Refrigerator Wars

After discussing yesterday's unfortunate ice incident with some co-workers this morning, we uncovered yet another major bone of contention in the office.  Our comments quickly turned into complaints, the complaints were voiced to other [guilty] co-workers and before we knew what was happening, Refrigerator Wars had begun.

First, let me tell how the war was started.  We have one refrigerator in the first floor lunchroom  (as well as one in the upstairs lunchroom).  There are 43 employees whose offices/cubicles are on the first floor.  There is only one refrigerator. I'll let you do the math.  Keep in mind this is not an industrial-sized refrigerator, either - it's the size of your average home refrigerator.  Granted, not all of the first-floor employees use the refrigerator at the same time, there is still over-crowding.  Generally speaking, the overcrowding is not a result of 43 lunches being crammed into one refrigerator; it's due to people leaving their lunch in there so long that bacteria has started to grow from it, and from people putting their entire lunchboxes in there. 

I conducted an informal survey this morning, and polled 10 first floor co-workers.  I chose people who regularly bring their lunches, and when asked "What hacks you off most about our refrigerator?", 7 out of the 10 said that lunchboxes in the refrigerator was their biggest beef.  The other 3 said that people leaving their lunches in there for weeks was their biggest gripe. 

This topic was the theme for this morning's break, and it appears the battle lines have already been drawn.  One person said they mentioned the lunchbox thing to a co-worker who in deed does leave their lunchbox in the frig, and he defensively said "that's not as bad as the people who leave their stuff in there for months." Au contraire, my co-worker.  Our frig is cleaned out [supposedly] once a month, and anything that isn't a regularly used condiment or labeled with a person's name is tossed.  That includes leftover lunches and even Tupperware containers. 

There's another faction involved in Refrigerator Wars: the lunch-bringers that have staked claim on "their" territory in the refrigerator.  I've heard story after story of how lunches and other foods/beverages getmoved because the people accidentally and inadvertantly put their food in someone else's "spot".  I normally use the "snack bin" drawer for my lunches.  It's a small drawer, just about 2 or 3 inches deep.  It's the perfect size for the microwave meals that I usually bring for lunch.  Sometimes the drawer is full of Subway remnants so I just find another spot to slide my box into.  Not a problem with me.  But I've witnessed co-workers spending a major portion of their 30-minute lunch time searching through the refrigerator for their lunch that had been moved.  This is quite a feat if you've brought your lunch in a white plastic grocery bag, and there's two dozen of these bags in the refrigerator already. 

My department has often talked about pitching in and buying one of those small refrigerators like the college kids use in their dorms.  But with our luck, somebody else would cram their lunch in there.