This.
Put a sign up. Send an email around telling everyone this will enforced.
Ask the janitors to bring you or the managers any item they are concerned they would be accused of stealing. You can toss it yourself.
Have to be strict with the work fridge. :o
Another this. I’m kind of currious as to where the OP works where housekeeping can pretty much say “Yeah, we’re not doing that.” and still keep their jobs.
There’s a big giant note on our door, signed by management, that fridge will be emptied out on X day at X time.
You’d still be surprised by the number of folks that complain that their shit got thrown out.
I have taken it upon myself that if I find any half drank fast food cups in the fridge, I’ll throw that shit away. One sticky mess spilled on top of my lunch is enough for me TYVM!
On hot days, 100F or so, and if there was room, I would put my motorcycle helmet in the fridge. And it was taken out every night.
Yuck ! So food could be left there for a whole month , people should date their food and if not eaten by the end of the week it get toss out by anyone that find it.
Ours are cleaned weekly by the janitorial staff. Everything but condiments are tossed every Friday. I don’t think they bother washing containers - you forget, you buy a new one. In the nursing mother’s room (for pumping, we don’t have babies on the premises, thank goodness) there’s a mini fridge. I don’t know if anyone cleans that out. I’ve never seen anyone use it, except maybe for the observant Muslim man, who I think uses it for prayer times.
StG
Once, where I worked where there was a fridge to store our lunches, the fridge had a clear glass door. No freezer section. So with the clear glass, there was no “out of sight, out of mind” effect. There was always room for me to drop off my sammich.
I am constantly throwing shit out from our work fridge. I keep an eye on what’s in there and after a few weeks it goes into the garbage, container and all.
Who the hell brings a lunch into work and completely forgets about it? Like forever? How is that possible?
I do this all the time and I just can’t comprehend it.
I think the forgotten items are from people who rarely use the fridge. They bring a lunch because they think they’ll have to work all day, but then they get a break and go out. Or they bring a doggie bag back from a lunch and forget about it. The rotten food bothers me too, but I’ve forgotten doggie bags in the work fridge, so I cut them some slack.
One way to clean out a fridge is to put stickers on everything and put up a sign saying anything with a sticker will be thrown out after 2 weeks. That way it gives people plenty of time to claim their stuff by removing the sticker. Anything which still has a sticker at the 2-week mark is considered abandoned and you can throw those things away.
I clean out the office fridge, too, and I throw stuff out heartlessly. I just do not give a shit. If you leave your stuff there and it is past the expiration or I can’t tell, into the trash it goes.
It’s the Tragedy of the Commons - Office Edition.
I do it.
About 6 months ago I transferred to another office. The fridge was a mess. I put up a sign saying that I was going to clean it out on Friday and to get your stuff out or I was going to trash it.
The place has a pretty big employee turnover rate. Therefore I found all kinds of old food. Lots of mold. Stuff past their best by date years ago. The oldest thing had a best by date in 2007 so it was at least 8 years old. Lots of the leftovers in plastic containers didn’t have dates but some had to be over 3 years old. I filled two heavy duty garbage bags. It also took a lot to clean out the inside of the fridge and microwave.
Another place where I work has a little college apartment fridge. The freezer was completely full of ice when I got there. I dragged the thing outside and put it facing the sun with the door open. As the ice melted, food started to show inside the melting ice. I defrost and clean that one once a year.
Same deal where I work. And since everyone knows it’s coming, the fridge is pretty close to empty by Friday afternoon at the end of the month. The cleaning staff never has to throw away very much.
And what sort of person puts their purse in the fridge at work?!
I guess it depends on whether there’s a problem with food being left a long time. At our office, the once-a-month cleanups seem to have resulted in generally good habits.
And with some stuff, there’s no reason not to leave it there for a few weeks. I bring a container of half n’ half at the beginning of the month, and put it in the back of the fridge. Even if it takes me a few weeks to bottom it out, it’s still good the whole time. And (except on weekends, when nobody’s here) it’s not taking up any more room than if I brought in a new container every week.
But once the stuff’s in the fridge, it doesn’t need to be in an insulated bag. The purpose of the insulated bag should be to get the food from the fridge at home to the fridge at work without spoiling.
Our office cleaners are responsible for dumping the contents of the fridges. They do it at the end of the month and an email is circulated reminding people that this is going to happen. There’s also a notice stuck on the fridges in our building to remind people (and inform anyone who for any reason doesn’t see the email). As far as we’re concerned, if the cleaners want to keep/use/eat anything they find on the month-end cleaning, they are welcome to it but we’re not being held responsible if it makes them sick!
I was the boss (long time ago) and every Friday afternoon anything left in the fridge was tossed. Containers and all. Anything left in the sink like coffee mugs and silverware was also tossed. After the first Friday rampage - which was preceded by several notices - never had much of a problem!
Anybody but me! 
I usually wind up doing this at my workplace. I get sick of it first, so in a battle of wills, I lose 
I always put a sign stating, I’m cleaning it out on so and so a day. If you don’t label something, I pitch it. I’ve gotten yelled at a few times, but you should’ve labeled it.
So Carryon pitches the carrion. 
No , it doesn’t need to be in an insulated bag. But at most of the places I’ve worked,you would want to leave your food in a container of some sort if it was multiple items - a sandwich, a salad and a yogurt, for example. Otherwise, it becomes too hard to find anything as people move things around.(yogurt ends up in the back corner behind a bunch of 64 oz juice containers ) etc.