The Office Fridge

Thursday, January 31, 2008

My heart was warmed this morning by the glory that is passiveagressivenotes.com; it made me mildly nostalgic for my pre-pregnancy office days, since the office is essentially a haven for passive aggressive note leaving. I wasn't surprised at all to see so many "To the Loser Who Ate My Sandwich:" notes, as I've experienced mysterious lunch thievery myself.

If you've never worked in an office before, you might be blissfully unaware of this epidemic. If you're a sane person such as myself, the idea of taking someone else's food, which they brought from home, out of a shared fridge and eating it seems completely bizarre and also, frankly, pretty gross. I'm not even talking about just frozen Michaelina's or other prepackaged foods here, I'm talking Chinese food leftovers, hand made sandwiches, pretty much anything you can think of. Apparently there are human beings on the planet that honestly see no problem with taking someone else's ham sandwich out of it's plastic bag and eating it.

The mystery of who steals the opened, unlabeled, previously handled food in every office (and it's happened in every one I've ever worked in, by some miracle of oddness) will probably never be solved. It's just one of many strange things about office culture that I think should be studied anthropologically- something about the copy machines and the cubicles and all the slate gray carpeting does something rare and special to the brain. Could it be that these food swipers are sincerely starving people, people so destitute that my leftover pasta alfredo from Olive Garden is not just the only source of sustenance they'll receive all day, but is also the only thing keeping them alive?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no office saint; I admit to having on a few occasions poured myself a cup of coffee without putting the required quarter in the Coffee Fund jar, but come ON. A quarter a cup is RIDICULOUS, and at least I saw the coffee making process from start to finish on my OWN. I know exactly what's in there and I also happen to know the person who poured that cup of coffee I'm drinking (me) doesn't have some strange disease or otherwise unpleasant personal habits, you know what I mean?

No one apparently ever sees these food thieves at work, either; the pure brazenness of their actions seems to shield them from capture. Maybe it's a compulsion, like shoplifting? Are these people feeling so beaten down by working in a shitty office every day that their one source of self empowerment is swiping other people's mediocre food, forcing them to eat honey buns from the vending machine for lunch?