Quality Assurance

I eat at a college dining hall, so I have no illusions about the food being above a certain level of decency. I'm sure ours is much better than many universities have, but that only goes so far. Dinner tonight was surprisingly good. We had a special for burgers where not only did the meat seem better quality, but it wasn't grease laden and wet when it came out, but seemed like it had been grilled nicely. The veggies on top were fresh, though the Mount has always been good about that. Bacon was also of a higher caliber. And there was a delicious melted cheese with some kind of spice to it I had dripped all over it.

I wish I could tell you what kind of cheese it was, but therein lies the problem. I asked the people behind the counter and they started unabashedly guessing. No one knew it was a certain kind or type, or how they made it, or what it was like. It was just there. And so they started guessing at each other every yellow-ish cheese under the sun as if the other would know when they said the right one.

No one even thought to go ask, or look it up, or offer that.

Similarly, I went to get dessert, and was thrilled to find out that those cream pies were in fact banana (our schools banana and coconut cream pies look identical, and are never served at the same time but also never on a regular schedule that lets one predict when one or the other might be had). I was assured it was banana, so I took one, as I love the banana cream pies but can't stand coconut.

Yes. I found out it was coconut on the first bite.

Aren't people allergic to coconut? What if I had been one of them? Is it so hard to take an interest in the food you've been asked to serve enough to learn the names of what you're offering on a given day, or if you forget to go to ask someone? I've been in restaurants where the server didn't know something about a meal often enough. But they've always, ALWAYS, been willing to go ask someone for you, even the less respectable or more hurried seeming places. Can a private university's food services and student workers really have so much less respect for their jobs? I doubt the waitresses at every waffle house think of it as permanent employment, nor get paid out the ass. It's not the money that's the difference, so what? Is the school so careless and devil-may-care in putting a bit of quality and pride into their food? It's not like you can take a cab or bus out to get food elsewhere around here, you either drive fifteen minutes plus or your options are the cafeteria or scavenging a local corn field for some choice husks, assuming its even the right season. And you don't mind angry farmers driving you off however they care to.

I just don't understand how they can make college food so solidly decent and edible, but fail so tremendously about basic fundamentals of service. Is it really so unimportant?

I don't think so.