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Office kitchen wars are back
- bell-cot 4y agoNo mention of old-school counters to food theft - mineral oil salad dressing, laxative brownies, & such. Nor of restroom trolls. Nor...
- xbar 4y agoThe biggest takeaway from COVID upon returning to the office kitchen wars: no fish in the microwave.
- bengale 4y agoNo fish, no popcorn.
- crazygringo 4y agoQuestion for HN: is salmon OK? I'm serious because I always believed in the no fish rule but then I realized that for me personally, it's white fish where the odor always spreads. But salmon doesn't seem to spread, to me. No different from chicken. Shrimp* seems self-contained too. So I'm suddenly curious if other people are bothered by salmon and shrimp, or if it's really just a white-flesh fish thing (cod, tilapia, bass, scallops*, etc.). * Not technically fish, I know
- katmannthree 4y agoNo. Salmon is fish too.
- kube-system 4y agoIf you can’t trust your coworkers to not mess with your lunch, how do you trust them to do important work?
- vkou 4y agowhether or not I trust my coworkers has no bearing on whether or not they continue to be my coworkers. My boss is accountable for them, I'm not. He's paid the big bucks to separate the sheep from the goats.
- kube-system 4y agoI would not want to work in a place where I could not trust my coworkers to that degree. If they were my direct reports I’d fire them, and if I had no say over the situation I’d leave. That kind of behavior is a huge red flag, especially if tolerated.
- scythe 4y agoUnfortunately, many people in offices don't have the kind of freedom in choosing a job that tech workers are used to. For example, as a medphys resident I'd destroy my career if I quit over a lunch.
- mr90210 4y agoWhy would you really trust your food with your coworkers? What you eat should be well protected.
- kube-system 4y agoIt’s not about the food. It’s about trust.
- mr90210 4y agoTrustworthy people still make mistakes, and act out of emotion, you surely don’t want anybody making mistakes on your food. Feel free to downvote, but never play with the safety of your food.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoThis seems like a pretty vapid article banking on the fact that you can claim any typical office trouble went away and is now 'back'.
- cratermoon 4y agoOffice thermostat wars are back. Office background music wars are back. Office talking-on-the-telephone-at-your-desk wars are back. Office clicky mechanical keyboard wars are back. It's almost like the bosses want the workers to be fighting with each other over petty shit. And having open-plan offices exacerbates many conflicts.
- gruez 4y agoI just eyeballed it and it looks like 2/3rds of the article is quotes from askamanager.org
- PopePompus 4y agoA bring my lunch in three brown bags labeled "A", "B" and "Control".
- euroderf 4y agoand one is spiked with phenolphthalein. Or two.
- photochemsyn 4y agoSimple draconian solution: evening fridge sweep, everything left in there goes right in the trash. Spray down with a mild disinfectant too, helps prevent transmission of flu, Covid, etc. Happily the pandemic makes this easier to justify. Appoint a health & safety officer, pass out memos, problem solved. Also I thought we got rid of handshaking, can't we do Japanese-style bows or something instead that doesn't involve hand-to-hand transfer of viral and bacterial particles?
- amyjess 4y ago> Also I thought we got rid of handshaking, can't we do Japanese-style bows or something instead that doesn't involve hand-to-hand transfer of viral and bacterial particles? Personally, I just do an open-hand salute. It started as something I did on Zoom calls and then expanded to real life. I've never been comfortable with handshakes, even before the pandemic. And not even for disease reasons, the physical act of it just made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. So I'm happy to just salute now.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoHN is the only place in my entire world where I read/hear people mention that they thought we did away with handshaking. Are you all in a different universe from mine?
- waylandsmithers 4y agoWorst and most psychopathic offense I've ever seen- in a coworking space- someone is reheating some leftovers in the microwave- another person stops the microwave, takes out the plate and puts it on top, then puts their stuff in and starts it.
- cosmodisk 4y agoThere's another type: who comes into the kitchen,right at midday, knowing well that there will be another 15 queuing to do the same, puts in the food and walks away for a half an hour. I had to take food out quite a few times because I can't wait around for some princess. Obviously stopping it mid journey is a crappy thing to do.
- chadash 4y agoFor the fridge, I liked a former company that had a policy that you label your lunch with a dated sticker. Every friday the fridge gets cleaned out. If you don't have a dated sticker, dated within the last two days, it gets tossed. Doesn't matter if it's in a lunch box or if you were storing bars of gold in the fridge. If you have a fridge with lighter use, you can do the same think with blue and red stickers. Week 1 is a blue sticker week. Put your food in the fridge with a blue sticker. On Monday, everything with a red sticker gets tossed, blue stickers stay. The next week you switch colors and then switch back the week after that. Only exception might be condiments which, if not labeled, are assumed to be for communal use. Edit: By the way, I think the biggest issue, by far, is not people being inconsiderate, but merely forgetting that they had put stuff in the fridge in the first place. They buy a plumb, put in the fridge and then forget about it altogether until it goes rotten.
- colechristensen 4y agoIt’s also just fine to do away with the labeling and say that the fridge gets emptied after everyone leaves each Friday.
- crazygringo 4y agoYeah I've never worked anywhere where you could expect to leave food over the weekend. Office fridges are for today's lunch, or saving lunch leftovers for tonight or tomorrow. Or maybe yogurts for the whole week but there usually isn't space for everyone to be doing that.
- bobleeswagger 4y agoAt my first job, this never got solved. One day a camera showed up, pointing directly at the communal sink. I didn't use any of the dishes in the office, so it didn't really bother me. But it seemed like those most bothered by it were the ones leaving messes in the first place, why else would you have a problem with it? Kind of a culture killer, the important lesson learned is you can't let these issues work themselves out, eventually you'll have a war with two sides. Leadership matters, even in the most mundane of topics, like dirty dishes.
- t344344 4y agoIf kitchen is unhygienic, is not that a violations of some safety norm? Is not company asking you to work at unsafe environment? Restaurant or cafeteria with the same hygiene level would get closed and fined promptly. Who is cleaning it is irrelevant.
- TylerE 4y agoThey aren't selling food to a customer. The employees are doing the prep. If one doesn't cook his chicken well enough and gets food poisoning, should the company be liable?
- amyjess 4y agoIt may not have to meet the restaurant standards, but if an employee gets injured as a result of another employee's carelessness during work hours, then yes the company is liable. So if some chucklefuck puts raw chicken on the break room counter, doesn't wipe down the counter after, and that causes another employee to get salmonella, the company is absolutely liable.
- JohnFen 4y agoThis nonsense is why I have avoided using office kitchens for decades. Much easier to opt out than to have to be involved with childish BS.
- cosmodisk 4y agoBefore going full remote when covid started,we had a couple of offices. One was filthy, stuff all over the place, fridge looking like it's been a nuclear war inside,etc. The other was always clean,no stupid leftovers, toilets were pristine, and everyone always had "wow" moment when they walked in. I was in the clean one. How did we do it? Everyone cared about it from day one. People weren't leaving plates on tables but were putting away into the dishwasher. For the fridge we had a rule: not consumed by the end of Friday - it goes to the bin,no excuses. And even if it's only a few employees who care about it and do challenge others when things aren't right(e.g. leaving empty boxes instead of dumping them,etc), suddenly it becomes very easy to maintain high standards.
- j45 4y agoSince offices can be daycare or high school for adults, it might just be easiest to get a well insulated bag or lunchbox to keep at your desk. The tech these days is crazy. Some folks I know have used a small cooled fridge meant for beverages. If needed throw some medication in it (like eye drops for those dry eyes) to keep it cool. Community fridge - people can put shareable things here. Sometimes people have soda they don’t like or some frozen meals that they bought too many of they don’t like. If you let people know they can do the nice and thoughtfully hung, they will. Someone I know would take left overs they were done with and still good, mark it as a free leftover lunch. Never know what someone’s momentarily experiencing in life, or when you might be. Oddly others started doing it. On the other extreme, I know someone who experienced endemic lunch theft that it was bordering cruel and once attention was brought to it it happened even more. So they put already expired lunches in the fridge.
- DrThunder 4y agoIs this really hacker news material? I read a paragraph of this before I decided it was a massive wast of my time. Who cares about such petty bullshit? The only ting worse than "office kitchen wars", is creating an article whining about it.