30 year olds can look like 20 year olds from far away. It really depends on whether they kept in shape. Usually those who get children lose their figure fast and no longer fit in with the slim twenties bunch. I wasn't in shape, but I kept a slim figure, mostly because I was impoverished and couldn't afford food. So working at the phone bank as a 30 year old wasn't all that bad. Most people just assumed that I was an older college student. I think most people just pegged me as a guy in his twenties, older than them, but not 30 yet.

There were two great improvements to my life that this job gave me. The first one was that I could now eat everyday without worry. This alone was such a vast improvement to my life that I could never complain about things like having to come in ten minutes early or not getting our lunches paid. Things that some of the other kids complained about.

The fact that I now could walk to

Chipotle

during my unpaid lunch break and order a $6.63 Chicken Bowl (after tax) without having to worry about being broke made me feel richer than a king. This must be what they mean when they say wealth is relative. Some of my friends felt broke while having big houses trying to pay off their mortgage and fund their next vacation, and here I was feeling like 

Bill Gates

, being able to eat Chipotle for lunch everyday without it breaking my bank. 

Most of the kids ate out for lunch everyday. It was rare to see someone bring in a packed lunch. I didn't think anything of it until one day a coworker laughed and said, "damn I can't believe I spend an entire day's wage for a week's worth of lunch." 

"Isn't that what working this job is for?" Caroline said. 

"Maybe. But I'm thinking about bringing in some lunches," the coworker said. His name was Robert.

Robert was a Vietnamese junior studying biological lab sciences. Something like that... an acronym containing four letters, but I can't remember what that fourth one was. He actually had already worked at the Office of Financial Aid and knew his way around the system. So he actually wasn't a coworker but a supervisor. He walked around the room, and whenever one of us got stuck, we'd flag him over and tell the person on the phone "hang on, let me get my manager." and Robert would solve the issue swiftly, like a surgeon.