As a human being, I need to eat to survive. As a carless young adult in the 21st century, I often prefer to order food rather than cooking myself. Ideally, I would like to do this with as little hassle as possible.
However, on the A-State campus, ordering food is somewhat of a hassle. You have to find the address for the dorm building, which not many people know. Then you have to hope the delivery person actually knows how to get to that address, which is where most of the problem lies. Heaven help you if you live in a dorm with a gate, like Pack Place, Northpark Quads or Collegiate Park, as you’ll have to wait by the gate to pick your food up.
I have my share of horror stories from ordering food on campus, like the time I met a pizza guy in the middle of the street, or the time I put in the address for the Fine Arts building and my driver called and said she was at a gas station by Walmart. But I’m not the only one who’s had bad experiences.
I sent out a form last Wednesday on the A-State app, and got eight responses from students who live in a variety of dorms. Half of them said they had never had a delivery driver make it to their dorm unassisted; half also said that they have had to leave their dorm area and go to another part of campus to pick up a delivery order.
“I had to walk a mile to get my food,” said Brianna Kiplinger, a junior special education major from Jonesboro who lives in Northpark Quads. 75% said they have had a delivery driver call them and say they had arrived to drop off their order, but they were at a completely different location from campus, much like I did.
Five students, who live in Northpark Quads, Kays Hall, The Village and Red Wolf Den, said that gates had been an issue for food delivery. “Gated places can cause panic if not thought out first,” said Robyne Richards, a junior theatre major from Beebe who lives in Northpark Quads.
GrubHub is partnered with A-State for ordering food to campus, and allows you to select your dorm when ordering food. It also lists a physical address in the app when ordering. Despite this, somehow the delivery drivers tend to get lost. This is not an uncommon phenomena, but it’s easy to assume a delivery driver would have an easier time finding A-State’s campus than they would have finding some random house.
Once the drivers do make it to campus, finding your location gets even more tricky. The pizza guy who met me in the middle of the road said that his GPS signal became unclear when he got onto campus, though I’m not sure what would cause that. It’s true that campus can be difficult to navigate, especially for townspeople who are not on campus regularly.
“The addresses could definitely be clearer,” said Kelly Fiesser, a junior English major from Warm Springs, Arkansas who lives in Red Wolf Den. “There are so many buildings with limited access, and they aren’t labeled very well. Not everyone knows the layout of campus.”
“They can’t really differentiate between the places on campus,’’ said Destiny Taylor, a freshman zoology major from Little Elm, Texas who lives in Kays Hall. “Most of the time they get confused.”
“It’s a big campus and they can’t get in the buildings,” said Laci McLemore, a freshman CLS major from Marmaduke, Arkansas who lives in Arkansas Hall. “My food is always cold.”
All but one student said they thought there should be a centralized space on campus for people to order food to, and I agree. Having a drop-off or meeting point for food delivery would help to minimize confusion, and would make the whole process easier. Perhaps said point could just be an insulated box (similar to one of the metal newspaper boxes scattered around campus) with a physical address so delivery drivers can easily find it. As long as there’s no one camping the boxes to swipe food like people swipe laundry machines, I think that system could work.
I don’t know that it would be feasible for A-State to partner with every delivery company to make ordering food to campus easier. There are too many companies to coordinate that sort of thing. But it’s frustrating that delivery drivers seem to have such an issue delivering food to campus, leaving many students confused, frustrated and hungry.
A full breakdown of survey results can be found on the second page of this article.
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Categories: Opinion
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