The lunchroom can be a chaotic place, with little over 20 minutes for students to get food and eat. No one has a view of this chaos better than lunchroom supervisor and drama teacher Wendy King. Every day she watches the hustle and bustle of the scramble area, and she has had plenty of time to recognize the flaws in our lunchroom

“I think the biggest problem is, one: how it is designed, there’s no way to form any sort of line, it has to be a mob, which does not work well. Beyond that, there are a lot of students trying to get through the lunchroom all at one time and it’s a very short amount of time,” King said, “With there being such a short amount of time, students feel that they are being rushed and that they have to fight their way through the crowd, which creates other problems: pushing, shoving, people getting hit or dropping food. Basically, it’s over-crowding and impatience.”

The students aren’t the only ones feeling rushed, the cafeteria staff constantly has to rush through the motions, to be prepared for three lunch periods.

“Everyday after lunch, Mr. Martin, the janitor, is responsible for cleaning off every table and getting all the chairs pushed in, if anyone leaves trays or trash he is the one who has to pick that up. It’s impossible for him to get all that done in four minutes, so the lunchroom supervisors are asked to help. There have been times where we have been pushing in chairs and picking up trash when we have to open up the doors to let kids into lunch,” King said. “If students throw away their trash and push in their chairs, then we (the lunchroom supervisors) have time to help with other things.”

                King sees the same problems every day, and has ideas on how the lunchroom system can move faster.

                “I think if the utensils were outside of the scramble area, that would make things easier, because there are some people that bring their lunch that just need a knife or fork. I also think they should switch the positions of the main entrées and the sides, because people go and get their tray and then have to go back through the crowd to get their side or entrée,” King said.

                Ultimately, the main problems of the lunchroom come down to one common factor.

                “We need more time for lunch, I think that would be a big help, even if it were only three or four minutes, because right now, in both of my lunch shifts, people usually get through the line with about 15 to 17 minutes left. It isn’t a lot of time,” King said. “However, adding time to lunch would mean changing class period times, which is hard to do. I think in the next few years, they (the administration) might have to even add a fourth lunch shift.”