Our state university uses GrubHub for student meal orders at all dining areas except the main dining hall. A couple of the cafes also take cash and cards at the counter. I’ve ordered at the counter a handful of times over the last 2 semesters, but yesterday was the worst. One of their employees told me they’re understaffed, and I suspect GrubHub allows them to take more orders than they can fill in a reasonable amount of time, but yesterday’s wait for a simple grilled chicken sandwich and sweet potato fries was 31 minutes. And the order I received wasn’t even mine.
There were plenty of orders (at least a dozen) under the warming lights when I got to the pickup area and twice as many students, but no staff was expediting. After 10 minutes of waiting and not seeing a single order move I found a staff member and they located an expediter. He was a college student so I’m sure he’s still learning. He’d ask students to give him an order number then he’d search thru all the orders for that number. Then he’d ask for another number and start the process all over again. I gently suggested it might be more efficient to just call out the order numbers he had. He did for a couple of minutes then disappeared to the back of the kitchen and didn’t come back.
After about 5 minutes I asked a staff member to find an expediter and they made him come back to the front. He went right back to asking students to give him an order number. I gave him mine and he gave me an order that turned out to be someone else’s. Clearly he needs more training (and a couple more people to help him), but this issue is deeper than that at our school. The wait times at the other cafes are also long. There’s no such thing as a quick bite between classes. I’m wondering how your kids are faring at their schools.
I haven’t heard of issues this year at my D’s school. There was lots of grumbling last semester but they seem to have worked out staffing and distribution issues. That said, my D went off meal plan this year and has been cooking for herself so I don’t have direct knowledge (just that the parent FB group blows up when people are unhappy with things and there haven’t been any angry posts ; )).
At Michigan State University, they are so short staffed that they are asking employees and alumni to volunteer in the cafeterias. They also increased student wages to try to get more student workers.
At DD2’s school they have not been able to open one out of three dining halls because they can’t get enough full time staff. Limited hours at other locations like Dunkin. The town has few restaurants, so the kids are kind of miserable.
Yes, the variety of meal choices, lacking access to buffets or similar options, limiting offerings to those that can be packaged “grab and go”, etc. have all very negatively affected food services, according to my daughter.
By now she’s on a minimum meal plan, just so that she can pick up the occasional snack between classes - breakfast/dinners she prepares in her appartement.
Many of these Universities have vaccine mandates for their staff/workers. If this lowers the possible pool of workers by even 10% - this has a huge ripple effect. The workers who are there are overworked - so get frustrated/overwhelmed and quit. Rinse/repeat. Raising wages does not have much of a benefit in the current inflationary environment that we are currently experiencing. There is too much incentive through entitlement programs for people to not work at all - so why put yourself into that stressful environment. The same situation is happening in health care/pharmacies. You vote for socialists- you get socialism . It always leads to a shortage of goods/services, just crack a history book. This is just the very tip of the iceberg. Why do people act surprised?
No clue about politics but my kid in Charleston is down a dining hall…in her dorm.
Really is this different than society ? I can go to a half empty place and be told an hour wait and it’s because they don’t have staffing. Other places have limited menus…they don’t have food.
$15 in years past would be a goldmine for kitchen service worker. Now it’s an insult.
It’s got zero to do with politics. But much to do with covid, supply chain issues and a super hot economy….regardless of your state has restrictions or not. I know bcuz my state TN has zero restrictions of any sort and we suffer all these issues.
Our school requires vaccinations so the pool of vaccinated students should be high. At the school where I work there are always more students who want jobs than there are positions, so I thought that would be the case here too.
Work study pays a standard rate and it’s set by the federal government, not the school. It’s possible students are getting jobs in town because the pay there is higher, but it’s a small town so the number of jobs is limited. The reason students work is the same as it’s always been – to earn money for books, food, and other college expenses – and there isn’t enough federal or state money to go around so that need hasn’t disappeared.
It’s a state school, so maybe the state reduced the budget and those cuts trickled down to the dining hall. I’ll have to check the job site to see if the issue is that there are jobs open that just aren’t being filled or if there just aren’t any openings.
I feel for the students who don’t have access to adequate food options at their schools. At least all of our on campus facilities seem to be open for some part of the day so we’re very lucky.
Actually, the work study rate is set by the school, not the government. Schools can pay whatever they want (but not less than the federal minimum wage). The issue is that colleges get an allocation from the government, and they have to kick in $ for at least 25% of the total spent. Many colleges don’t want to kick in any more money than they have to, so they want to keep wages low.