As their stomachs growl with hunger, students grow agitated as half of their lunch mod ticks away, giving them only ten minutes to eat lunch. Because mods are only twenty minutes long, if students spends ten minutes in line, that leaves only ten minutes left to eat lunch. They can eat in ten minutes, but that leaves students feeling uncomfortable or sick.
This was not an issue at the beginning of the school year. There were always two cashiers waiting on students and getting the job done efficiently. However, since winter break, efficient is not a word that could be used to describe the cafeteria breakdown.
Some days, when the mods are shorter due to a special bell, a lunch mod can be eighteen minutes long. Wednesdays and special bells make lunch shorter, and when you add in time for the cafeteria line, a student is down to about eight minutes to eat lunch, which is extremely unhealthy.
One cashier on duty is not enough manpower to handle over fifty students at a time trying to buy lunch. It is a stressful job that involves dealing with crabby teenagers that are tired and hungry. All these students want to do is hurry up and eat.
Most underclassmen have off only one or two mods a day. It seems like a decent amount of time, but if they have homework, have to study, or have to help a teacher, their time is quickly eaten away. Usually a student has only one true lunch mod and when their time is so short, they have just enough time to gulp down a chicken patty before running to the next class.
This situation recently took a turn for the worse on Grandparents Day. There were no cashiers at all. Some students with only one mod off did not even get to eat lunch that day. The students asked the teachers to step in, but they did not have the authority to use the cash register. The cafeteria workers in the back had the same issue. Students had no way to pay for or eat their lunch.
These incidents left students in an uproar. Something has to be done or else students will all start packing lunches. That will leave us in a situation where there is no cafeteria and all of those workers will be out of a job. Nobody wants to see that.
There are many solutions to consider when trying to solve this issue. The easiest solution would be to have two cashiers on duty during the lunch mods. This would cut down the time and have the cafeteria running more smoothly.
Another solution would be to lengthen lunch mods to thirty minutes instead of twenty minutes. This way, even if students stand in line for ten minutes, they will still receive a solid twenty minutes of lunchtime.
Megan Foard is a Multimedia Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.