Advice to make the courtyard more enjoyable for all

Everyone wants to get through the lunch line as quickly as possible, but there seems to always be a line that lingers on. To avoid spending half of your lunch mod in line, we sat down and spoke with the expert on the whole system, nutritional services employee Rose Kent. Kent has been working at Westside as a for nine years, so she was the perfect person to get intel from. When asked what students could do to help shorten the line, Kent had an answer.

“Put [student] ID’s in their hand, know their ID number and know how much is in your lunch account before you get to lunch,” Kent said. “Our production has gone up immensely in the last couple of years so that’s the other reason why lines are a little longer. Students have been finding the food more appealing in the past years, causing more students to want to eat.”

The space in the cafeteria is quite limited, therefore not allowing any room to add another register. Instead, the cafeteria staff has adapted another form of payment for students. The handheld registers seem to help with making lines go smoother.

“If we get much bigger, maybe we have to go to two handheld ones [registers],” Rose said.

The administration has given complete control to the cafeteria staff when it comes to the organizational system of the Courtyard.

“We have tried things [forms of organization] since I’ve been here and it’s always gotten better. It’s probably going smoother than it’s ever been,” Kent said.

Overall, the biggest thing that we as students can do to help is come prepared with our ID’s and be patient with each other. In the end, we all just want a meal..