I Have No Real Problems

This is Sundae, our house guest for the Family Day long weekend.
Of course she's on our couch.

 Norm Erosion

Everyone who has ever worked in an office knows the kitchen fridge is a battleground. The winners are almost always the fridge fetishists, the ones who load the shelves with forgotten food, half-empty bottles of dreadful salad dressing and jars of mayonnaise. Once this camp has secured their dominance over the fridge, everyone else capitulates, risking salmonella, but avoiding something much worse, by just not using the fridge.

Every morning, when I open the crammed, smelly fridge where I work to stow my lunch, I imagine another fridge in another office, with this sign on the door: 

“No overnight storage. 

Any items left in this fridge after 6 p.m. will be thrown away.”

When I think of this imaginary fridge, I think of the imaginary manager who announced the new policy to her team by saying: “Look, there are almost forty people who share this fridge. No one has a greater claim than anyone else, which means you can use about 1/40th of it. 

“How does that translate into action?" asked the manager. "It means you can use the fridge to keep your day’s food cold. That’s it. You do not use the fridge to store the different ingredients of your lunch so you have a loaf of bread and a head of lettuce and some Tofurky slices and a jar of vegan mayonnaise and some sliced vegan cheese. You keep those things in your fridge at home. You make your lunch at home. You bring your lunch to work. You store your lunch in the fridge. You eat it that day. 

“You leave nothing in the fridge overnight. If you do, it’ll be gone the next day.”

I think, too, of the imaginary office staff’s reaction to the new policy. I assume some are quite offended. Some wonder about milk for their coffee and tea. None of them see themselves as the offender with the Tofurky and vegan cheese. Others (the ones who actually are responsible for the Tofurky and vegan cheese) think this is ridiculous and swear to never use the fridge again. And some think to themselves, “well, this could work.”

A few of the imaginary office staff test the limits of the rule. They leave a half-consumed box of blackberries in the fridge and a couple of cupcakes left over from an office celebration.

These items are removed that night by cheerful and motivated imaginary cleaning staff. 

The person who left the blackberries is upset until he reads the sign on the fridge and thinks to himself, “oh, right. I forgot.” He’s still annoyed but knows he’s on the wrong side of history.

Everyone is secretly relieved about the cupcakes.

And so it comes to pass in the imaginary office that no one treats the communal fridge like a home fridge, and there is always lots of room for sandwiches, and reheatable containers of pasta, and Ziplock bags full of salad, and clear plastic containers of fresh fruit and no indescribable stench arises from the depths of the crisper bins and no items are left to fossilize at the back.

It didn’t take long in the imaginary office for the new way to become normal. People who used to avoid the fridge now use it. After a few traumatic losses, no one leaves anything in the fridge overnight, so the cleaning staff is even more cheerful. And finally, after untold decades of fridge wars, there is one imaginary place in all the world where peace reigns.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Family Day!

Karen