Wow I never put it together before but you are right, the free lunch was a lesson to work hard and not be poor, and I have to say it worked on me. We had our free lunches provided in a very distinct white paper bag and you had to walk to the office to get it, then walk back down to the cafeteria after everyone was already sitting down. So everyone got to see the white bag lunch as you walked in, and everyone knew what it meant. Would it have killed the school to use the standard brown paper bag, or give it to us on a lunch tray with the hot lunch kids? No but if the reason was to embarrass me into not being poor it worked. I promised myself that my kids would never have to deal with that embarrassment, and so far I've kept that promise.

[–] Spellinbee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It's crazy how different things can be in different places. When I was in school, it didn't matter whether you paid or not, everyone got the same thing the same way. Actually, we had no way of knowing what other students paid for their lunch, as we would have an account with the school that you would put money on, and when you went through the line, you would give the person at the end the last 4 digits of your ssn and it would charge you the correct amount and take it out of your account.

Now if you didn't have enough money in your account to cover whatever you owed, then there would be an issue, but I don't remember ever seeing that.