Our Board of Education has privatized the school district's cafeteria services. I am employed at the cafeteria through this private company. The school district has 5 buildings for which the private company has one director. Two buildings have non-union supervisors. I work in one bldg. with a supervisor who is being train on a need to know basis by her underling. Here we are 8 women who prepare and set up the food and clean. When children come to eat, then 2 women serve hot lunches and 2 women make deli wraps and 4 women are on the cash registers.

I'm a cashier and our registers are computerized. Each child is to put identification number into a keypad and his account comes up on the screen with their name and grade. Last year there was also the child's picture. Sometimes a child puts in the wrong number. One child realized he got away with using anothers' account and the parents came to the supervisor alleging the cafeteria women were stealing the money but we then caught the child.

A substitute broke the lock on my cash drawer early this year. In between serving lunch periods I have other responsibilities and carry the cash drawer to the office, not locked. Teachers and special groups of children come in between and give me money which I manage to put into the register drawer but not always remember to ring it into the register computer. This means at the end of the day my register may have more money than the supervisors' report. Really? Whose in charge of fixing the register lock so I can do my job?

These are new computers and there are computer glitches more and more..but anything mentioned to the director who does not come to our building gets twisted into the most illogical result.

One day as the children were coming into the first lunch period all registers went down, later that day at a union mtg. we learned all school registers went down at same time because of some thing the director did.

Before winter recess a kid tells me something is funny with his account. He gave me $20. to put on and asked me to remember his balance for when school resumed. I wrote it on a pad and the first day back checked his account. It had gone from $27.50 to $6.60. I had supervisor print out history which stated the $20 in-put but $1.25 was owed, this should have appeared on my screen at the time of in-put. I can't explain it.

Then at another register a child owing $60. gave a check for $80, he spent near $10 of the remaining $20. balance yet later his account stated $89.95 balance. Similar happened to another student.

Then a teacher who had put $10 on her account in the A.M. bought $2.25 breakfast came to lunch and her account said she owed $0.60. At a lost we gave her our directors' phone number.

Instead of the director resolving the problem or printing out the teacher payment history she told the teacher that the cashiers are allowing students to use her account?!
The cashier who discovered the problem flipped for being pushed under the bus. I thought the director is so out of touch that she did not realize that only the teachers identification numbers start with the letter "A" which is not on the keypad making it impossible for this mistake to occur. But wait, it was pointed out to me that was not what the director said.

I am told this problem is above my pay grade and I should not be concerned about it. But it not only reflects on me but I resent being in the front of the firing squad.
There are other glitches I quess I've got use to but who is responsible for the registers working properly?