Once upon another time, I wrote a satirical piece on the University of Southern Mississippi Fresh Food Company, also known as "The Fresh." Now, I come before you to air my grievances with Eagle Dining in a much more serious light.
The students of The University are tired of Eagle Dining, and how it is run. We pay so much money for meal-plans, and for what? We come for orientation blissfully ignorant to all of your many flaws and get sucked into your lies about how great the cafeteria is, and which meal plan would be the best, but it's all a crock.
You have all these signs posted around The Fresh that say "We hear you," offering us a place to submit complaints and suggestions. Well, you know what, sure you hear us, now listen to what we have to say.
Let's begin with the meal-plans:
(http://usm.campusdish.com)
The students of Southern Miss shell out this much money a semester for what seems like a good reason but it's truly not.
This is all very false advertising.
"Unlimited meals," yeah totally, once you wait an hour in between every swipe you make. That is ONE meal every hour, and there are 24 hours in a day, but you can't even get 24 meals.
I'll break it down by days of the week:
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Monday-Thursday: The Fresh opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m. giving the possibility of maybe receiving 13 chances for a meal.
Friday: The Fresh opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 7pm knocking your chances down to 12.
Saturday-Sunday: The Fresh closes at 7 p.m. but it doesn't even open until 9 a.m., leaving your chances of a weekend meal at 10.
Once you look at this, factor in classes, work, extra-curriculars, your chances at eating are very limited, so good luck.
Bonus bucks are a USM student's best friend, until they run out, because they save us from having to suffer through The Fresh, who sometimes actually puts mashed potatoes on pizza in place of the tomato sauce.
Our hours of operation across campus are pitiful. You close just about everything across campus around 7-8 p.m., and you have people that don't even get out of class until 9:30 p.m. Some of us don't have money to be shelling out at The Powerhouse just because it's open.
At other universities in our state (Hail State), The Fresh is open until 10:30 p.m., and in some schools (Hotty Toddy), 12 a.m..
Oh, and did I mention they pay around $600 less than us?
Last week, for about three or four consecutive days, you served us baked potatoes off a hibachi grill. You paid all this money for a new grilling station to make macaroni and cheese, and some freaking baked potatoes.
On most days, about an hour before closing, you seem to just give up and stop cooking all together. I can't even count on my hands and toes together how many times I've walked into The Fresh and walked out because there was nothing to eat, and it's even worse on the weekends, because you seem to not want to cook at all.
How about we talk about what you "cook:"
Last week you o were serving "Beef Pot-Pie," which was quite literally beef vegetable soup in a shallow pot with some biscuits spread across the top, like, I can't even make this sh*t up.
And this:
This was a photo I took, and I literally cannot tell you for the life of me what it is, and guess what? Neither could your staff. When I asked the workers what it was supposed to be, no one could tell me. Somewhere in that greasy slush was some bits of chicken, and you can just look at this picture and see how overcooked that rice is.
Not to mention your staff, while not all, is full of very rude, very nasty people.
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The students of The University of Southern Mississippi are sick and tired of you, Eagle Dining, and now I'm putting you in the national spotlight.
You said you heard us, now listen.
