Here I sit at the Observer trying to think of a topic for my inside column. Now, I know there are several different ways I could go with this. Maybe I should talk about W's tax plan, or maybe the Mir crashing back to Earth.

No, I think I will talk about something that is of grand national importance. The dining hall.

Yesterday I was sitting in the dining room at SDH when I saw this guy drop his tray. His bowl came crashing down, and food splattered all over the floor.

The guy did not try to clean up his mess. He just left it there for some dining hall worker to clean it up.

It reminds me of an incident from breakfast last year. I dropped my tray near the drink machines. I was embarrassed at dropping my food, but since it was breakfast not many people were around. Immediately I bent down to clean up my food. A dining hall worker came up behind me and cleaned up my food for me. She reassured me to go get more food and to not worry about the mess.

I understand that it is the dining hall worker's job to clean up food. But is it really that hard to clean up a bowl and a plate?

Most, if not all, of the people who go to Notre Dame come from middle class backgrounds. There wasn't much that we lacked growing up beyond the new He-Man toy or nerf toy. Notre Dame students volunteer at a much greater rate than the average University. We participate in Summer Service Projects and dorm service days.

So let's not take the DH workers for granted. Don't be a jerk for something as simple as cleaning up your plate.

I think that the next time I see this in the dining hall I am just going to go ballistic and punch someone. Of course I won't punch the guy in the dining hall. Especially if he is bigger than I am.

Maybe I will just take my aggression out on the feta cheese in the salad bar.

Another thing that bothers me about the dining hall is the guy who stands in front of the cups at the drink machines. He is the guy who waits until the drink machine right by the cups is open. Meanwhile, a line of seven or eight people begins to form behind the one guy waiting for cups.

I am sure most of you have experienced this phenomenon in the DH. Those of you who haven't experienced this are probably those causing the problem in the first place.

I can't tell you the shame the first time I found out that my friend Pete is one of those guys. He waited right in front of the cups for me to get done filling my cup. I thought I had taught him better than that. Apparently not.

Bottom line, don't be that guy.

So in closing, let me stress that this isn't of national importance. Stuff that happens in dining hall isn't oppressing anyone, and it really isn't taking money out of anyone's pocket. There are more important things in the world, like global warming. But considering it snowed yesterday, I don't think we need to worry about that. So I guess the dining hall is the most important thing happening right now.

• Dining Hall Etiquette