Snide Comment Encourages Homeplate Grill Worker to Work Faster

Yesterday evening, having waited in excess of eight minutes for his teriyaki salmon at the Homeplate grill, Aaron Pauley ’13 took a stand for the Dartmouth student body and made a snide remark about why his order was taking so long. The remark came after Pauley reached for another student’s salmon, only to be informed by grill worker Todd Whitney that it was not his. Pauley shot back, declaring, “Sorry, I just assumed it was mine because I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes, my bad.”

The result was an immediate and noticeable increase in both the efficiency and effort of Whitney at the grill.


Whitney explained, “All of the sudden it just hit me. I wasn’t giving one hundred percent and it took this kid to point it out to me. I wish he had spoken up earlier so I could’ve realized that I was capable of so much more.”

Witnesses observed that Whitney immediately took on the role of a short order fry cook at a diner, filling orders in seconds and cutting the amount of time that it takes to cook raw meat to a safe level in half.

When asked if he was irked that a student would tell him how to do his job, Whitney was aghast at the suggestion, “Absolutely not, I was ashamed of myself. I had no idea these kids had been waiting so long. And let’s not kid ourselves, he goes to Dartmouth, I’d say he’s more than qualified to tell me how to run my grill.”

When interviewed by the Dunyun, Pauley explained that the spiteful comment directly to Whitney was definitely necessary, since Whitney had failed to notice his annoyed glances both at him and at his watch as well as his loud comments to friends that he would come sit down if they ever finished his salmon.

Whitney agreed, adding that he really needed a verbal cue since he was unable to understand the visual ones.

Pauley has used his new popularity with the DDS workforce to score free pavilion cookies, large drinks at the medium price and extra meat in his stir-fry. He is also credited with bringing about the new pay-per-meal structure after commenting under his breath to a cashier that he couldn’t believe his dinner was $15 several weeks ago.