Mine, All Mine

A common difficulty within the Workplace is The Sharing Of The Communal Refrigerator.

It's an easy enough trap to fall into. Your significant other makes something amazing for dinner, and you find the self control not to snarf it all in one sitting - instead opting to set some away for later.**1 You pack it delicately into its tupperware container, stuff it into your lunchbox and put the whole shebang into the fridge.**2 And the next day you bring it with you to work.

Now, keeping it at your desk risks your food going warm before you have the chance to heat it up in the Nuke-erator. And one cannot have chemistry take away ones jollies like that, so one instead opts to put their lunch in the Shared Fridge.

But instead of being safely confined in a meatlocker, your food is instead left to fend for itself like a baby squirrel whose mother stood in the middle of the road too long trying to remember whether she shut the door to the fridge or not. The vultures descend. First they peek at your lunch, "just curious about what you brought." Then they sniff it. And try a little bite.

And before you know it, your tasty treat is gone.

This happened within our office today. There was chatter of making up snide and snarky stickers to label food not for community consumption.

READER POLL:

What would YOU write on your yogurt cup/lasagna leftovers/sparkling water bottle**3 if you could say anything to That Dude Who Just Snitched Your Snack?

**1 Just like a cute little squirrel.

**2 A cute, neurotic little squirrel.

**3 A bottle containing sparkling water. Not a sparkling bottle containing regular water. I know that can be confusing.