My freshman year, there were maggots and metal shavings in the food at Saga.

It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. If you don’t believe me, download Jodel and scroll back about three years — you’ll see some pretty heinous pictures.

I get why freshmen and sophomores complain about the food. It’s because they don’t know how bad it used to be. But that being said, now you know. 

I will die on the hill that Metz’s takeover of our cafeteria and A.J.’s Cafe was a godsend. I love the fresh fruit, the hummus, the additions to the salad bar, and more. Our cup runneth over with edible dining options, but people still love to complain.

Where did students live before college where they ate delicious, low-processed meals they were excited about every day? I love my parents’ cooking, but it’s not like I was pleased when the Gaudet household subsisted on a giant pot of beef and barley stew for days on end. 

Despite some obvious differences, Saga is not all that different from the meals at one’s house. Parents work with what they have, on a pretty routine schedule, to make their kids something everyone will like enough to eat. Not every day is going to be your favorite, but it’s hot and someone worked hard on it. 

I think we can all agree that if we spoke about our mother’s cooking like we speak about Saga, we’d be beaten with a wooden spoon faster than you could say “just kidding.”

What’s even more vexing is that people abuse the system they love to complain about. Senior, homecoming king, and A.J.’s employee Truman Kjos clued me into a problem I had never encountered in our little cafe: people putting in triple orders on weekends to get all their food for Sunday.

There’s only one cook in A.J.’s on the weekends, and he or she certainly doesn’t have the capacity to fill 30 orders in a timely manner, especially with the pressure of complaining children tapping their feet and checking their watches. Metz employees are people, too. Treat them like it.

I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the dining options on campus anymore. But if you want to, at least take it outside the union and away from those that worked hard to prepare it. If you’re complaining within earshot, you’re just asking them to hop over the counters with wooden spoons.

Claire Gaudet is a senior studying rhetoric and journalism.