For perspective: I come from a country where “cafeteria” food at school is good and affordable (most is less than the equivalent of 5-10 USD max and it’s not slop, it’s actual food), but it’s not an obligation for everyone since it’s up to the student if they want to buy something or bring their own lunch.
The “cafeteria” in my school isn’t a typical American one, rather it’s closer to a canteen where they sell food you can purchase from cup noodles, fried stuff, sandwiches, baked goods, etc. also appliances like a kettle or microwave are available in the dining hall for students to heat up left overs if they wanted.
The thing I tend to notice from American schools (according to US movies, there’s bias whether it’s true or false) is that they tend to depict kids always heading for the cafeteria for recess or lunch picking up whats available instead of bringing their own food from home (left overs from dinner), why is that the case?
God, another reason to dislike Texas.
I usually skipped lunch and would pocket the cash my parents gave me to shoot hoops in the gym or play video games or watch TV in one of the computer labs. The only ones who had any sort of lunch restrictions were those in detention and, if I remember correctly, even then there was no specific seating arrangement unless they were associated with someone else as co-troublemakers.
ps edit: what was the point of “yellow”? Didn’t you generally go through the line with your friends anyway?
Yes, but that might be difficult if you were in different classes, since we were supposed to go straight from class to cafeteria. It was also like “you were kind of bad today, do better tomorrow.” I think at least one time, they even changed it from yellow to red while we were eating because they deemed us too loud or rowdy or something.
Naturally this meant one group of troublemakers could get the whole school in trouble. Collective punishment for individual offenses, just like god does in the bible. They wanted us to live in fear and shame, they were cramming us into an inhuman mold to better serve our corporate overlords.
I was in a small school and even then I can’t imagine the work it would take to arrange us in anything even close to a prescriptive order.
When third period ended, everyone had priorities. Maybe you need to hit the restroom to suck down a dart. Maybe you have to settle a beef with someone from second period PE. A romantic tryst in the north stairwell. Or you might be a normal kid and throw your shit in the locker and press up in the line, trying to cut as far forward as your social class allows. No matter how you use it, you have 45 minutes. If they tried to put us in some sort of prescribed order, that would be all we did that day