Who puts a paper towel wrapped half of an avocado in the office fridge and leaves it there for more than a week?
Do you have any office fridge horror stories?
That depends-- Was the seed in it? Maybe they were trying to sprout an avocado tree.
I was the office fridge horror story. When my office decided half and half was too expensive to provide for free, I purchased my own quart, had my morning coffee and by lunchtime the quart of almost empty. There was no H&H for my evening break coffee. I got another quart, but a sticky explaining it wasn’t for the office but my own, personal H&H. It was gone in a day. Finally I bought a quart and put a post it note that read: This is my fucking half and half. Buy your own fucking half and half or drink my spit. Yes, I spit in this container.
ETA: Although the H&H lasted more than a day, people still used it.
We’re very strict at my work. Signs are posted all over the break room that the fridges are cleaned out every Monday morning between 6a-7a and EVERYTHING will be tossed.
I’ve had one microwavable soup stolen (I put it down in the break room while the microwaves were in use and I ran to the bathroom, and when I came back it was gone) but my boss set up a dorm fridge for our department so I don’t have to use the communal ones any more.
I used to sit 90 degrees and 2 feet away from our work area’s mini fridge.
Every fucking time, people would hit the back of my chair with the refrigerator door.
Every fucking time, they would interrupt me while I was working for inane lunch-related chatter (“YUM! Food!”).
Every fucking time, if more than one person was at the fridge, it turned into a noisy conversation spot with me literally trying to work sitting right next to them.
Every fucking time, if I was eating, they would make comments about my food.
All the fucking time, someone would leave their shit in there for weeks, and clouds of weird, musty, rotting odors would escape and linger right where I was sitting.
I don’t sit near the mini fridge anymore.
My office has really weird ideas about naming food. I just ate a sandwich named “Mike.”
My last place of employment instituted this rule-- although it was emptied out every other Friday at 4. My boss sent out an email before it was emptied. some people still whined about their stuff getting thrown out but not many because no one had sympathy for their loss of their half eaten Yoplait.
They don’t just dump food. They dump containers. A former employee got into a screaming match with the office manager because she’d lost her Tupperware.
I’ve seen them throw out half sheet cakes from someone’s birthday and an unopened gallon of lemonade. I understand, since this isn’t your house and we can’t leave food in the fridge for weeks on end, but I still cringed at the waste.
In my office the fridge is emptied out every day. Makes it pretty useless, at least for me.
My only horror story is forgetting to mark my yogurt all the time.
Not that other people eat it, but if I go to get mine and I haven’t marked it, I can’t convince myself it’s not somebody else’s…and I DON’T wanna be the guy that eats the yogurt of others.
Sometimes, eventually there’ll be two or three yogurts with no marking. I’ll watch them for a couple days, and of course they stay right there.
Then I’ll decide to eat one, but still be nervous someone’s gonna be like “someone ate my yogurt!”
Here’s the perfect office fridge cleaning procedure. It will throw away only those items which went untouched for at least a week but leave the more recent items:
- On Monday, go through the fridge and put a rubber band on all items.
- Every subsequent Monday, throw away anything that has a rubber band. Apply a rubber band to all remaining items.
This way if someone forgets their stuff, it will be in the fridge a maximum of 2 weeks before it gets automatically thrown away. If someone wants to keep their stuff in longer (like milk), all they have to do is remove the rubber band. But if someone doesn’t check on their stuff within the week, it will be thrown away with all the other rubberbanded items.
Pick a day other than Friday. The problem with Friday is that the cleaning crew might not pick up the trash, and the garbage will stink up the place over the weekend.
The problem with throwing everything in the fridge out on a specific day is that some person may be working late or have some other legitimate reason to have food in the fridge that day. The benefit of the rubberband method is that food has to stay untouched for at least a week before it will get thrown away.
If there are two strawberry yogurts in there, and you brought one of them, it shouldn’t matter which one you eat.
I probably brought both of them. But I’m always afraid I’m wrong.
I ate someone’s food by accident once. The whole office was on Weight Watchers and I brought in my week’s supply of frozen WW meals and stored it in a Key Food plastic bag in the freezer. Friday came, I took out my last meal, popped it into the microwave and ate it. An hour later my office manager was yelling about someone eating her food. Her very own special Smart Ones Mac n Cheese that she put special in this here special Key Food bag AND SOMEONE ATE IT!!!
Seeing as how I did not have any special kind of Smart Ones in my Key Food bag and the remaining Key Food bag in the freezer did not have Mac n Cheese in it, special or not, I figured it was me. I felt terrible. She was obviously looking forward to her lunch and I ruined it for her. I offered her my Smart One and to go out and get her another but she declined, still upset that someone ate her food.
This is why you should put your name on the food in the communal fridge. Not to keep someone from eating your food but to stop you from eating someone else’s.
Locks would be better
Ours gets cleaned out once a year, usually by me when I can’t take it anymore. WHY every time do I feel the need to see just how bad a milk from a few months ago smells??! Somehow I just can’t help it and then I beg myself, WHY, self???
Dead Dove - Do Not Eat
In a workplace eons ago, someone spilled an entire can of Coke in the fridge and left it there. After a couple of weeks, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I brought in a scrub bucket and some rags and detergent. I came in early, emptied the fridge, and started cleaning. As people arrived at work, they bitched because they couldn’t put their food in the fridge.
Yeah, you’re welcome.
From that point on, I carried my lunch in a small cooler that sat by my desk. Never touched the fridge again.
At my current job, I bring my lunch in a small fabric tote that fits in the bottom door shelf. It doesn’t stay overnight and I just ignore the rest of the contents. Someone cleans it periodically, but it’s not me, tho I did bring in a box of baking soda when it got particularly ripe in there.
As the boss at one job, I made sure that any mystery objects that were left by COB Friday were tossed, containers and all. People got the idea fairly quickly.
My question is why hasn’t anyone integrated a camera into a fridge JUST to put an end to this. From what you read there should def be demand, don’t you think?
Sure it would add a little cost but it’d be worth it if it put an end to office lunch theft. I would think the company would be willing to pony up the difference just to cease the endless drama, accusations, and bitching.
It would show you, who took what, out of the fridge. Maybe you could watch it from your desk even!
Seems like a million dollar idea to me!