Fucking hell, we have to download an app and pre-order school lunches now?!

[AngeloMysterioso]

I have 3 DC, the eldest of which is in primary school. They’ve changed school lunch suppliers this year and now we have to download an app, set up an account and pre-order our children’s meals. I’ve just been sent an email reminder because I hadn’t got round to doing it since the letter went out last Friday because my mental load is already pretty heavily loaded, what with dentist appointments, swimming lessons, birthday parties, after school clubs, hospital appointments, paying the childcare fees, sorting packed lunches, and bloody everything else you can think of.

I’m like… seriously? As if I don’t have enough fucking family admin to do, now this? What happened to kids just queuing up and asking for what they want?

I'm on the one in, one out now on my phone. I don't have enough memory for the constant requirement to download apps for every different task. I don't feel I should have to pay hundreds of pounds for a better handset because a company wants an app rather than a website for me to perform a basic task

Where is your partner in all this mental load? Give the task to him.

Oh my god I know AIBU isn’t exactly a comfy cosy place but the way people have jumped at the opportunity to make me feel like shit for not being overjoyed at having yet another task to do… ok fine if people want to point out the pluses of this pre-ordering faff but the personal digs are just so fucking unnecessary

Any parent who doesn’t like the system used to provide their child with a free school dinner has the option of sending them in with a packed lunch.

I’d find it a bit irritating too, it’s nice not having to think about lunches at all so any change that would require me then having to do so and take action in some way would be a change for the worse! Also maybe I’m the only one who has an awkward child who likes to decide that morning ‘what she fancies’ (tbf she’s just like me in that regard!)

It’s a minor thing but an annoying one and it’s fine to be annoyed by it.

It seems like a good idea as they're all guaranteed their chosen meals. Quite often my children had what was left over if they're at the end of the queue! It annoyed them so much, we changed over to sandwiches.

One of the reasons I liked DT’s - no choice for lunchtime meal. One option only with the menu issued once a term.

This is very normal in my area. Almost every single school here does this.

We’ve always had to order through an app but it’s been mostly brilliant - you can usually order several weeks in one go, so it was a 5min job once a month or less. Only issues have been if I’ve forgotten (cut off is the Weds night the week before, even in school holidays) or if the app has glitched/updated and lost all your bookings and you don’t know that until the Monday when school phones to tell you your child has no lunch booked and needs packed lunch for today and the rest of that week (happened twice in five years). I felt it reduced my admin load tbh as it wasn’t something I needed to do every week, and I’d have hated scrabbling around for cash or trying to put a decent packed lunch together every day. Also meant I knew what was on the menu so could avoid e.g. pasta twice in a day, and DS found a few new things he liked, as well as plenty some he didn’t!

This is the kind of simplicity we need to return to.

Just wait to you're asked to download multiple apps and yet they still text and email. I end up having to check my email, texts teachers2parents and epraise plus actual letters coming out in his folder.

I don’t have DC in primary, but this seems like a massive faff OP! When will the constant app madness end 😂

ETA: Christ why are some PPs being such wankers 😂

I would much rather pick my children's food and know whst they are having so I can plan other evening meals around it.

I really find it frustrating when people say “it’s easy”. I am lucky that my brain is wired to do a hundred things at once, but my DH, who is an amazing Dad and a creative genius, nevertheless gets total emotional overload from the onslaught of appointments, emails, apps etc. For a lot of people life has become ludicrously complicated to a degree unimaginable to our parents’ generation. So, OP, you have total sympathy from me.

Because they then cook to order. The ingredients are ordered to be used in lots of different meals across the week/month, that’s how they plan the menu, there’s plenty of overlap of ingredients as would be sensible.

At our school they order their specific meal at 9am on the interactive boards in classrooms and then they collect their meals at lunch, so nothing extra is cooked, they only cook what has actually been ordered. There’s a button to press if you’ve got a packed lunch too.

And don’t get me started on apps. We have three with very similar names for different things which are invariable shit and randomly boot you out then require bonkers levels of 2fa to get back in again.

It’s been this way at DCs school for years; one is in a mainstream school, the other a specialist school (he has autism)

I love it. Sort the meals for the entire term once alerted it’s open for lunch bookings and don’t have to worry about it until the next term. Pay for things then and put in the calendar that it has been sorted. All done.

But that’s exactly the same if you order in advance via an app, except that they have longer to make sure they have the right stuff available. They’re still cooking to order… they cook what has been ordered in advance via the app.

It does sound like a stupid idea anyone who has brought up children knows it's a waste of time. My son is 10 and I haven't had to submit what he wants he decides when he gets to school. Isn't anyone miffed at the amount nannying that is given in this country and now it's shoved at our children. We are not bringing up children to make choices they are being taught control.

Yes but the point is our way doesn’t require me (parents) doing anything at all! The kids choose in mornings. The app means that parents have to do it by a specified date. That’s the whole point of this thread: that it’s an additional task OP now has to do.

My reply there was to the PP asking how ordering in advance on the day cuts down on waste, which is of course in the same way as the app order.

I agree OP. And then how do they even track if the kids had exactly what they ordered or changed their mind? Seems pointless.

people are being mean to you because they like a chance to have a dig. It is annoying.

I have three children, all of whom have been through primary school, all of whom had to choose and book in advance via an app, and it has worked well for us. Not a waste of time. I don’t see why it’s ‘controlling’ them? They still get to choose what they want.

I was responding to your point about wastage. You said the way your school does it means there is less wastage as they cook to order?

lol this is normal but I hear you! Our school just switched app and the UI is appalling on my mobile phone, you have to book one meal at a time going all the way back to the main menu to select the next date, you can’t see at a glance what you’ve ordered for the week.

I sit down and do the entire half term when the menus are released whilst I watch Tv!

Imaging complaining about getting free school meals and having to click a screen a few times to get that 😂