School portraits / A cafeteria debate, fall 2015, continued at dinner
The UNIS Cafeteria Investigation of 2015
The cafeteria at the United Nations International School got a facelift. The student paper polled students, teachers and the woman at the register, and the register won.
In fall 2015 the student paper at the United Nations International School in Manhattan, UNISVerse, investigated the cafeteria. Over the summer, the food vendor had redesigned it. There used to be one hot food line and one sandwich line. Now there were two queues for hot food and sandwiches, one for a multi-purpose bar, two cashiers in the middle, and a more open space.
The director of dining services said the system was more efficient. The school's assistant executive director said the aim was to ease overcrowding, but that he had yet to see "if it has totally worked that way."
The students split. One said the new setup had made the lines a greater issue, though two lines for pasta was a good idea. Another said the lines "flow a little better."
Two students looked at the same line and came back with different lines. That is also what I receive nightly when I ask how school was.
The head of the new Theater Arts Department loved the new salad bar, and added cheerfully that "they should have hummus every day." A theater consultant wanted more protein.
Then the reporters did the thing I would like every journalist, and every parent, to do. They went to the end of the line and asked the person at the register. Sabita Singh, the paper said, was one of the main backbones of the lunchroom, and she was struggling with the new computer system. "It now takes me eight steps to process one person's meal," she said. The register was slow to open. Before, she could type in an ID number or look a student up by last name.
Eight steps. Every student in that line had a theory about why it was slow. The answer was at the front, and only one person had asked her.
Even the new neutral color scheme, the paper noted, received a wide range of responses.
At our house dinner service has its own bottleneck, and for a year I blamed the middle one, who holds his plate out and waits. Last week the youngest counted how many steps it takes me to get dinner from the stove to the table. Eleven. Four of them are me looking for the serving spoon.
We now keep the serving spoon next to the stove. The line moves faster. The middle one still waits with his plate out, but now he gets there first.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- UNISVerse, October/November 2015: Food for Thought, pp. 1–2 unis.org
- UNIS: UN Day 2025 unis.org
- UNIS public student reviews niche.com