The smell is comparable to a dead corpse and is enough to warrant a visit from a local CSI team.

It's a combination of once living mystery meat and a disturbing growth inside a forgotten Tupperware bowl.

What is this dreaded smell?

It's the office refrigerator.

Like millions of other offices throughout the country, we have a community refrigerator which is shared by at least twenty co-workers. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if everyone pitched in and helped keep it clean.

For whatever reason, many of my co-workers leave their half-eaten lunches in the refrigerator. The forgotten lunches are left to rot like a zombie in a low budget Ed Wood horror movie. It's dreadful because you never know what you will see inside the refrigerator...or smell.

Inside our office fridge are the typical items: old bottles of salad dressings, a bag of freezer burned strawberries and an unwrapped mini UFO that used to be a veggie burger.

Out of curiosity, a co-worker and I wanted to see if the abandoned burger could fly like a UFO. We used it as a Frisbee until it broke into several pieces. Now it's really unidentifiable.

I have a few questions and concerns about refrigerator etiquette.

Why does anyone put a giant lunch container inside a refrigerator? I bring one to work but keep it at my desk. The logic behind the plastic lunch container is to temporarily keep items either cool or warm until you are ready to consume them.

If an item must stay cold, then it should be placed inside the refrigerator. It's not necessary to put the entire bag in the fridge when it only contains one item. Putting an entire lunch container in the fridge defeats the purpose of its usefulness.

I also have an issue with co-workers who keep leftover French fries or half eaten burgers from a local fast food joint. Who eats a leftover Big Mac? It's not like it can be re-heated or actually eaten. Have you ever seen a Big Mac that's been in a refrigerator overnight? It hardens and turns into a grotesque statue.

Fast food should be eaten minutes after ordering and not saved.

Finally, what's with co-workers who "borrow" other people's lunches? Some of my co-workers have questionable hygiene practices. I have seen a few of them use the restroom and then leave without washing their hands. The last thing I want is leftover food cooked in their kitchen.

People often treat the community fridge like a garbage dump. Instead of tossing things into the trash which is only inches away, they dispose of it in the fridge where it will be forgotten for all eternity.

Co-workers can be inconsiderate and disrespectful when it comes to refrigerator etiquette. Sometimes I secretly think about asking my co-workers if they keep their own refrigerators so dirty.

I won't ask though, I probably wouldn't like the answer.

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