The Fridge Purge: A Special Report

The sign is printed in a font one size larger than necessary and taped at four corners, which is how you can tell Facilities means it.

Inside are: eleven condiment bottles, four of them mustard; a labeled lunch bag dated the eighteenth of a month that was not specified; three yogurts belonging to a woman who left the company in June; and a Tupperware container that nobody on the floor is willing to open and which has now survived two of these notices.

“It has tenure,” one employee said of the container. “It was here before I was. I have made my peace with it and I would prefer it not be disturbed.”

The yogurts are the genuinely difficult part and I have thought about them more than is reasonable. Their owner was made redundant in June along with four other people, on a Thursday, with the usual speed. She did not come back for her things; a box was couriered. The yogurts were not in the box because nobody thought about the fridge, and they have sat on the second shelf for nine weeks being quietly moved aside by people who all know exactly whose they are and none of whom will throw them out.

It is not sentiment, or not only. It is that throwing them out is a small administrative act that finalizes something, and everybody would rather it stayed unfinalized, and so a communal refrigerator on the fourth floor has become the last place in this building where she is still listed.

Facilities will resolve this on Friday at five, correctly and without ceremony, and that is the right outcome and I am glad it will not be me.

In related matters, a bag of frozen peas has been in the freezer compartment since at least February and is used exclusively as an ice pack. It has been applied to four separate injuries, three of them from the stairs. It is not food and has not been food for six months and it is, by some distance, the most useful object in the room.

A line was drawn in marker on Monday at 340 millilitres. By Wednesday morning the level stood at 190. The owner takes coffee twice a day and accounts for approximately 60.

A second line has been drawn. A note has not yet been written, but a note has been drafted, and the draft has been read aloud to two people for tone.

Twenty-two days have passed. The ticket has been viewed nine times and updated once, to add a category.

Three employees have brought kettles from home. One of them has, quietly and without announcement, become the floor's utility.

The floor has now heard both sides of a mortgage negotiation, a dispute with an airline, and Tuesday's medical scheduling call, which reached row seven.

Nobody has said anything to him. Eleven people have said something about him. This is the standard ratio.

The paper has yellowed slightly. The exclamation mark has been added to by a second hand. A third party has drawn a small face.

Printer Two continues to be used approximately four times a day by people who did not see the sign, which is taped to the side.

Seven minutes. The message went to a channel muted during focus time, a setting configured for exactly this reason and now under review.

A colleague reports the cake was “fine, honestly.” This is believed to be a kindness.