Neilsen "Restraunt"

Neilsen "Restaurant"

Recently, students have been in an uproar about Chartwells, the new food service to Piedmont. However, people should take the time to step back and think before complaints are made without consideration.

Piedmont College pays Chartwells enough money to feasibly produce enough food for 19 meals a day. If a meal is missed by a student, that food has still been cooked. There is no way to call in to the cafeteria and say “Hey, don’t cook food for me today! I won’t be there.”

As for the hours – Chartwells is a business. They are run like one. Aramark should have been run like a business, but it was not. Or rather, it was not run like a legit, functioning business. While the hours are a bit strict and the staff on the dramatic side of “enforcement,” Charwells still is a business and run like one.

They need time to prepare food and keep areas clean. This is understandable. While I do think that three hours to clean and cook is a bit unnecessary when regular restaurants are kept open for hours at a time without closing, regular restaurants have a full rotating staff instead of a small staff Chartwells is forced to hire due to Piedmont’s attempt to turn a profit from something that should not be a business.

Bringing up that subject – Piedmont is attempting to turn a profit from this venture, which is one of the biggest stems of this problem. A dining hall for your college should not be an attempt to make money. Refusing to work with a company in order to change hours so your students do not utilize the meal plans full is underhanded.

I know that managing a college is a business, – that is a whole different topic of discussion I will not go into as of now – but borderline intentionally making your students miss food opportunities or forcing them to adapt to unreasonable requests is underhanded.

Students should take a step back and realize the precarious predicament that Piedmont has placed Chartwells before moaning and complaining about the food service as a whole instead of seeing what their employer is trying to do.