Spring has sprung! It's mighty warm out...and even warmer in the cafeteria. I've taken up stashing a few water bottles of my own in the freezer near the register. I'm also finding that I 'need' things from the walk-in freezer more often these days...don't ask me what, but I'm sure it'll take me a minute to find it! But most of all, the advent of warm weather means that we are now serving ice cream with lunch far more often, which often leads to what I call the Side Swap Pile-up.
It works like this. For what is called a "Type A" lunch, a kid needs to choose one entree, two sides, and a milk. That gets charged the standard lunch price, $2.25. A la carte or extra items beyond those get charged separately. This can be particularly important to the free and reduced kids...buying a Type A lunch costs them either nothing or forty cents, whereas individual items cost anywhere from fifty cents to $1.75 apiece.
The small freezer is at the end of the line, right near my register, and contains the ice cream. In today's case, there were two kinds: ice cream sandwiches and frozen juice pops, identified as a side by a small sign beside them. So the kids would get their entrees from the server, choose two sides along the line, then reach the freezer and spot the ice cream. They would then decide to swap out one of their sides for an ice cream, but instead of returning the other item to its proper place would merely set it on top of the freezer or on the edge of the milk refrigerator. Between rushes, I had to clear away the ever-growing piles of juice cups, carrots, apple slices, etc....the Side Swap Pileup.
One audacious young man cracked me up, forcing me to quickly put on my "this isn't funny" smirk to avoid encouraging him. He slid on up to my register with one entree and TWO ice cream sandwiches. "Oh no," I told him. "You need to put one of those back and choose another side. You need two different sides." After a moment's consideration, he returned one ice cream sandwich and hopefully pulled out...a frozen juice pop! Sorry kid, but nice try and thanks for the laugh.
And so the afternoon wore on, until finally I was checking out my last kid of the day...there was a sudden POP, followed by a sticky rain, and *poof* my computer died. What on Earth? I traced the source...as the server began shutting everything down and putting food away, she had slammed the lid on the milk refrigerator. Which happened to have a small container of orange juice resting on the lip. Thanks to...you guessed it...the Side Swap Pileup. The ensuing eruption of juice splattered both me and my last student, and tripped the surge protector on the computer.
I could make some sort of awful pun at this point, pertaining to the juice...pop....but, I'll abstain. I'm above that sort of thing, you know.
It works like this. For what is called a "Type A" lunch, a kid needs to choose one entree, two sides, and a milk. That gets charged the standard lunch price, $2.25. A la carte or extra items beyond those get charged separately. This can be particularly important to the free and reduced kids...buying a Type A lunch costs them either nothing or forty cents, whereas individual items cost anywhere from fifty cents to $1.75 apiece.
The small freezer is at the end of the line, right near my register, and contains the ice cream. In today's case, there were two kinds: ice cream sandwiches and frozen juice pops, identified as a side by a small sign beside them. So the kids would get their entrees from the server, choose two sides along the line, then reach the freezer and spot the ice cream. They would then decide to swap out one of their sides for an ice cream, but instead of returning the other item to its proper place would merely set it on top of the freezer or on the edge of the milk refrigerator. Between rushes, I had to clear away the ever-growing piles of juice cups, carrots, apple slices, etc....the Side Swap Pileup.
One audacious young man cracked me up, forcing me to quickly put on my "this isn't funny" smirk to avoid encouraging him. He slid on up to my register with one entree and TWO ice cream sandwiches. "Oh no," I told him. "You need to put one of those back and choose another side. You need two different sides." After a moment's consideration, he returned one ice cream sandwich and hopefully pulled out...a frozen juice pop! Sorry kid, but nice try and thanks for the laugh.
And so the afternoon wore on, until finally I was checking out my last kid of the day...there was a sudden POP, followed by a sticky rain, and *poof* my computer died. What on Earth? I traced the source...as the server began shutting everything down and putting food away, she had slammed the lid on the milk refrigerator. Which happened to have a small container of orange juice resting on the lip. Thanks to...you guessed it...the Side Swap Pileup. The ensuing eruption of juice splattered both me and my last student, and tripped the surge protector on the computer.
I could make some sort of awful pun at this point, pertaining to the juice...pop....but, I'll abstain. I'm above that sort of thing, you know.
No comments:
Post a Comment