In a story that has made international headlines, a cafeteria worker at a high school in New Hampshire was fired in late March for serving a student lunch without making them pay. According to Cafe Services, the provider of the school’s lunch services, the employee, Bonnie Kimball, violated company policy by not charging the student for four lunch items, despite the student paying the lunch bill a day later.
“To me, letting that kid go hungry because he didn't bring any money that day, that would have been wrong,” Kimball said in a phone interview with NBC10 Boston. “If the bill did not get paid, damn straight I would have paid it out of my own pocket.”
During an interview with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday, Atlantic senior editor and food writer Corby Kummer applauded Kimball’s decision, and said it was unfair for her to be punished for what is really a systemic failure of the public school system in her district.
“She’s being accused of a systemic failure. She can’t fix the systemic failure, which is that lunches should be free,” Kummer said. “She comes across as a hero.”
Cafe Services has a different perspective on the situation. In a recorded statement released on YouTube, Brian Stone, the president of Fresh Picks Cafe, a division of Cafe Services, said that to the company, the issue isn’t whether or not a student was fed. It was that Kimball allegedly lied to her manager and said the student had paid for his lunch when he had not.
“The employee told the manager she charged the student’s account for the lunch, but the manager later confirmed there were no charges on the account,” Stone said. “Every student in the lunch line gets a lunch. So, there was no reason for her not to charge the accounts.”
After watching Stone’s video, Kimball said she “[could not] believe it,” and refuted Stone’s assertion that every student at the school received a lunch. According to Kimball, the student no longer qualified for free lunch and would frequently bring their own lunch or ask others to buy a meal for him.
