If you work in a corporate setting, chances are you’ve either encountered or been the perpetrator of one of these office kitchen no-no’s…
1. Eating another employee’s lunch
This is one you want to avoid all together, especially in a smaller office setting. Lunch is a special time during the work day, people look forward to their 30 minutes to an hour of escape where they can enjoy the meal they’ve been thinking about for the past hour. Eating another employee’s lunch is a quick way to make an office foe and ultimately contribute to a less productive afternoon for the company due to lack of lunch.
2. Leaving just enough coffee creamer to fill the inside of a contact lens
It’s early on Tuesday morning and you’ve been looking forward to having a delicious cup of coffee since you pulled into the parking lot, and after pouring that warm delicious coffee you grab the carton of Half & Half and there is barely a drop… it’s as if someone is purposefully playing a joke on you! Morning coffee isn’t anything to joke about and cream is a very important element.
3. Leaving an empty coffee pot
Office Linebacker Terry Tate put it best when he said, “You kill the Joe, you make some mo’!” Perhaps truer words have never been spoken. This type of behavior is unacceptable. Remember “Be Kind, Rewind” well same thing applies here.
4. Performing an unannounced purge of the refrigerator
Nobody likes having an over packed fridge and most people can appreciate a nice clean spacious refrigerator after a good purge. However, if you place your Tupperware of left over pork chop dinner in there in the morning only to find it has been carelessly tossed into the trash like an empty bag of chips, you’ll shrilly feel a mix rage, disappointment, and confusion – none of which are healthy emotions for an office environment.
On the flip side, I would like to defend the refrigerator purge by adding that it is also an office kitchen no-no to let your 3 month old tub of cream cheese grow mold and turn into an alien life form.
5. Cooking Thanksgiving Day dinner in the toaster oven
Don’t be that guy or girl who decides to take up the toaster oven or microwave for 20 minutes while you defrost chicken or bake a shepherd’s pie. It’s important to think about the resources available to you and your colleagues in the office kitchen. If there is only a toaster oven, a microwave, and a toaster you might want to be efficient while heating up your lunch or you’ll have a line of hungry frustrated people behind you plotting their revenge.
I’d like to give a shout-out for all the office managers and clean freaks out there for their efforts in maintaining the office kitchen. For everyone else…try to be courteous to others and clean up after yourself, it only takes a few minutes to maintain a clean and happy office kitchen.
