Yeah…we don’t have those in The Land Of The Free.
My kids call her. “The Lunch Warden.” And we get an automated email when the lunch account gets to a certain balance.
Earlier this month, I received an annoyed note saying that my son owed money on his lunch account. He didn’t go lunchless, because the teacher paid for him. Which was nice of her. What *wasn’t *nice is that I paid the entire year’s worth of lunch money before school started, and had proof that they cashed the check. I was on the phone to Food and Nutrition Services immediately and unleashed my wrath on a number of people. (My son was highly amused by the entire situation.) It turned out that there’s another boy with my son’s name at his school. Everything was straightened out.
Wow, that’s just terrible, those poor kids 
Waaaaay back in the day when I was a kid, our folks used to buy lunch tickets ahead of time, and each day when we walked out the door my Mom would hand each of us a ticket “Don’t lose your ticket or you’ll have to starve for the day!”. And the tickets were turned in as you stood in line for lunch. I remember once losing my ticket and I just sat quietly at the table with the rest of the class, and my teacher went and got a lunch tray for me. I’m sure she paid for it out of her own pocket, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
We had tickets when I was in elementary school, too. You could use tickets, or pay cash. In high school, it was cash. When I read the article, was the first time I’ve heard about ‘lunch accounts’.
Shooting might be a bit much, but horsewhipping the messenger works for me.
About time to have your son chipped. 
I hope you thanked the teacher.
I was watching one of the 24-hour news stations at the gym earlier today (CNN? MSNBC? FOX? can’t remember), and one of the parents said that the school was supposed to have an email notification system, whereby parents would be sent an email when the money in their kids’ lunch accounts was running low.
This guy said he never got the notification, and the reporter said that other parents were making the same claim.
As they fire that person, I hope they say;
“How could you possibly have expected that taking food away from children and throwing it away would not result in it making national news?” :dubious:
Exactly. I can’t imagine that an employee that took a child’s lunch away and threw it in the garbage in front of everyone in the cafeteria wouldn’t be fired.
This.
I feel like it’s somehow become a moral imperative for some people to make sure that nobody gets something they don’t “deserve.”
I think it’s pretty obvious what happened. Some poor, untrained and uneducated worker gave out lunches without checking the students’ accounts and realized (or was told) that she would either be fired or made to pay for the lunches herself. She panicked (or was told by a superior, “Go fix it!”) and decided the best thing was to simply undo the mistake. Chances are the school in question has a paper trail for food that is sold, but not for food that is disposed of. It was a major fuck up, but the solution is to improve training and cost accounting, not to fire some poor schlub who made a mistake because she was terrified of losing her job in the first place.
An officious bureaucrat who needs to grow up.
Anyway, I’m getting a big plate full of deja vu with this story. Didn’t we all see another story substantially identical to this one just a few months ago somewhere? Anybody remember something like that? (Not sure if they dished out the food and then took it away like this, or just refused to dish out. But I’m sure there was a shitstorm not long ago about kids going hungry at lunch because their accounts got low.)
Did anyone else click on this thread, expecting Tanstaafl to be some sort of Dutch cuisine?
I am an underpaid cafeteria drone and am disgusted by this. At my school, we allow the kids to charge 3 times. They are not allowed to charge after that, but we would never withhold food from them, let alone take it away. We give them a cheese sandwich, milk, and their choice of a fruit and vegetable. Before it comes to that, they will have already received a few letters home letting the parents know what their balance is and that their child will be getting a cheese sandwich if it is not paid. I work in a somewhat affluent city and yet even here there are children that need this food, and its usually the ones that do get behind on their accounts (obviously). It would break my heart to see them treated that way because of their parent’s lack of responsibility.
I don’t know how to make a title all caps.
I THINK YOU CAN CHEAT IT IF YOU PUT IN SOME WHITE LETTERS.like this
You’re thinking of tantestaffje, of course. Literally “blossoming auntie”. Delicious treats, especially when fresh from the bakery.
What?
Oh, rijstaffel. Those are tasty too.
I thought it was a poster here and something bad had happened to them or it was their birthday. I was hoping for birthday. Don’t we have a poster named Tanstaafl here?
Except you can’t do that in a thread title.
You are so right. Thank you for correcting my bad info. I honestly appreciate it.