As second-year psychobiology student Jill Chanley walks past the coffee station at Bruin Café, she is met with a chorus of greetings.

Since she started working there in January 2010, Chanley has joined a group of employees, students and non-students alike, who have formed strong bonds through work in dining facilities.

Chanley attributed the physically small work spaces of Bruin Café and other Hill eateries as a reason students and permanent workers grow close.

She added, however, that those ties have now extended to relationships that exist even when she’s not working.

As a student employee, Chanley sees and admires the permanent employees who juggle single parenthood or work the late shift after being at school all day at another university. She has seen prom photos and heard about the college aspirations of co-workers’ children.

Chanley recalled a time when she was studying in Bruin Café and feeling unwell. One of the permanent employees she is close to brought out a cut-up apple and orange to help out.

“I feel like she’s my mom but a friend too,” Chanley said.

Co-workers play similar roles for third-year psychology and sociology student Ida Garcia, who has also worked at Bruin Café since winter 2010. Some bring tea to her room when she’s sick, while others tell great stories from when they were younger, she said.

“There are so many interesting characters,” Garcia said of the co-workers, many of whose families she has met. She even attended the birthday party and baptism of a co-worker’s child.

Although food services employee Ramona Givings has never worked with Chanley or Garcia, she’s become used to the nickname “Mom” from other students she trains.

As an employee on the Hill for more than seven years, Givings tries to make the students she trains feel comfortable in their new environment.

“You can tell when they’re away from home and scared,” Givings said of the students, who are the same age as her own children.

One of the students Givings has trained is Andrew Hattala, who graduated from UCLA last year with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Since training with Givings in Rieber Dining Hall three years ago, Hattala has transitioned from student employee to current permanent employee.

Although Givings has since moved to Café 1919 and Hattala to Bruin Café, the two joke and catch up as they sit outside Café 1919.

“I trained Andrew,” Givings said, pointing to him with long nails painted bright fuschia. Then, turning to him, “And you did a good job. … I like his speed. He’s really fast at the monitor.”

Givings said it was nice to see that Hattala takes orders the same way she does, using the efficient method she taught him.

“I don’t have her nails though,” Hattala shot back with a smile.

Givings carries her title as adopted mother with pride.

“It makes me feel really special that they think of me as a mom away from home,” Givings said. “I’d want someone to do that for my children.”