Several students at Pentucket feel that the lunch line needs a solution to its chaotic and time-consuming nature. People are packed together very tight, partly because they are afraid of losing their spot in the line because people are constantly cutting. However, you can not blame people for cutting, as the line moves so slowly that you are at a standstill most of the time.
The line for the hot lunch at school tends to be the longest. 29 high-school students filled out a survey about the lunch line. 25 out of the 29 students say that they get a hot lunch, which is 86.2%.
The line for the hot lunch is very long and crowded, so crowded that students getting a different lunch struggle to navigate around the massive line. Students getting a different meal have to squeeze through the mob of people or wait for someone to notice and let them through to the other side so they can leave the chaos.
One high school student says, “I get shoved when trying to get lunch.”
In the survey, students rate how chaotic the line is on a scale from one to ten. One being not bad at all and ten being I can barely move and people are cutting. The results are in the photo below.
Clearly people feel that the line is chaotic.
One day during the second lunch, how long it took for the line for hot lunch to build up after the lunch bell rang was timed. It took 58 seconds for the line to build up. And about 5 seconds later this photo was taken:
The survey also tracked the amount of time students wait to get their lunch. 17 students responded with answers that were five minutes or higher, with the highest time being 15 minutes.
The time the line takes depends on the meal served that day. At lunch, the amount of time it took to get food was recorded. The meal served that day was cheese-stuffed breadsticks, marinara sauce, grated parmesan cheese, with crinkle-cut french fries. The amount of time from when the lunch bell went off to the last few people grabbing their lunch was 6 minutes, which is a relatively short time.
Another day, the amount of time it took to get lunch was recorded, the lunch served was an Italian meatball sub, grated Parmesan cheese, and oven-baked potato wedges. It took 11 minutes before the last person in line got their lunch. Keep in mind we only have 25 minutes for lunch, so some people spend almost half their lunchtime in line for food. Here’s a photo of the line that day:
A high school student says, “The lunch line gets very chaotic after 1 minute, and by the time I get to my seat I only have 15 minutes to eat.”
Results from the survey say that 28 out of 29 students want more than two people serving the hot lunch. Getting more people to serve lunch is one way to speed the line up.
Overall, many Pentucket high school students show dissatisfaction with the lunch line. It is too chaotic and time consuming, and is an issue in need of a solution.
