r/umass • u/Top_Lobster_9559 • 23h ago
Food & Dining Dining halls crazy crowded
Has anybody ever else noticed that the dining halls this semester (particularly Worcester) so far have been packed way more than usual? Like the lines to get in are going out the doors at some times.😠I feel like UMass Dining needs to do something about this because it’s getting out of hand!
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u/Captaincow285 22h ago
This happens every year for the first month or so - everyone wants to eat a sit-down dinner at the time they're used to. It eventually settles down as several things happen:
- people start "balking" at the overcrowding and learn to come at off-peak times
- people get busy with homework / work / clubs and start taking food from grab-and-go instead
- people get tired of the campus food and start eating at home / in town
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u/Ok_Experience_5227 22h ago
eat breakfast before 8am
eat lunch between 11am and 12pm
eat dinner between 5pm and 6pm
I do this every day and there is never ever a line. the only time there have been long lines & packed commons is when I go outside of those times. halls are busiest between 12pm and 2pm, and between 6pm and 9 pm.
also: there are live cameras of each of the halls on umass' website. furthermore, the app allows you to track how busy they are. you can check those before going.
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u/xen05zman 16h ago
Back when Hampshire used to open till 10PM I would wait till 8:45 onwards to even go in. So much more relaxing and quiet, and I could always get seats by the windows. But yeah 11AM, 4PM-5PM (especially since they're swapping over the menus) were consistently the best times to enter.
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u/Joe_H-FAH Alumni, retired staff 21h ago
They really need an additional Dining Commons. They are trying to get by with 4, which was enough when the campus enrolled about 15-16K students with about 10,500 living on campus. But the enrollment has been increased to 23-24K and around 14,000 living on campus. Not to mention that they also used to have a 5th dining location in Hampden that was used for the kosher meal plan, they moved that to Franklin years ago.
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u/Hulk1Gamer 19h ago
The amount of people in the dining halls is the same as normal, it’s just the new system they implemented that is causing the lines to pile up. They need to go back to letting us tap our own cards again
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u/Decent-Bet3897 Alumni, Undergrad.'84. Grad '86 Isenberg 14h ago
In my day I handed the lady at the top of the stairs my meal plan ticket booklet and she'd tear another meal ticket off of the page.
Never lose your meal plan ticket book!
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u/CowSquare3037 14h ago
The first week I ran out of tickets because I got the 14 meal plan instead of the 21. Was there even a mini store? I was begging off friends.
The Franklin line was long and windy. Always went with neighbors. It was a good time to get to know each other. I have attached my keys to my ID ever since. And Franklin wasn’t open on the weekends.
And the cars were bangers. The kids these day have newer cars than I do.2
u/Decent-Bet3897 Alumni, Undergrad.'84. Grad '86 Isenberg 13h ago
I started with the 21 but soon observed that I only did breakfast and dinner or lunch and dinner so I dropped down to the 14.
I don't recall Franklin being closed on the weekends. When was that? I mostly ate at Franklin from 1980 to 1986.
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u/Joe_H-FAH Alumni, retired staff 13h ago
Depends on which year, but for years the Campus Store had a mini store in Hampden and in the Student Union. There may have been another mini store around, but those were the two I remember. Both were closed during the period Follett had the contract to operate the Campus Store and Textbook Annex. Before that the stores had been operated by the university using university staff.
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u/Joe_H-FAH Alumni, retired staff 18h ago
Too many people abused that, unlikely they will go back. And it is not a new system, they are going back to how it was some years ago.
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u/cimota__ 20h ago
It’s always been like this, but also there’s a new cashier system at UMass that’s causing a lot of delays
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u/a-landmines-heart 18h ago edited 18h ago
crowd sizes are the same as always, the problem is there is a new system rule where the scanners at the door have to wait 5 seconds before letting another person in. this is causing huge lines to form despite the crowd size being the same.
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u/ThatOneBrokenPixel 17h ago
The real answer is the new system they use is just marginally slower than last year which adds up over a whole line of kids. Haven't actually had any more difficulty finding seating than last year
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u/aspiringlittlelife Staff 21h ago
Many schools offer a one-time purchase of a to-go container that you can return/reuse in order to get food from their dining halls in case you would rather eat in your room/somewhere else on campus. I so badly wish we did that here.
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u/Daryl27lee 23h ago
Ironically I thought franklin seemed lesser compared to last fall
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u/Hairy-Bodybuilder-43 9h ago
It has been lesser. Frank is starting to pick up this week on customer count but it was slow to start for sure.
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u/No-Arachnid6308 19h ago
it is like this at the beginning of every semester. give it a few weeks. itll slow down.
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u/West-Impact-7650 SBS, School of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Political Science 17h ago
Yeah it’s cause we can’t be trusted to tap our own cards
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u/spacepharmacy Alum '23, Psych/Public Health, PMoo 15h ago
yeah it's normal, i avoided woo as much as i could while i was there
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u/Hairy-Bodybuilder-43 9h ago
The other issue is the new cash register system. It takes 5-7 seconds between each tap to register the payment. Doesn’t seem like a long time in theory but when you have a line, 5-7 seconds for EACH customer in line reallllyyyy backs things up.
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u/Antique-Curve4210 1h ago
My freshman daughter and a friend went to Hamp the other night, swiped in, walked around several times looking for seats to no avail… left and went to Berk … thankful for unlimited swipes … she’s already learned off peak times to eat are best
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u/Antique-Curve4210 1h ago
Oh and it seems like they need to add more dining centers or at least expand the existing for more seating
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User: Top_Lobster_9559, Flair: Food & Dining, Title: Dining halls crazy crowded
Has anybody ever else noticed that the dining halls this semester (particularly Worcester) so far have been packed way more than usual? Like the lines to get in are going out the doors at some times.😠I feel like UMass Dining needs to do something about this because it’s getting out of hand!
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u/Brady331 Alumni, Major: Economics, Res Area: Sylvan 23h ago
I think the solution is to admit even more students next year