not sure if I'm proud of this behavior, but hey
Across the way from the building that houses my department and my office is Watterson dining hall, where one can find such things as slices of pizza, overprocessed fried chicken, burgers, fries, and sometimes a "healthy" option such as a baked potato or some such thing. Many times during my career here at ISU I've run over to Watterson to get myself a slice of pizza to hold me over for, say, a night class that goes from 5:30-8:30.
So this is what I did last night at about a quarter to 5. But, lo! I walk in and instead of being able to walk right in to choose my poison, I'm faced with a cashier and a bunch of turnstiles that I'm apparently not allowed to go through until I pay some kind of fee. Meanwhile students are filing past me, handing their cards to the cashier, who swipes them and allows them through.
So, I say to the cashier: What's all this?
C: It's the new meal plan. It's all you can eat.
Me: What if I just want a slice of pizza?
C: It's nine dollars for the meal.
Me: For a slice of pizza?
C: It's all you can eat.
Me: You've got to be kidding me.
C shakes his head. Students are filing past me and I'm standing there dumbfounded. My mouth is probably hanging open, cartoon-like.
Me: So I guess I'll just stand here until I see a student I know and he'll get me a slice of pizza.
A couple students chuckle at me.
A couple minutes pass.
Me: Are people upset about this?
C: Yeah, faculty are pretty upset about it.
Me: I can see why. Nine dollars for a slice of pizza.
Pause.
Me: You're not really gonna make me stand here until I see a student I know, are you?
He sighs. Not sure what to do with the likes of me. Difficult faculty. He's heard about us.
Me: I have to teach from 5:30 til 9:20 and I just want a slice of pizza.
The emotional appeal.
Finally he hands me a to-go container. A small to-go container. Apparently if one pays for the nine-dollar meal and wants to take it to go, one must fit everything into this small container. There goes my plan to bring five of my friends and pay for one meal.
I go through the turnstile and over to the pizza counter. Where they used to serve it up for you, it's now serve yourself. The student behind the counter shrugs when I ask him what he does back there. "Slice the pizzas," he says.
Me: Which one is the freshest?
I leave with my really-not-all-that-fresh slice of pizza in a container not made for it and I wave thank you to the cashier.
posted by aerobil @ 5:38 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
In a country that spends half its Federal budget on ways to kill, at an institution where the humanities building is a dilapidated joke compared to the one built for the business school, this sort of short-sighted, consequence-filled plan is what we can expect.
A la pop machines in k-12 schools, the decrease in public funding to the university system, and invading a sovereign nation in the 21st century.
From the foolish* aristocracy perspective its all about teaching the economic livestock to be corralled for easy sheering and obedient and efficient dully produced work. Thus reifying the fallacy of one human as more worthy, better, smarter, more (insert some other fake modern category) than some other human by virtue of birth, education, age, score on some test or other, or another ultimately subjective distinguishing mark.
All to reinforce the false meritocracy. Doing so by creating sadly wasted humans who are professionally and intellectually dull, but almost insanely (childlike) emotionally vibrant. And by economically ossifying socio-economic stratification to keep them from us (whichever side of that separation you fall on or where in between you live/have lived/will live).
Or I suppose that's what Jack and his gang might say in a play written for today.
Tra la-la.
* Foolish because of course revolutions are an inevitable fact of history (A), and (B) because no matter how ossified social stratification is, it is never immutable--time eventually evens it all out. Or foolish because god will get 'em (if they or you believe), or they are doing a harm to themselves, which they must suppress, but cancer-like it eats away at them just the same.
Yikes Dr. R....yikes.
It's a Commie plot! The university no longer teaches or preaches the good life, it dishes it up at $9 a crack, thus turning the cafeteria into the equivalent of an opium den where you can hang out from morning till closing time, without going to class, gorging yourself into oblivion. This will result in an easy overthrow of the government when the Chinese get tired of footing the bill for our follies, because the intelligentsia will not be able to stand up, let alone think; they will roll over and play dead, or more likely be dead from pizza crust stuffed with artery-blocking curdled cow's milk with salt added.
Think Kosher! And publish the name of the idiot who signed off on this, acting _in loco parentis_ and submit the story to CNN!
(Have you noticed that even our garlic now comes from China--and we all know what they use for fertilizer, right?)
If it weren't so pathetic, it would be hilarious.
shoe
This is really sad. Chick-fil-a has been a savior. Is Ben and Jerry's in this new system as well?
so your entry made me think about the pizza we used to eat in Acton, and take to paint a plate, yummers!!
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