teenage Workalite


The workaholic and social butterfly, Charlotte Neal, tells of the unseen life of the teen


Usually, I wake up to the sound of my Blackberry alarm buzzing on my bedside table at 6.45am. I never find the will to get out of bed on a work-day so I end up hitting the 'snooze' button at least three times until I feel I've had a satisfactory enough lie-in - 7.00am - to start my day with a sprinkling of luxury. I'm the only one awake in my house, I live with my Mother, Step-father and younger Sister. 


I normally like to brush my hair as soon as I'm up - it freaks me out if I don't as it feels like spiders on the back of my neck. I make my bed, head downstairs and select the cereal for the day; Coco Pops. I settle alone at our family table with a Cosmo to read and eat my way through the next 15 minutes. Waitress don't get very long lunch breaks, so I know I'll be hungry later unless I eat now - so I pour another bowl and re-read my favourite fashion article. 


Often when I get to work, I can't remember the journey there. It's as if I'd been driving on autopilot for the last ten minutes which is a little worrying. The restaurant door isn't open, it's only 8.00am, so I head round the back and hammer on the door repeatedly until it swings open. I'm second here. Everyone else files in whilst I'm dressing for work. I'm always assigned the cleaning for front of house, apparently I possess attention for detail. I make my way through the boring and seemingly endless tasks of vacuuming, toilet bleaching and floor-mopping. It can be lonely sometimes - two hours of a one-man job. 


Often there are lunching ladies and happy families pouring into the restaurant come 12o'clock. It can become predictable who will order the chicken salad and who will order the meat feast pizza. It's actually quite boring. I do find it good fun at times though, in a normal day I speak to such an array of people - small, tall, young, old, fat, thin, black, white, chinese, british, american or latino. It is really interesting to listen to their stories rather than telling my own. The length of each shift varies but usually I'm home by five. 


First task - count up my tips and see how much money I made, normally feeling a little smug with myself that my hard work has paid off. Second, shower and wash the Italiano smell from my skin. That's always a problem when you come home, your entire body smells of work and without a shower it is hard to leave the day behind. When I'm done with the cleansing ritual I like to stand in my kitchen and talk with my Mum. We always catch up at some point in the day, over a peach squash and some hobnobs. 


I like to meet up with my friends three or four times in a week. We go for drinks at the pub, go to the cinema, chat over dinner or occasionally we go out clubbing. I am a very talkative person, but I also like to listen to other people, I find it stops me thinking about my own day or things that are worrying me. We usually pick traditional pub food over anything posh or swanky - student life has its limits! Plus, I have a boyfriend to wine and dine me at the posh restaurants. I see him three or four times a week, he is working through the summer too and we are both saving for university. 


On a week night I'm normally in bed between 12 and one p.m. However, I then have to face the dilemma of sleep. My head fills with the things that happened during the day, or my plans for the next. To empty it out I wrote a blog post and listen to my ipod - 'Hed Kandi' or chilled acoustic. It only takes me 20 minutes but by the time I'm done I feel exhausted and drift to sleep, only to start work again in six hours time... 


Let me know what you think :)