Learning Curves in the New Dining Hall

The student body’s first week in the Brick Dining Hall was marked by Wednesday lunch lines stretching out to the front steps, an insurgence of bumper carts, push-cart drifting, and line cutting like never seen before. There’s no worse feeling than wasting away in a stagnant line knowing your away game bus is leaving in ten minutes, only to get cut by ten people ahead each grabbing four slices of pizza, reminiscent of the dark days before the dining hall crackdown managed to systemize lines. Unfortunately, this feeling was ever more prevalent for students this past Wednesday, with historically slow lines for pizza stretching all the way from the kitchen to the entrance. It wasn’t just buffet lines that were disturbed by the new dining hall setup—the sit-down meal system has also received big changes. On Monday night, I gathered in the first floor common room with hallmates, reflecting on our first days working the job as first and second waiters. We were able to utilize our shared experience and draw an essential conclusion: the new bumper carts are a recipe for disaster. The slippery sheen of the dining hall floor, coupled with the cart wheels’ stiffness make for an unnecessarily difficult waiting experience. Thus, the job is usually a process of struggling to start the cart’s momentum, finally gaining enough momentum to inch forward, then being cut by someone Tokyo-drifting into the line in front of you. While these new systems certainly have their merits, the confusing waiting system for first and second waiters have made the pacing of sit-down meals markedly slower. On Monday, students and teachers were devastated to have arrived at third period almost fifteen minutes late. The following day, students were again terribly disappointed when they were released almost ten minutes late. Not only that, but the cleanliness of the dining hall was in decline early on in the week. Students would often leave sit-down and walk through meals without wiping down tables, leaving extra work for our devoted dining hall staff to carry out after long shifts in the kitchen. However, recent observations in the dining hall have shown improvement, both in the student body’s ability to navigate the new complex systems, as well as the responsibility demonstrated by students in keeping our dining hall clean. For the past few sitdown lunches, students have been punctually dismissed to afternoon classes following smoother first and second waiting experiences, especially thanks to the hard work of the napkin crew, kitchen staff, and Mr. Kelly’s direction. Not only that, during his recent speech