The first few minutes after the lunch bell rings feature a common sight: people running out of their classrooms toward the lunch line. If they don’t get there in time, they know they’ll be stuck in the daily lunch crowd.
The amount of students at Carlmont has gone up, and so has wait time to buy hot lunch. The lines can take up to 15 minutes to get through, which is 15 minutes taken out of an only 40-minute lunch.
Sophomore Kazim Haider explained his reasons for not wanting to buy hot lunch. He said, “The lines suck. There’s a lot of pushing, and people could get hurt.”
Haider is not the only one with these opinions. Sophomore Michelle Tenin also said that she does not like waiting in line.
“I hate waiting in the lines because people push to get to the front,” Tenin said.
Classic foods like the spicy chicken sandwich sell out fast, but some students don’t care much about the quality of the food.
Haider said, “I don’t really care about the food, it’s more the line situation that turns me away.”
Many students choose hot lunch because of the convenience and the time it is supposed to save them. Senior Kamrin Choye does not buy lunch from the school.
She said, “Students often buy lunch because it’s hot, and because they don’t have time to make their lunch in the morning.”
Some students have opted out of buying lunch, and instead turn to other options.
“Sometimes I go to the student store instead,” said Tenin.
Laura, who has worked at the lunch station for 12 years and declined to give her last name, has a different point of view than the students.
She said, “We have enough lunch areas, but we need more cashiers because many have left.We just trained a new cashier to help with this.”
All in all, the choice to buy lunch at Carlmont is heavily influenced by the factor of just how quickly a student can run from fourth period to the lunch line.
