The Easy Way to Fix Fly-By

You learn something new at Harvard everyday. Yesterday, I was informed by a uniformed staffer at the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) that I wasn’t allowed to wear jeans while using the equipment because “it wears down the fabric on the seats.” I was left wondering what the differences are between a 100 percent cotton t-shirt and a 100 percent cotton pair of denim jeans, since the former must touch the fabric of those machines hundreds of times a day. If places like the MAC are just going to make arbitrary rules, they should at least think up more creative excuses.

“There are no jeans allowed in the MAC because they speak esperanto.”

“Salmon-spawning season.”

“Jeans and sweat cause a chemical reaction that yields Patricia Arquette.”

Still, on a campus with so many arbitrary rules, it’s funny how students persist in following the crowd even when, presumably, they could set their own rules. Consider Fly-By, the erstwhile cafeteria for upperclassmen located beneath Annenberg Hall. Whenever I go down to get food at Fly-By, I have to wait in line forever. The interminable wait is worst after popular classes on Monday and Wednesday, when the line sometimes snakes out the door of Loker Commons and up the steps towards the Science Center.

The time I’ve spent in line might not be a total loss, though, since it got me thinking: what is the difference between Fly-By and every other cafeteria located everywhere on the entire face of the earth? No, the food in other cafeterias isn’t good either. The difference, in fact, is that the line for Fly-By moves at the speed of the slowest, shortest girl spooning meat lasagna into her stupid plasticized white cup (plus the 30 seconds it takes for her to wrench the cap onto said cup), whereas all other cafeterias move at the speed it takes to pay.

Think about it. Go to the Barker Center. The Café there is set up so you get your food and then line up to pay at the cashier’s desk. Go to the Greenhouse. You get food; and then you pay. Go to Adams House. Pay; get food. The two actions are always separate. But Fly-By, like the aforementioned meat lasagna, has chosen to mush two good things together into a semi-unrecognizable mass of epic yuckiness.

Actually, I just committed a cardinal sin of editorial writing with that last sentence. I assigned blame, nebulously, to “Fly-By,” when I should have been more explicit. It’s our fault. We’re Harvard students, and we’re stupid. All it would take to fix Fly-By is a conscious choice on the part of Fly-By-goers to treat the different food stations at Fly-By like they treat the different food stations at the Greenhouse. Once we’ve all filled up our bags with six nutritious items, we can queue up near the card-swiper lady. Relative to lasagna-scooping, swiping moves at four times the speed of sound. This way, small girls can get their meat lasagna without holding up the line, and I can actually “fly” by instead of dropping out of the sky.

MAC employees, Patricia Arquette, short female fans of Italian cuisine, and amorous salmon be damned—I want to soar!

Alex Slack ’06, a Crimson editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.