Cafeteria Bottlenecks

The movie Home Alone has a scene when Kevin is sitting in a chair eating ice cream covered with all sorts of junk food. He yells, “Guys, I’m eating junk and watching rubbish! You better come out and stop me!” Of course he is home alone so so one stops him. I always thought that his parents had not spent a lot of time stopping him before, but that is just me.

My mother was an official ’50s mother. She cooked supper for us every night. She didn’t ask me what I wanted. She didn’t ask me if I wanted something else. She cooked it. She put it on the plate. No family style. That way, my father didn’t over eat. If he went to the stove to look for more, there was no more because she cooked enough for the three of us.

When I was teaching at Alpha, they had kids helping with the cafeteria. 6th grade kids. Some of them were my kids. One of the upper grade teachers at Alpha had cafeteria duty each day. We also had lunch recess duty which made other schools crazy. What the other schools didn’t understand was that we wanted it that way. We wanted a teacher out during lunch so we wouldn’t have to put up with recess nonsense at the end of the lunch hours. We ran a tight ship at Alpha. But I digress.

I didn’t mind the cafeteria duty because all we had to do was keep the kids lined up and excuse them one class at a time as there was room for them in the lunch room. It usually went pretty quickly because we had two principals in the cafeteria making sure things kept moving. However occasionally things would jam up. The principal at the door would be called to the office to talk to a wimpy parent who was upset because someone made their kid behave and the lines would move very slowly. Teachers never were supposed to leave the lines, but I would tell the kids they would be walking the line until Santy Clause comes if they so much as breathe. I would go inside and see what the problem was.

The problem was that there are eight zillion wimpy parents who let their kids run the show. The reason for the jam up was that the primary kids were still in line. Here you have squeakers, pushing their tray above their heads. Then there is the helpful sixth grader asking each kid if he or she wants peaches! What does a squeaker know about peaches? He is in line because his teacher told him to line up. He is a second language learner and is not sure if the word peaches should make a picture of an apple or peach in his head. So, he stares. The helpful sixth grader asks again. What does the squeaker know? He is just pushing the tray and hoping for the best.

Enter Mr. B. who tells the sixth graders to dish up the food. Don’t ask. Put a peach on the tray. There are 300 kids outside, waiting to eat. Step two is to tell the kids to get moving in line. Get your spork package, put your tray on the slider and start moving. Step three, fix each one there, including the cooks, with a teacher stare and go back out. The lines outside are still neat because the kiddies believe you might look out the tinted window and make their class last. Plus they have seen Mr. B’s class walking the line and there might be a teacher walking by who will tell them if the don’t stay in line and keep quiet the will be walking the line when Santy Clause comes. If they look across the playground, they will likely see some kids walking the line. Sometimes I looked out the tinted windows. We ran a tight ship at Alpha. Some called it Alphatraz.

Moral. Don’t ask a kid what he wants to eat. What does a kid know? Kids will eat garbage if you let them. Look at Kevin. I don’t think you should ask a four year old what he wants to eat and I don’t think you should let a four year old drive your car, either.