A couple weeks ago, a student was caught on camera stockpiling food in the cafeteria. The individual was not able to be identified through the footage, so I was assigned to further investigate. And the first step of any good investigation is observation.
I had been keeping an eye out for any leads, but it was not until last week that I saw something suspicious. I was taking my regular stroll around the buffet lines to evaluate all of my options for lunch. I spied the apples, pears and oranges in the baskets next to the desert trays and thought to myself, “Perhaps I will have a healthier snack today.” However, I stood pondering my choices for too long, and the line of people behind me grew agitated, urging me to move on. This prompted me to, instead, head over to the pizza line where I snatched up a few slices of pizza.
After eating my cheese, pepperoni and carbs, I felt compelled to at least pick up an apple in an attempt to be able to say I had a well balanced meal. I returned to the fruit baskets to find they were empty! As I went to check the fruit baskets by the soup, I almost tripped over a student in a hoodie crouched on the ground over her backpack reaching for a roll-away orange. She unzipped her backpack and, looming over her, I could clearly see it was full of apples and pears. I looked around, but no one seemed to notice the student and her overstuffed backpack.
I followed her from a distance to where she was sitting and saw her stuffing more items in her backpack: an unopened bag of bagels, a bunch of half a dozen bananas and the salt and pepper shakers from the table. Her backpack was like Mary Poppins’ bag; it seemed to fit an endless amount.
She swung the backpack onto her back, picked up a large handbag and lined it with a large plastic bag. Next, she strolled back into the cafeteria. She headed over to the cereal station, held her bag up to the cocoa puffs dispenser and proceeded to empty the entire container of cocoa puffs into her bag. Looking both ways, she shifted down to the milk station and streamed chocolate milk into her cereal. After giving the bag a little shake so as if to distribute the milk over the cereal, she hung the handbag in the crook of her arm, and headed over to grab a bowl and a spoon.
Certain that I had caught the culprit, I ran over to tell someone in charge, but it was too late. By the time we spotted her amid the lunch crowd, she was already making her way through the back door with a mountain of oranges in her arms. The oranges were stacked so high, we could not catch a glimpse of her face before she left. I ran out after her, but she had disappeared.
After witnessing this, I decided to interview a few students in the cafeteria to see if they had witnessed any suspicious activity. The first few people didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about. Then I noticed someone watching me as I was interviewing people. The student motioned me over and whispered that she might have answers for me. I met her outside, and she told me her roommate had been exhibiting an odd behavior all semester.
“My roommate no longer allows me to use the mini-fridge,” she said.
This lead prompted us to go to their RA and present the problem. The RA suggested we stage a type of intervention to get to the bottom of what was going on. All three of us waited in the girls’ room until the roommate came back. She wore a hoodie and the pockets appeared bulky. The first question we asked her was, “Why are you refusing to share the mini-fridge?” She immediately became nervous, and when she didn’t respond we opened the fridge. The fridge was entirely full of various fruits. Then I opened the freezer, and it was full of pizza slices. We then searched the rest of the room and found dozens of bags full of cereal, bagels, muffins and cookies in the closet.
This article is a satirical piece and is not meant to be taken seriously.
