I think I'll bring a lunch to work, put it in the fridge and forget about it: forever.

Honest to God people. How do you bring a container of food to work and forget about it?

For the second time in 6 months I’ve just thrown out a half dozen containers of rotten, moldy, stinking food. Seriously?

One sour cream container had a yoghurt in it dated sometime in 2013.

You don’t notice the next day that you left yesterday’s lunch in the fridge?

What the hell?

Ah, work fridges. Where condiments go to die.

More employers should do what mine does: all common room refrigerators are cleared out and cleaned by the custodial staff at 6 PM every Friday.

I just bought my own mini fridge for my office. HATED the work fridge.

Throw them out??? Take them home and refurb them. Casrefully spoon the colored stuff off the yogurt. – add sugar if necessary to overcome tang. Most cheese can be eaten all the way out to the edge, but you might pare a little off the surface, if badly discolored. Never mind how hard it is. Lunch meats, if they’re sticky, just rinse them off under hot running water.

My office is right across from the kitchenette, and occasionally the fridge gets a funk that wanders into my office every time someone opens the door. I put a sign on our fridge that says ‘Random Fridge checks - Science Experiments will be tossed.’ I don’t care if it’s your grandmother’s heirloom Tupperware. I don’t open it to check first, out it goes… makes me wonder what the hell their houses look like.

I once found ten-year-old mustard in our office fridge.

My strategy for cleaning the office fridge:

  • Put stickers on everything in the fridge and freezer
  • Put up sign that says, “Remove sticker to keep. On <date>, anything which still has a sticker will be tossed”

In my department’s case, it’s done by us staffers, including managers. You get assigned to a couple 2-week “kitchen duty” stints each year, which involves tidying the counter and a weekly fridge clean-out. Date and label your stuff or it gets tossed, and anything dated but old (old lunch, expired product) gets tossed regardless. You send out a warning e-mail the day prior. Unlabeled containers go on the table, and in the garbage by the end of the day.

I bring breakfast and lunch in a cooler each day that sits by my desk, and bypass the office fridge. Everyone wins…

Is this an example of how Chalk River has started producing penicillin as a sop to the medical community now that it is getting out of the isotope business?

That’s a smart tactic. Now WTF is with the people I work with who bring their lunch in a cooler and then put the whole damn thing in the fridge taking up all the space? The insulation works both ways, people! I think your sammy will probably be OK in your cooler bag for a few hours.

Quite possibly. Maybe they were science experiments after all.

This is absolutely brilliant. Truly.

We go the other way. Stickers and a pen are provided. Everyone is expected to label their food with their initials and a date. Every Friday, anything that’s more than two weeks old gets tossed.

I did this once, sorry.

I brought in a lunch, but then a co-worker offered to buy me lunch.

Forgot to take it out and left on a 3 day business trip. I didn’t think of it again for a few weeks.

Luckily, my office is a “clean out everything on Friday” type place.

Some moron left an unopened can of tuna in the fridge. I think I’ll put it in the freezer for him. just to be safe.

Bring a lunch, get fired before lunch, forget your lunch.

I don’t know, but I’m in an office of only three people - and one is my wife - and yet we still find ourselves having to ask “Who left this thing in here? Can you please deal with it before it crawls onto my desk?”

I appointed myself Fridge Sheriff a couple years ago. Anything without a label - date and name - is subject to being tossed out at any time. And I did it.

I pissed some people off - one literally screamed at me - but everyone knew the rule and I had management backup.

Most folks loved the policy.

These days I work elsewhere and carry breakfast and lunch in a large, insulated lunch bag that never goes near the fridge.
mmm