Four Employees Fired After Coelho Middle School Students Denied Lunch

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/employees-fired-coelho-middle-school_n_3024697.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Four Employees Fired After Coelho Middle School Students Denied Lunch
AP | Posted: 04/05/2013 7:52 pm EDT | Updated: 04/08/2013 9:14 am EDT

ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) — A food service company spokesman said Friday it has fired four employees after about two dozen students at a Massachusetts middle school were denied lunches this week because their prepaid meal accounts ran low.

"There is a zero tolerance for any individual who leaves a child hungry," said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Islandia, N.Y.-based Whitsons Culinary Group.

The lunch decision outraged parents, who said some students at Coelho Middle School in Attleboro cried Tuesday after being told they couldn't eat. Parents and school officials said some students were told to throw their lunches away when they reached the checkout.

Whitsons officials apologized Friday and said it was a violation of its policy that only occurred at Coelho, which has students in fifth through eighth grades.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Somebody held accountable? Good.

[LeftofObama]

2. When I said in one of the original threads on this a few days ago that

the worker or workers who denied food to these kids should be fired I was told that it wasn't the worker's fault because the worker was probably only making minimum wage and was doing what they had to do to keep their job.

You can read the entire exchange in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014444191

I stand by my statement in that thread: "WTF is this world coming to when we are so afraid of our jobs that we start denying food to children?"

[Blue_Adept]

3. My kids use Whitsons

In three different schools in a different district. whitsons policy is the same throughout; if the child does not have money, the child will get food and a note sent home that they need to bring the money in tomorrow.

That's happened to my kids a few times over this year, which is our first in using Whitsons. The district switched to them as they offered more varied and healthier choices overall. Took the kids a few weeks to accept the changes at the start of the school year, but they're eating much healthier and more varied meals every week and it's making it easier to introduce new things at home as well.

I can understand so many people freaking out thinking its a corporate policy, but the majority of schools would not use Whitson's if it was. The contracts with the schools coincides with whitson's policy that students will not go hungry. The workers at this school, for whatever reason, just were plain wrong and it's good to see that Whitson's disciplined them as they did, though I hate to see anyone lose their job.

[juajen]

4. The humiliation these kids suffered is another reason they were crying.

I know, as I have been there. My parents were, at times, unable to provide lunches for us. It was a very bad experience, as children can be very cruel.

[zentrum]

5. Not buying the company's story

I'll bet this denial of food if you don't have the cash is part of the tacit company culture. In this case, because it was exposed, they fired the lowest status workers. But I'll bet the employees were afraid to feed kids that hadn't paid--afraid they'd be fired for that. This is a private for-profit company---does anyone believe they have a "policy" of feeding kids who can't pay? No way.

It's the top boss that needs t be looked at---how do they train employees, what do they teach them? I have doubts that the 4 took it on themselves to suddenly not feed kids they had seen every day.

[adamuu]

7. +1

[Flying Squirrel]

8. +2

[Orrex]

6. Who could have foreseen that low-wage private contractors would screw up?

It's difficult to imagine that free market private enterprise could yield anything but boundless prosperity for all.

This is obviously much better than those quaint and antiquated systems in which schools actually employed staff to prepare and serve food on site.