Office Food Etiquette

I've blogged in the past about the office etiquette I have found lacking in many offices I have worked in but another I have found that is just as bad are the general kitchen habits of so many co-workers I've had in the past and the present. For whatever reason (I don't think it will every be fully understood or explained) people tend to take on slightly different personalities than those they have in their private lives. I say this because I can't believe that some people are this slovenly or this unkempt in their own homes. Or perhaps that's my desired belief and I am deluding myself into believing that people can't be so messy or inconsiderate at home.

The reason the kitchen is the focal point for so much bad blood in the office is because of what goes on in there. Take for example the fridge. There are so many people in an office that the fridges at work are often as full as the ones at home though that is not always the case. Given that the current trend in the office these days is to work more (at least for some people) the idea of the fridge was so that workers could bring something other than a sack lunch like they were in school. Instead we are now able to bring in leftovers, fresh food, microwaveable meals and a veritable cornucopia of food and beverages that transforms what could be a very mundane lunch into s meal fit for a king. Or so the thought process went.

What happens though many a time is that people sometimes forget that they have stuff in there. Take for example the one office I worked in where people would bring in the raw ingredients for sandwiches or veggie wraps and then would assemble a fresh meal for lunch virtually every day. I guess it makes more sense than making one at home and bringing it in every day if you have the option of making more than one sandwich if the mood should strike. What tended to happen in that particular case however was that the individual would often forget that they had raw ingredients left at the end of the week and rather than clearing it out or finishing it off, it would be allowed to fester. Then opening a fridge and finding stale and rotten leftovers made for a nasal journey that most of us would just as soon forget.

But sometimes it wasn't even a case of forgetting food; rather someone would come along and take the items that people had left in there. I remember one time I had made breakfast burritos for the office (there were very few of us there so I didn't have to make that many) and I had made a couple of extra for myself for later in the week. I had put the extras in a bag with my name on it and kept it in the fridge. The next day when I went to get one I found that someone had gone into my labelled bag and taken some of my extra burritos. Now one can argue that perhaps that isn't such a big deal since I had made them for the office but still, as I said, some people tend to change their attitudes in the workplace. After all do we go and take other people's food at restaurants? I don't think so.

Even the microwave, that wonderful modern convenience can be a curse at times when the power of the atom is misused in the office. If you don't know what I mean then I only have one word for you: popcorn. For all the times that someone has popped a fresh and fine tasting bag of popcorn in the kitchen there are at least ten instances where someone has set the timer and left popcorn to burn and there's no more potent an office smell than burnt popcorn. Fish may be another but I don't think I've smelled fish as often as I've smelled burnt popcorn. Are you so busy that you can't spend the five minutes it takes to make the bag watching it to make sure it doesn't burn? If you are that busy then why are you wasting time eating popcorn in the first place? When you sit in a cubicle environment where air permeats from one end of the room to the other in no time flat, it helps if people are considerate enough to be mindful of the olafactory senses of those around them. Not everyone's culinary ideals match up so what you think smells wonderful may drive your cubicle neighbor up the wall.