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Imagine going to a high school where a lot of the students live there, but some of the students live at home. What would you do if the school decided to change the pricing structure making it more expensive for the boarding students?

In this story, one boarding student was in this situation, and all of the boarding students were furious at the changes.

The school seemed to think they could convince the students that the new pricing structure wasn’t that much of an increase, but they were very, very wrong.

Keep reading to see how the students rebelled and taught the school a lesson.

Rewrite your prices to gouge money from students and bleed money out, a tutorial.

This is from over a decade ago when I was a student, but it never fails to make me smile even now.

The curriculum I was in is very particular to my country. It’s a two-year intensive program that usually ends in admission to the best schools in the country.

This curriculum, like most of its kind, was hosted by a public high school (with a much larger population of high school students), and – important part – it was heavily STEM-oriented.

A lot of students lived at the school.

This high school, being downtown in a big city in a large area of nothing, had, in addition to the usual lunch room, boarding facilities that were mostly used by students in this curriculum, as the high school population usually lived in town.

When I arrived, the price structure was the following:

boarding students paid a fixed price of about €62 a week for the room and all meals Monday morning through Saturday morning

other students could eat lunch for about €4.30 a lunch, with a prepaid card. Easy enough. (I don’t remember the exact prices but it was in this range)

But then the pricing structure changed.

In January of my second year, all boarding students were made to attend a meeting about a new price structure that would count everything separately.

The room would be €29 a week, lunch and dinners would be €4.20 a pop, and breakfast would be €2 a pop.

The resulting price would be an across the board 2% increase, which “is negligible”.

Key word being “across the board” here.

It was actually a much bigger increase than 2% for the boarding students.

I still don’t know who they expected to fool.

Obviously good STEM students would figure out instantly that for them, the week would now be €82, so a 33% increase.

There was an uproar.

The rest of the meeting was hearing over and over “it was validated by the school board”. As if boarding students had any representation there. The parents were too far and the students too busy. And of course other parents and students would approve of what was essentially a discount for them.

The students did something the school didn’t anticipate.

So we were stuck with the new pricing.

Okay. But we don’t pay for the meals if we don’t go, huh?

Remember: the school was downtown. And it appears, the students needed much less the breakfast, lunch and dinner on site where there are tons of options in walking distance at a lesser price. Up to and including stocking up things in the rooms for breakfast.

The school had to make another change.

The kitchen was DROWNING in stock and BLEEDING money through the nose.

The school being public, buying the food was not a very flexible process they could change week after week.

It only lasted a few weeks they came back to the old pricing structure, albeit a little higher (€65 per week I believe).

I still call it a win.

While the prices didn’t go back to where they were, at least the school brought them down significantly. Good for the students for finding a way to teach the school a lesson!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person imagines what the office workers were thinking.

Another person wouldn’t have wanted them to change things back.

They learned this the hard way!

Another person points out that the response was to be expected.

The school didn’t think that decision through very well! You’d think they would’ve had to at least notify the boarding school students’ parents and/or given them a vote on the matter before making this change.

The students proved that they were smarter than the school administrators!