Imagine getting to the Lakewood cafeteria at 10:17 a.m., only two minutes after the bell, sounds great, right? Imagine how short the line would be, how close you’d be to getting your meal when suddenly a swarm of other students rush the line cutting in front of you and now you would have to wait twenty minutes to get your food. Twenty minutes, maybe more, out of a half-hour lunch period.

For Lakewood this past month, that hypothetical maybe once-a-week situation has turned into the everyday.

Many students are up in arms about this issue, including myself. Not only does it make getting lunch a tedious time-consuming event when it can be efficient and quick, but it’s also disrespectful to students, cafeteria staff, and everyone involved. People get shoved to the side, staff must set time aside from their work to try and manage rowdy students with no regard for others – the amount of chaos in the lunchroom because of people like this has made this process unbearably annoying.

Those who have bought lunch at LHS now dread this process, prompting many to skip it altogether and to even cause issues with others through arguments or physical disagreements, both of which should not occur at our school. Students should be able to get their food in a seamless process, waiting in line like the respectable individuals we should be acting as before leaving to go eat. Easy as that.

Think about it this way, if you’re at a coffee shop and there’s a long line – even if you’re in a rush, even if you don’t feel like it – you wait in said line. You don’t rush the counter, you don’t push people out of the way, you don’t yell things at others, none of that. We’ve been taught that since elementary school, even pre-school, and there is no reason why in high school those principles should be thrown to the wind. It’s outrageous.

There is an easy fix to this issue too, which should be put into action at once: don’t skip the line, don’t jump into the middle with the excuse that someone is your friend, just have patience. Have patience and understand that if you get to the cafeteria late, you’re going to have to wait your turn. Everyone is trying to get lunch and enjoy their half-hour, and we can’t just rely on staff members to make sure that happens. For that, we must do our part too, and that can only be accomplished if we try our best as a school to regain our consideration for one another and wait our turn.