Author: Gil Alcaraz
The Tiger Cooler is a place for the Occidental community to relax and chow down on any day of the week. With plenty of options to satiate your hunger or thirst, no matter what you’re looking for, everyone can find something to meet their needs. In general, the Cooler is a great and beneficial place. Unfortunately, many students assume their tuition money grants them a personal cleaning staff. This sense of entitlement makes students think it’s okay to leave trash lying around.
Yes, almost all of us students pay a lot of money to attend this school, but that does not mean we can or should make life tougher for the employees who work all day to provide us with something to eat. We are all adults by now and should know how to pick up after ourselves. Contempt for the staff is never acceptable, and the widespread intoxication on the weekends only further adds to the insult.
Weeknights are not exempt from this treatment either. On a daily basis, the tables and floors of the Cooler are covered with packets of ketchup and used napkins.
Occidental students don’t treat the Cooler like a privilege, but instead like a place they can take advantage of and disrespect. Things worsen on the weekends when handfuls of students come down to the Cooler after a long night of partying and drinking, disregarding any sort of acceptable manners.
Students can be rude, careless and even abandon common courtesy towards the staff when it comes to the Cooler. Carla Saucedo, an employee of the Cooler for several years now, agrees. “On weekends, students come in drunk and just don’t care. They drop things and don’t pick up after themselves,” she said.
A cook for the Cooler, Jessica Escalante, can’t stand having to pick up all the trash left laying around on weekends. “It’s ridiculous. I cook food for drunken students all night long and then have to clean up after them too,” she said.
Although many Cooler staff members could not recall any specific events to reference about students being too rude or destructive, they all generally agreed that students do take advantage of the Cooler and its staff’s generous hospitality.
When we disrespect the Cooler staff, we not only disrespect hard-working employees, but our fellow Oxy students as well. Many of the workers at the Cooler are students, who do their best to provide quality service alongside the full-time employees. They often have to take time from their normal responsibilities to clean up messes that their peers have left behind. I, myself, work at the Cooler and must constantly pick up condiment packets, as well as other pieces of miscellaneous debris, that people could not hassle themselves to put in the trash can.
So for those of you who find yourselves unable to take those few extra steps to the trash can on the way out of the Cooler, all I have to say is this: Remember that you’re littering in a place that the entire school shares. Through your disregard of common decency, you are inconveniencing your fellow students and Oxy staff members who work hard to provide a comfortable place to eat like the Cooler for all of us.
Gil Alcaraz is an undeclared sophomore. He can be reached at galcaraz@oxy.edu.
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