If It's Not Yours, Don't Eat It

Some of you may have noticed this wonderful, magic white box in the kitchen.  It keeps food cold.  It has an even more magic compartment that turns water into a solid!  When you were a kid, it was always full with wonderful things you could eat.  Magic!  It’s amazing!  

Well, science is pretty awesome, and electricity is neat, but, alas, the magic of the refrigerator does not extend to automatically filling itself.  When you were a kid, your mom had to actually go get food and put it inside (or your housekeeper, if you were more privileged than I).  Some adults, sadly, appear unclear on this concept.  Here’s how a refrigerator works:

1. You buy food.
2. You put food in the refrigerator.
3. At an appropriate time, you return, and the food is still there.  You take it out, prepare it as desired, and eat it.
4. Do not eat anything that you did not purchase and put into the fridge yourself.  (Side note:  When your roommate says, “Hey, can you pick up some milk?” and then pays you for it, this is an exception to the rule that you’re allowed to eat things that you put into the fridge.)

Unfortunately, this system breaks down where an asshole has access to the refrigerator.  This problem can occur in both a roommate situation or a work situation.  Many people unfortunately seem to have trouble with the concept of not eating food that they did not personally buy and put into the fridge.  Then, the non-assholes of the world open the fridge and - voila!  Magic!  It’s empty!  Oh, no!  That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Some offices have a manager or other nice person who purchases condiments for the group.  That’s nice of them.  They do this so you don’t find yourself in a position of being unable to store food in the fridge because there are 47 varieties of mayonnaise.  

Don’t take advantage of nie people.  Don’t make them regret being nice.  Stocking a few items that may be shared doesn’t make everything in the fridge fair game.  You’re still not allowed to eat anything you find in there.  And you can’t assume that any condiment in a community fridge is fair game.  Wait for someone to tell you, or ask.  If it’s not yours, don’t touch it.  It seems like such an easy concept, but some people still don’t seem to get it.  Don’t be one of them.  If you can’t be bothered to buy your own food, your options are to develop your very own lovely collection of take-out menus or become intimately familiar with www.grubhub.com.