This year, the school system has had difficulty fully staffing school cafeterias. This impacts the cafe staff, students, and the efficiency of lunches as a whole. 

In years prior, the average number of people working in the Salem kitchen was ten or twelve, now there are five or six.

“I’m 50% staffed,” said Cafeteria Manager, Carol Hawkins. 

And although the amount of people working in the cafeteria has declined, the number of responsibilities remains the same. Employees are now taking on double or triple their usual tasks.

“I’m exhausted,” said Hawkins. “I’m doing three jobs: I have to cook, I have to clean, do the dishwasher, I have to be the manager. I’m completely exhausted; all my people are though. They’re all doing three or four different jobs, but they’re a good crew who have been working really hard.”

The ripple effects of this problem have also reflected in the food they have been serving.

“Today we had chicken, more chicken, and burgers and I don’t like doing that to you guys [students],” said Hawkins. “I believe we should have pizza. We should have all this scratch cooking that I would like to do.”

Due to the shortage, preparing more kinds of food or more from scratch meals just isn’t possible. The staff is doing their best to feed students as efficiently as possible, but that leaves little time for them to take a breather. 

“I get here at 6:30AM and don’t leave until around 1:30PM, but it also depends. If we are very busy it can be 2:00PM,” said Cafeteria Manager Assistant, Gemma Brandon.

Hawkins points out that the Cafeteria’s main priority is making sure all students are being served their lunch within the time given. However, making this the priority has also affected other tasks. 

“Unfortunately, certain things do get put off that don’t necessarily affect the serving of the food; inventory, mainly,” said Hawkins. “I spend a lot more time here. I end up having to work weekends to get certain things done.”

The shortage’s effects have also become noticeable to students. 

“The lines are definitely long,” said senior Lauren Thomas. “It can take fifteen minutes of our lunchtime to get food.”

Despite the challenges, the staff is grateful for the kids and people they work with.

“It’s easy [to get lunch out] because the children here are so nice,” said Brandon. “Even with the shortage, they have a lot of patience for us, especially now.”

The cafeteria staff hope to hire more workers soon, but in the meantime don’t forget to say thank you and show the current staff our appreciation for their hard work.