ranting after an absence
I don’t take leftovers to work for lunch, no matter how delicious and salivatary-inducing they are. I want to, but I don’t. I can’t. I won’t. It’s a hard and fast rule I’ve never broken and I never ever will. And it all stems from the first time I saw a communal work fridge and realised that human beings are just really truly disgusting. Milk containers so old and congealed that the contents have taken on the consistency of panna cotta (but with the smell of fetid toe jam mixed with dried baby vomit). Half-finished jars with weird floaty globs. A veritable army of near-empty takeaway containers and plastic bags you dare not look in. Grimey smears and marks and dollops of rotting food detritus over every conceivable shelf and surface. But worst of all, the combined smell of all that out of date filth - dear god the smell! You’re dry-wretching, eyes watering, but mostly just despairing about the state of humanity.
Opening up a communal work fridge and confronting the fridge’s vile innards is a guaranteed way to a) put you off your lunch, however delicious and salivatory-inducing those leftovers would have been, and b) make you look at your work colleagues in an entirely new and completely unpleasant way. Because surely there has to be something very very WRONG with a group of people who can be okay with a fridge like that and actively contribute to its ever-evolving strata of disgustingness, right? Right! So I don’t take leftovers to work, I don’t go near the fridge, or the communal microwave, and I spurn the use communal tea towels.
I’m convinced that communal sharing environments bring out the worst of humanity, highlighting our pathological apathy, slobbishness and overall grossness as a species. If there isn’t someone “in charge”, we just piss over anything shared (I’m not saying someone has pissed in the communal fridge, but honestly, if they had, would you really be all that surprised?).
Opening up a communal work fridge and confronting the fridge’s vile innards is a guaranteed way to a) put you off your lunch, however delicious and salivatory-inducing those leftovers would have been, and b) make you look at your work colleagues in an entirely new and completely unpleasant way. Because surely there has to be something very very WRONG with a group of people who can be okay with a fridge like that and actively contribute to its ever-evolving strata of disgustingness, right? Right! So I don’t take leftovers to work, I don’t go near the fridge, or the communal microwave, and I spurn the use communal tea towels.
I’m convinced that communal sharing environments bring out the worst of humanity, highlighting our pathological apathy, slobbishness and overall grossness as a species. If there isn’t someone “in charge”, we just piss over anything shared (I’m not saying someone has pissed in the communal fridge, but honestly, if they had, would you really be all that surprised?).