So, let's say it's 2 pm on a wednesday. You start the program, it starts at 2, and for every minute that goes by, it resembles an hour in the program. My goal is to have the program run for 5-7 hours, which is basically 5-7 minutes real time. I have absolutely no idea where to start on this. My teacher suggested to get the system clock and manipulate it.

Are you making a game or what? If you are doing 5-7 hours of processing it will be impossible, because you would need a 60x faster processor. If you are running a simulation then just make it run in as little time as possible.

Sorry, I should have given a little background info. I'm running a restaurant simulation. What do you mean run in as little time as possible?

If it is a simple simulation you do not have to use real time, u can just write fake time variables, but if u want to include actual time you can use the <ctime> library: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ctime/

what you can do is make one second of simulation time equal to 1 min of real time, hopefully this helps...