Students stream into the lunchroom, eager to refuel after hours of classes. But, to the dismay of many, the lines grind to a halt when the first student hits the register. Lunch ladies appear overwhelmed. For some kids, the period is almost over by the time they get their lunch.

“It makes me frustrated when I can’t get my pizza,’ senior Ben Trueblood said.

According to MCCSC Food Director Hattie Johnson, the change is for the best: “[Before the change,] every day the lunch ladies had to check the inventory and stay late to enter paperwork,’ she said. With the new procedure, lunch ladies enter each item individually instead of having a blanket ‘lunch’ button. Johnson continued, “now the system’s software registers inventory automatically and saves the lunch ladies work.”

Bloomington South’s own manager of food services agreed that having to manually enter items for the inventory was a problem. But she also said that they had little to no warning or training for the change in system, which is why lunch checkout was so slow at first. And the new layout wasn’t without its problems: for example, instead of the apples being included in the fresh fruit category as one would expect, they had their own separate category.

MCCSC has responded to the problem of slow checkout by recently giving the lunch ladies back their trusty ‘lunch button’ – but on the condition that they only use it when their line is getting backed up. And every time they press that button, they add an extra few minutes of work (without pay) at the end of their day.

Perhaps senior Emily Axsom said it best: “(The long lines) were frustrating because we only have a half an hour for lunch, but I really just felt bad for the lunch ladies.”