http://www.kmvt.com/content/news/Lunch-lady-fired-after-giving-meal-to-hungry-child-363387621.html

Apparently kindness doesn't pay!???

From cursory reading, it doesn't seem that she wanted to pay for the meal herself, she wanted to exercise the generosity of her employer.

I suppose from your perspective there really isn't such a thing as a free lunch. But this story is not about political or societal perspectives but about a hungry child who had no money for lunch. The cost involved is piddling and food likely thrown in the garbage after lunch would dwarf its value. This dinner lady did what any mother or compassionate person would do..she fed the child. She even offered to pay the $1.70 for the lunch but was refused. For her efforts she was fired by a school district that was more interested in enforcing rules than in the welfare of the child. Shame on them. This story has gone beyond Idaho and even to international news levels and they deserve the derision they are receiving.

Back in the Eighties, I was working for Social Security. I got a call from a friend of mine who was the director of Food Services for our local school district.

This wasn't just any friend. I knew her from church, our sons were in Scouts together (and in fact, would receive their Eagle Scout awards at the same ceremony, some years later). Gayle and her husband had often double-dated with me and mine. So I had known her for a long time and knew she was a good person.

She asked if I could help her get financial information to help a kid at one of her schools who was probably eligible for both free lunch and free breakfast, but who never returned any of the papers sent multiple times to his mother for completion.

It was a small town and the name sounded familiar. Some of the kid's siblings were in my SSI caseload. And I realized why none of the papers had come back - the kid's mother was illiterate. She probably just threw them away.

So I gave Gayle the info she needed on the kid's income, right then, over the phone. She was thrilled - the kid would be eligible for both free lunch and free breakfast. he had been going around at lunchtime, begging for food from other kids, which had brought him to Gayle's attention in the first place.

The Manager From Hell overheard me giving this information to Gayle. I was called into her office and grilled thoroughly. Yes, I admitted, I had circumvented proper procedure, but I totally trusted the person I gave the information to, and most importantly, A HUNGRY CHILD WAS GOING TO BE FED. The manager said, implacably, "But the mother could SUE us." I said, "Not bloody likely. She can't even sign her name." We had some more words, not pleasant, but I thought it was over.

It wasn't. Some days later, I was called into her office. My immediate supervisor and the assistant district manager were also in attendance. Full court press.

Herself went on, ad nauseam, about how I had violated confidentiality rules by giving information directly to my friend. It didn't matter that a child was hungry. It didn't matter that the lady I gave the info to was a trusted friend who was in a position to help the child. The only thing that mattered was that I HAD BROKEN THE RULES.

One cool thing here: I knew that the manager, like me, had been a Spanish major in school. So I started making snarky references to the Spanish Inquisition, implying that the manager was a bloody tormentor who was more interested in breaking people than in doing God's will. But I said all of this with very indirect references, so that the manager understood every reference I made - but not a CLUE got through to the witnesses. They had no idea.

She finally took another tack and said, "I don't get the impression that you regret what you have done." At that point, I was so angry that I got up, slapped my hands down flat on her desk and loomed over her. She looked scared, and it felt GOOD to intimidate the witch.

"I DON'T regret it," I said, "Not one bit. I would do the same thing tomorrow if another hungry child would be fed." And without being formally dismissed, I just turned and walked out.

A few days later, she came to my desk and showed me a piece of paper which she said would go into my personnel file. It was a "Formal Reprimand." I didn't even read the whole thing. I just handed it back to her and said, "Fine. Whatever."

Maybe I was supposed to burst into tears. I don't know. At least, I didn't get fired, which was all I really cared about.

I told my friend Gayle later about the whole hullaballoo that had gone on. She told her principal, thinking that maybe he could smooth things over. After he called and spoke with Herself, he came back to Gayle, looking shaken, and said, "That woman is certifiably insane. Not a shred of compassion. I'm sorry your friend has to work for someone like that."

Well, all that is ancient history. I'm retired, The Manager From Hell has returned home, and I hope the kid grew up OK. But compassion has no place in the workplace. At least, not officially.

I continued to do helpful things for people in need for the remainder of my career. I was just more careful about getting caught.

What a shame when the letter of the law trumps common sense and decency.

Who wouldn't do the same given same circumstances? Ignoring a hungry child serves what interests? With all the food that goes to waste in school cafeterias, I find it incredible that one person gets fired over giving lunch to a hungry kid.

I understand why you did what you did, but you were wrong. You as a representative of the government gave private financial information to someone you knew from church and trusted partially because of that. Many people we know from church and trust while we believe in the same faith are not trustworthy.
You could have requested the paperwork be resent and then volunteered to help the women fill it out. The school could have called a social worker to help her fill out the paperwork. But giving an unauthorized person personal financial information of someone else because they are a friend is not ok.
I've seen Mormons who are mental health professionals give mental health information to bishops, doctors share information with home teachers, employers give information about their employees to missionaries. Not ok.

Thanks for sharing all of that, catnip. I'm glad that there are those with sufficient courage to risk erring on the side of common sense.

The lunch lady's employer's statement is all about THE RULES, how wonderful they are, and mentions that this was not a "singular" incident. Maybe that's code for, "OMG, not again! Another kid fed without the proper paperwork!" Some enterprising person has published that lunch lady had a prior petty theft conviction from a former employer, with few details.

Pure speculation here, but without those details, I would most likely gamble that lunch lady had some type of moral rationalization for the earlier conviction, right or wrong.

Smirkorama, thank you, too, for the history of the program. I suppose the corrective measures in cases like this could be as simple as documenting the dates and names of the non-program children fed, and n# of incidents within a given time frame warrants a report to CPS. Not that it would necessarily help the child, but the kids would be fed, expenses documented and bureaucratic butts covered.

...I suppose there's little chance that either of you would go high in gub'ment. <sigh>

A child being deprived a meal in the United States because of a lack of money is despicable.

I have it on excellent authority that this stunt was planned, so that the lady can start a fund raiser and make a bunch of easy money, then she'll file for unemployment, and when that runs out, she'll be so traumatized that she'll have to file for disability.

America is a great country!

A reasonable school district comes up with a plan for hungry kids with irresponsible parents. My school district used to give hungry kids without lunch money a PBJ sandwich. Eventually the kid would get seriously bored with PBJ and the parent would pay up. Now, if a school is designated as a Title 1 (high-poverty) school, every kid in the school gets fed breakfast and lunch, no questions asked. The fact of the matter is, a hungry kid can't learn. If we want to give kids a chance in life, they must be fed.

We are also on a Federal government fresh fruit program. Twice a week, the kids get fresh fruit for snacks. It's a great program that teaches kids the virtues of healthy snacks. I've had kids who have never before eaten common fruits such as pears and blueberries.

The particular incident mentioned in the news article is not the fault of the cafeteria worker. This is the fault of an incompetent school system administration. I hope that the public holds the Pocatello school administrators accountable for their failure to plan properly.

this would be hilarious, IF it was not so pathetic and sad

the school hot lunch program was started by the LBJ admin to see that no american child went hungry for any reason at lunch time. It was expanded to breakfast and to the summer time in some places as well with that interest in mind . That was the ideal of the program which could be interpreted as its foundational aspiration /basic mission statement. So technically speaking, what this food worker did was in harmony with the program's most basic goal and fundamental aim.

Some (really anal retentive types) will say that this woman is fundamentally dishonest and that is the real issue of why she needs to be dismissed. I disagree. She only got caught because she was not devious enough to obscure what she had done, You know, like the highly competent people who make it into administrative positions would have done, the same people who probably get paid 5 to 30 times what this woman gets, the same people that now feel the need to fire her, the same people who want the public to remain oblivious to the fact that dismissing her and replacing her will cost over a thousand times the price of the lunch that they expected her to deny to the student and then completely waste by having it thrown into the trash, according to official protocol. They want to throw all of the blame onto the shoulders of the low level employee because the system that they administer does not have a ready functional outlet for situations like this that crop up, when the actions of the employee are actually in harmony with the basic expectations of the program that the administrators are supposed to be running on a supple functional level. While actually seeing to it that a hungry student was fed, the employee got caught outside of the inadequate operational capacity of the faulty system, instead of resolving that systemic inadequacy, the administrators see firing this employee as a remedy.

...... I agree that some one needs to be fired...... and it is not the person who allowed a hungry student to be fed....

IF lunch lady 'really' offered to pay, the only downside would b this could duplicate & put pressure on others to do likewise...