This year, lunch, everyone’s favorite time of the day, has been a catastrophe. No, not because of the scrumptious food provided by Merriweather-Godsey, but because of the nonsensical and confusing lunch schedule schemes cooked up every week.With new schedules nearly every week, lunch at Potomac this year gives flashbacks to last year’s ever-charging US Daily Schedule, where so many plans were created admin ran out of colors, leaving only chartreuse for the last one.

Every week I get my “Next Week in the Upper School” email only to find that a new devious plan stands in the way of lunch. It started with shipping freshmen off to the Flag Circle Building, which worked well for upperclassmen, until they had to make the trek. Then, the administration suggested that all four grades try to share the dining hall. It sounded just fine, like a return to normal, except we had to eat in twenty minute increments. Given the fact that it often takes more than twenty minutes to wait in line for food this was not a success..

While the 20 minute increment plan was started in an attempt to “de-densify the lunch room” and thereby protect us from coronavirus transmission, the hordes of freshmen crowding the stairs to the dining hall each day made this difficult.

Even if one manages to get past the administrators guarding the stairway against time-trespassers, the experience inside the dining hall is less than desirable. There’s so much line cutting that people just maneuver themselves to the front when they’re tired of waiting. Recently, I received an email describing penalties for students who try to use the elevator or back stairs to access the dining hall. Note to self: starvation of civilians is against the Geneva Convention.

Let’s do better, Potomac. Stop cutting in line and pray that the next lunch gambit will work out better than the previous ones!