Office refrigerator nightmares

The smell is comparable to a dead corpse and is enough to warrant a visit from a local CSI team.

It's a combination of mystery meat and something green and disgusting living inside a forgotten Tupperware bowl.

What is this dreaded smell?

It's the office refrigerator.

Like millions of other offices throughout the country, our office shares a community refrigerator. This wouldn't be a bad thing if everyone helped keep it clean.

For whatever reason, co-workers often left their half-eaten lunches in the refrigerator. The forgotten lunches are left to rot like a zombie in a low budget Ed Wood horror movie. It's dreadful because you never know what you will see inside the refrigerator...or smell.

Inside our office fridge is a collection of old bottles of salad dressings, a bag of freezer burned strawberries, and an unwrapped mini UFO that used to be a veggie burger.

Out of curiosity, a co-worker and I wanted to see if the abandoned burger could fly like a UFO. We used it as a Frisbee until it broke into several pieces. Now it's really unidentifiable.

I have a few questions and concerns about refrigerator etiquette.

Why does anyone put a giant lunch container inside a refrigerator? I bring one to work but keep it at my desk. The logic behind the plastic lunch container is to temporarily keep items either cool or warm until lunchtime. If an item must stay cold, then it should be placed inside the refrigerator. It's not necessary to put the entire bag in the fridge when it only has one item. Putting an entire lunch container in the fridge defeats the purpose of its usefulness.

I also have an issue with co-workers who keep leftover French fries or half eaten burgers from a local fast food joint. Who eats a leftover Big Mac? It's not like it can be re-heated or eaten. Have you ever seen a Big Mac that's been in a refrigerator overnight? It hardens and turns into a grotesque gargoyle.

Fast food should be eaten minutes after ordering and never saved.

And what's with co-workers who "borrow" other people's lunches? Some of my co-workers have questionable hygiene practices. I have seen a few of them use the restroom and not wash their hands. The last thing I want is any food from his kitchen.

People often treat the community fridge like a garbage dump. Instead of tossing things into the trash which is only inches away, they dispose of it in the fridge where it will be forgotten for all eternity.

Co-workers can be inconsiderate and disrespectful when it comes to refrigerator etiquette. Sometimes I secretly think about asking my co-workers if they keep their own refrigerators so dirty.

I won't ask though because I probably wouldn't like the answer.