It shouldn't be up to these workers. There's a bigger problem going on here.
Yes. Every poster here seems to agree that the issue should not be left up to the workers. Yet in at least one case a worker has been fired for giving away lunches. The article actually describes a good chunk of the schools problem, which is not collecting money from parents.
The school is supposed to administer the problem by collecting money, or applying for free lunch and in particular the district policy eliminates the solution that the school employed, namely throwing lunches in the trash and forcing the lunch lady or lunch dude to make that call.
I'm not sure what it is about Tanypteryx response that irks you so badly.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams