On Nov. 23, D.C. Central Kitchen founder and President Robert Egger e-mailed a couple of thousand District residents apologizing for an October mass e-mail promoting the organization’s Lunch Lady Campaign. Included in the initial message, which encouraged teachers and students to sacrifice one day’s lunch money to help the less fortunate, was a cartoonish depiction of a rotund lunch lady with a hairnet. Egger says he disliked the stereotypical image from the get-go but decided to delay his apology until after the Nov. 22 Lunch Lady Campaign party so individual contributors wouldn’t feel their efforts were slighted. Ben Boyd, director of communications for the D.C. chapter of the Service Employees International Union, applauds Egger’s belated mea culpa and hopes other organizations will admit their mistakes when it comes to pictorial representations of service workers. “Most people do not apologize for their fuckups. He did,” says Boyd, adding, “In the end, this is a victory for the lunch ladies of the world.” —Kelly Manion