“Twenty percent of students eat breakfast, 40 percent have a snack, and 90 percent eat lunch at school,” according to Kaiser Permanente an American healthcare company. TCS has three cafeterias: two in the Elementary School and one to serve the students of the Intermediate and Superior Schools. All three of them administered by the company ServiExpress. The school year is coming to an end, and after 5 years of overextended work at TCS, ServiExpress is still waiting to know if their working contract is being renovated for the following years. However, TCS shouldn’t be looking for other options of companies to operate the cafeteria because students and other members of TCS have expressed satisfaction with ServiExpress’ work.

“ServiExpress has been working at the Columbus School for 5 years, and this is the first time that at this point of the school year we don’t know yet if TCS is going to renew our contract,” explained Marcela Correa, ServiExpress’ cashier that has been working at TCS for three years. “We are waiting for a response from the school; there are other coffee shops interested in having the job, so the school decided to give them the opportunity of proposing a work plan.”  TCS directives decided to open a tender for the cafeteria in order to receive different proposals from companies that want to operate in the three cafeterias. There is not a clear, known, reason, for why the school decided to open the doors for other cafeterias. The only thing we know is that the majority of TCS community is worried about this situation, and campaigns are being held at the school to avoid the firing of ServiExpress.

“I have studied at the school for 14 years and I have been able to eat at Majoi, Sodexo, and ServiExpress, which are three companies that have worked in the school cafeteria,” said Agustin Jaramillo, 19-year-old Junior student. “Undoubtedly the work of ServiExpress stands out from other companies in every aspect.” Changes are necessary when something is not functioning how it should, but this is not ServiExpress’ case because there are very few people who aren’t satisfied with ServiExpress. This is totally contrary to when Majoi operated the school cafeterias, in which eating became a torture for the majority of students. “If they give the contract to another company I think that my level of consumption in the cafeteria would decrease,” stated Manuela Saldarriaga, TCS sophomore. “I say this according to my own experience, in which eating with other companies was a nightmare.” Nutrition is one of the most important aspects of adolescence, and whether school cafeterias provide quality service with respect to food quality or not, determines if students will eat over the eight school hour period.

The STUCO group created some surveys to receive every student’s opinion about the cafeteria service. They wanted to understand if TCS community was satisfied with ServiExpress work or if they wanted the school to hire another company. “The results were really high in beneficiation to ServiExpress. 80% of the people who answered the survey are currently satisfied with ServiExpress, and don’t want the school to change the cafeteria operator,” clarified Alejandro Gomez, Junior year STUCO representative. So what exactly is TCS’s goal with this process, if the majority of the school members haven’t asked for a change? Our school’s decisions have always prevailed in democracy, but in this case, there’s not a fair justification for the decision the school is willing to make.

Even though ServiExpress’ economic stability and point of equilibrium do not depend on TCS, a great part of their income comes from this Cafeteria because it is the biggest school cafeteria they serve in Medellin. In addition to the work that students are doing to maintain ServiExpress service in the cafeteria, the company workers are struggling to keep their satisfactory work at the school. “We did some surveys to see what the children and adults thought about our service and we got excellent results so we hope that this will help us to continue working in TCS for the following years.” If fairness is still the base of the school when it comes to taking a decision, TCS directives shouldn’t have any doubt about renewing ServiExpress working contract.