By: Hanson Han; Staff Writer

On March 14, 2022, The Habit announced that starting April 4, 2022 – the day Mills students come back from spring break – all students from Mills High School will be banned from entering the store until further notice. This decision was due to multiple noise complaints from customers and employees alike. After picking apart a few quotes from customers and employees, it has been discovered that the noisiest Mills students were in fact the freshmen class. 

A review found on Yelp essentially sums up the entire atmosphere of the restaurant when freshmen are involved. The review reads: “One of the best burger places I’ve been to in quite a while. However, I would not recommend it as the entire place was filled with shouting and screaming. The restaurant is located in close proximity to Mills High School, so I would assume those delinquent students were the reason for this annoyance”. In response, The Habit customer satisfaction team has sent out a message addressing this issue. While the contents of the message have been redacted in order to save the egos of the students at Mills, rumors have gone around stating the message contained phrases such as: “loud freshmen, disgusting bathrooms, as well as the strong scent of AXE body spray”. With that being said, many customers have also complained about the bathrooms being especially unhygienic after seeing a group of freshmen leaving the restaurant. To test this statement, the Mills Sanitation Team has gone down to compare and contrast bathrooms. 

After many long days and nights of data collection and research, it has been concluded that The Habit bathrooms are “just as dirty as the Mills Center Court bathrooms, only if freshmen were in the restaurant previously”. With it being no secret how dirty the Mills Center Court bathrooms are, we could do nothing but sympathize for the customers and employees who have to deal with the freshmen and their bathroom dilemmas. It was also made public that the janitors working at The Habit have received a pay raise due to the increased difficulty of maintaining the restrooms. 

And so, with all of the facts laid out, what does that mean for Mills students? For starters, Mills students will not be allowed back inside the restaurant until The Habit customer satisfaction team has decided that the Mills students, the freshmen in particular, have matured enough to be able to eat in the restaurant without causing a disturbance to others. Since this goal is so subjective, who would know when Mills students would be able to eat at The Habit again? 

While the common response from many students at Mills would be leaning towards negative, the majority of customers and employees would wholeheartedly disagree. One employee has stated: “I am glad that the management team has finally been able to address the crisis of Mills students invading our restaurant. I personally am fine with the majority of the kids, it is just the freshmen who bother me the most”. When asked as to how he would know whether a Mills student was a freshman or not, the employee simply responded, “They just have that look you know? They act differently, as if a group of middle school students decided to call themselves highschoolers for fun. I’m sure they are good kids, I just don’t feel comfortable associating with them”. 

In response to all of this backlash towards the freshmen class, the Mills administration has decided to implement mandatory maturity classes starting as of August 2022. The class would only be available for 9th graders, and weighted as an elective course. The class would teach incoming freshmen basic manners – especially in restaurants, proper hygiene, as well as the newly discovered art of “minding your own business”. With all of these measures taking place in order to ensure the increased maturity of next year’s students, we can only hope that The Habit will lift its restrictions and let Mills students back into its fine establishment.