Sure, there should be follow-up and any red flags investigated. 100%.
And if they had said the woman had been fired for refusing to tell the school that one of the kids had a serious issue, that could even be seen as a good and reasonable action.
But they said they fired her for filling out one of the meals. That’s the part that was putting the catering company’s bottom line above any legitimate theoretical concerns about the kid. You’re right we don’t know the whole story, but that confirmed part is still uncool.
They didn’t say that, the woman who was fired said that was the reason. The school says there’s been a long term pattern of her not following the rules, and the parent of the student in question is saying the same thing. So at this point, I’m inclined to believe that the internet jumped the gun on who was at fault…kind of like the Latina who was accused of racism and it took a black man with enough of a following online to get people to see how the initial claims were false and therefore everyone was angry at the wrong person.
It was the school that said she was fired for adding food to the meals and not charging him. That’s really not in question. It’s in their statements. The “unfollowed policy” they say she didn’t follow was the one that said kids who can’t pay should only get a specific amount of food, and she went over that and didn’t charge him for his food, to help the kid out.
Kimball said Monday that she frequently did not charge this student, because he lost his eligibility for the federal free and reduced lunch program.
(If the kid’s family is now healthily “middle class”, that makes it sound like it maybe wasn’t recently.)
It’s completely understandable that the parent would say everything’s been fine, because they’d want to keep their kid, and avoid internet outrages of their own, and more power to them. But it still just looks like the cafeteria worker just thought this kid was in trouble, and didn’t charge him for food because she thought the “official policy” was stingy for whatever reason. It also makes sense that she’d want to cover-up her “generosity” with her employer’s resources after-the-fact, to save her job.
She still doesn’t sound like any kind of villain, even if she stole from her employer to give the kid more food, when the kid convinced her he was in trouble. If he didn’t need the food, is the parent taking responsibility for what he did? Or maybe the kid did need a hand?
This is not how an adult should be communicating with a teen. If she were male and the student were female, we’d wonder what was going on. It seems she’d taken a personal interest in the guy and was giving him gifts (of food). The way she threw out dollar amounts for him to pay immediately when she realized she’d been caught, she knew he wasn’t poor and unable to pay for food. This was something else.
I don’t know the full story. But I know that this is a good example of people rushing to judgment and it turns out that reality is not so cut-and-dried.
If you don’t want people rushing to judgment, maybe don’t paint her as doing the equivalent of sending him pervy dickpics. That’s a little Elon Musk-y.
This is a lunch lady letting a student skip paying, after she said they’d been bumped out of federal assistance. It’s not a lot of money, it’s some lunches. It’s not Harvey Weinstein.
Obviously she was trying to cover up her small “generosity” when it meant she might lose her job. It’s $20. Something you might give a person you thought needed help, but not something you’d offer when your boss was looking over your shoulder.
I don’t think she showed the best judgment, but it’s not that scandalous a story, and I think I blame the news agencies the most for making more of it than what’s there.
I honestly don’t understand why you’re so convinced that the person who was caught and has changed her story is the only one telling the truth, rather than the parents AND the school AND the exposed private messages between this person and a minor.
The local paper, which has boots on the ground and has been reporting diligently, is telling a very different story now that they have more information. How do you know more than they do?
I don’t know why you want to join in painting her as a super-villain, over penny-ante lunch items. I don’t think the worker is perfectly honest, she stole french fries! But I don’t see a monstrous crime worth internet-aided destruction here.
Those “private messages” are just not that sinister. Inappropriate, definitely, but it’s “I think I got caught spotting you a coke, put some money on next time.” It doesn’t sound like they were planning on burning down the school and eloping.
The only reason I’m responding is that you were making a plea for people to not rush to judgment, which is great advice, and then you paired that with ooky speculation about the worker, who is a human being too. The worker admitted stealing, and she’s probably guilty of a double-digit infraction of the school’s emolument clause. I’m glad CNN is on it.
She’s not a CEO, she’s not a politician, she’s not an influential celebrity, she was a frontline cafeteria worker, and she has the Washington Post holding her to account about her disbursements of Powerades, in a way that they’re not managing to do for people who control more than how many scoops you get of mashed potatoes.
OK, I get that. But just because she’s powerless doesn’t mean she didn’t break a lot of rules. The story she gave at first fell apart quickly. So painting her as the good guy isn’t appropriate either, even if it fulfills our hopeful prejudices.
And as a parent, I would have been very concerned if a school staff member had the personal contact info for my kid and was communicating with them privately about how to cover up the situation. That’s wrong on multiple levels.
Turns out that if you give people with very little power something that they can dictatorially control, a large portion will do so. Especially if they fear retribution from above (no, those are not mutually exclusive states). Who could have predicted this outcome? Certainly not a community that has been at the mercy of dictatorial gatekeepers, petty tyrants and busybodies since forever. (Yes, that last sentence is deeply sarcastic).
Straw bans are the ultimate feel-good. They make it look like something is being done while the impact is minimal. Meanwhile, a marginalized group gets further marginalized and harassed. The bans aren’t industry solving a problem – bans are happening because industry can’t be arsed to solve a problem. If plastic straws are hard to recycle in current machines, maybe they need better machines/systems. As opposed to making it so a disabled person can’t have a fucking drink until they list their entire medical history and some underpaid service person deems them acceptable.
