Who moved my cheese?

This doesn't fall under the disgusting fridge subject,because this food never ended up in the fridge, but it's disgusting enough to be imprinted on my memory forever.

I used to work 2nd shift at a small, unsuccessful law firm in Chicago. One of the partners would visit the food court in our building right around the time they went around with the dumpster from restaurant to restaurant. The food was supposed to have been thrown out; however, Andy thought that the donuts were still tasty. After he'd return upstairs to the office we'd would walk into our kitchen to find a garbage bag full of donuts -- AND coffee grounds, AND dirty napkins, AND coffee filters, you name it -- on the kitchen counter, with Andy pulling the donuts out and putting them on a paper plate. At some point the donut shop people noticed he was doing this and tried to stop him, saying dude, that's GARBAGE. But not to Andy. Millionaire Andy. He kept on collecting it anyway. The donut shop employees must have taken pity on him and started boxing up the donuts instead of tossing them into the garbage; maybe they knew that there might be unsuspecting people who were eating garbage once the donuts got back upstairs. We reported it many, many times to our HR manager, the managing partner -- but they did nothing to stop him. Throwing the donuts out did no good, as he'd fish them out of our garbage and then want to know who did it.

My last day there was one of the happiest of my life.

I have to agree about the food fair comment - although I'm not sure using "ethnic" was a good descriptor. My office is right next to the kitchen, and there is a guy in our office who doesn't think twice about steaming mussels in the microwave, reheating leftover Indian food (I love Indian food, but it reeks) or stuff with overpowering garlic. Yikes.

Forgotten food? Not at my place of business. The office manager type has instructed the cleaning people to throw everything out on the 15th of every month. There will be no exceptions. They've thrown out unopened bottles of water, cans of pop and unopened granola bars. You can't put a note on it either - they've been instructed to ignore them.

You really got to be on the ball here! Can you tell I've lost quite a few items in this overzealous cleaning effort? There will be no common sense - you will be made to conform! ;)

I once worked in an office where employee's lunches disappeared from the fridge. Sandwiches, leftovers etc. A couple of times we left booby-trapped sandwiches (dishsoap in the mayo, nothing toxic) and after a couple of those the pilfering stopped. What a bunch of disgusting twits. And the microwave - you can't even go there. Most of these people were highly paid professionals, but the way they left messes behind them a pig would have declined to live with them. Spoiled babies who are too lazy to clean up after themselves.

This isn't in the refrigerator category but my pet peeve is people who hog the microwave. I teach in a school and have roughly 25 minutes for lunch. There will be a couple of people who microwave a frozen dinner for six minutes. I've given up and eat a cold sandwich or school lunch, always a treat!

After seeing how our kitchen is left every day, I've decided I'm never going to visit the homes of my coworkers. You can't rinse out a dish and put it away? I see better habits in my toddler's day-care class.

It is amazing what pigs people are. Our company was nice enough in these tough economic times to remodel our office and they created a beautiful kitchen area. I brought cleaning supplies and can you believe after only 2 days, the place is dirty and noone thinks to use a Clorox wipe to clean up their spills. I was in there wiping it down this morning.
I agree, I would hate to see their homes.

People here steal lunches every week...they steal each other's DOGGY BAGS...food that someone has already eaten and stored the leftovers...this blows my mind because of the potential bacteria from someone else's fork/mouth...sometimes the thief actually goes through the lunch and leaves what he or she doesn't like behind in the bad! Nothing is sacred in that refrigerator...why do they do it?

Wait that's not the worst, we been finding that someone on our floor of over 100 people is eating other people's food. Even partially eaten potatoe salads saved to snack on later in the afternoon have gone missing. It was not thrown out, when we looked in the trash the container was empty with a fork in it.

herstory wrote:

People here steal lunches every week...they steal each other's DOGGY BAGS...food that someone has already eaten and stored the leftovers...this blows my mind because of the potential bacteria from someone else's fork/mouth...sometimes the thief actually goes through the lunch and leaves what he or she doesn't like behind in the bad! Nothing is sacred in that refrigerator...why do they do it?

Disgusting as it sounds, we had the same problem and found out it was the cleaning staff at night who are literally that destitute. This country has really gone down hill in the last 25 years.

Too funny. Thanks for sharing your gross story!!

Gross Lawyer wrote:

This doesn't fall under the disgusting fridge subject,because this food never ended up in the fridge, but it's disgusting enough to be imprinted on my memory forever.
I used to work 2nd shift at a small, unsuccessful law firm in Chicago. One of the partners would visit the food court in our building right around the time they went around with the dumpster from restaurant to restaurant. The food was supposed to have been thrown out; however, Andy thought that the donuts were still tasty. After he'd return upstairs to the office we'd would walk into our kitchen to find a garbage bag full of donuts -- AND coffee grounds, AND dirty napkins, AND coffee filters, you name it -- on the kitchen counter, with Andy pulling the donuts out and putting them on a paper plate. At some point the donut shop people noticed he was doing this and tried to stop him, saying dude, that's GARBAGE. But not to Andy. Millionaire Andy. He kept on collecting it anyway. The donut shop employees must have taken pity on him and started boxing up the donuts instead of tossing them into the garbage; maybe they knew that there might be unsuspecting people who were eating garbage once the donuts got back upstairs. We reported it many, many times to our HR manager, the managing partner -- but they did nothing to stop him. Throwing the donuts out did no good, as he'd fish them out of our garbage and then want to know who did it.
My last day there was one of the happiest of my life.

Nothing changes with people and office lunchroom refrigerators throughout the years! In the 70's people brought lunches everyday, but maybe they went out that day instead of eating it - and - the next day they brought another lunch leaving yesterday's in the frig. Twice a month HR through out everything in the frig; good food, drinks, Tupperware, etc. Then we had the "thieves" who would sometimes get really hungry and take someone's lunch before noontime. The microwave was another issue sending the smells throughout the office on each floor; nothing like popcorn at 3:00 PM, etc. Like I said, nothing changes!

Our office solved the gross refrigerator problem by the boss buying a couple of the small, compact fridges you can get for $80. He put one in his office, my office, and another clerk's area. We have our own area and leave the pigs in the livestock area. Not easy to do in a cubicle but it fits under the desk. Now my stuff isn't stolen or sharing space with somebody's funky lunch from 2 months ago. Some people just don't care because it isn't their house and feel cleaning up at work is the responsibility of the clean-up crew at night.
As a nice gag - ever put ipecac syrup in something? Mixes nicely with sauces - that's how we found the supervisor (former supervisor) stealing lunch. Think she quit out of embarrassment.

I love when someone steal my pizza overnight.. I love putting brushing liquid laxative on the bottom crust, and the edge crust, then crushing pill form laxative and sprinkling it under the cheese. then i steal the toilet paper from the bathroom so when the overnight shift decides my pizza looks good enough to STEAL, they get what they deserve!!! haha.. i love it

*brushing (putting brushing)

At my last job, we had the opposite problem: no one would use the fridge. That's because for a short period of time, we had a vegan wackadoo working there.(For the record, I have no problem with vegans, just the militant ones) She would go through the fridge every day and confiscate anything that had any sort of animal product in it. Ham sandwich for lunch? To the garbage with it! Hard boiled egg for an afternoon snack? To the garbage with it! Bringing in coffee with cream in it? If you set it down, she'd check in out and then throw it away too. We all ended up keeping our lunches in our cars in coolers and eating outside.

Thank god she only lasted 4 months before being summarily fired...

Our office has an easy fix, every other friday, stuff in the fridge gets dumped.

I will never understand fridge thieves.

Luckily, I share a fridge with only three other people so there's no funny business. But I've heard the horror stories.

It's just BIZARRE to me.

A Laz wrote:

It is amazing what pigs people are. Our company was nice enough in these tough economic times to remodel our office and they created a beautiful kitchen area. I brought cleaning supplies and can you believe after only 2 days, the place is dirty and noone thinks to use a Clorox wipe to clean up their spills. I was in there wiping it down this morning.
I agree, I would hate to see their homes.

And I would hate to have them visit my home if the way they clean up their messes in the kitchen ( or the common restrooms, or their workspaces ) is any indication of their cleaning habits.

I used to work in an office that had one fridge that was used by a few dozen people, as a result it was pretty crowded and there was the usual stuff going on: people leaving food in there forever and forgetting about it, people eating other people's food and other stuff - in general, it was just pretty gross like many office fridge's tend to be. I was 'ambitious' enough to clean it and give people ample warning that it would be done and nothing would be spared if it wasn't out by a certain time of the day on Friday. I didn't mind cleaning it, but unbelievable as it may sound, there were people who just couldn't fathom that "anything left in the fridge will be discarded" verbage I used in my mass emails, signs, verbal communication, etc. One employee bitched to my supervisor that I threw out 1/2 bottle of his Costco Salad dressing, which sold for like $1.00 a bottle. Another employee came literally running up to me to make sure I wouldn't throw out like a dozen or so Icee Freeze Sticks (or whatever they're called) in the freezer. I'm at a new job now and got a bigger sized mini-fridge for my office for $35 off Craigslist and no longer am concerned with the drama of the Office Fridge...