Please Pass The Penicillin

We try to be diligent in using our leftovers in a timely manner. We have plenty of containers for storing food in the fridge when we have made too much to eat in one sitting. In a busy household, the remains of previous meals can be a real time saver, when all you have to do is reheat something instead of creating a meal from scratch. But no matter how faithfully we try to use our leftovers, something always seems to get lost in the great wilderness in the back of the fridge.

These forgotten items in the back of the fridge seem to hide. We try and clean out the fridge weekly, but for some reason there always seems to be something forgotten at the back, just waiting to emit a disgusting odour. Nothing makes me gag more than having to clean out and wash a container that has been festering in the fridge for weeks. Everything, from the first cracking of the seal and the smell that seems to cling to everything, to scraping the goop into the garbage and washing the offending container, makes me want to gag (and sometimes does). While in university, I even sometimes resorted to just tossing the whole container in the garbage in order to avoid having to open it. Never though, have I closed down a place of business or sent people to hospital by cleaning out the fridge.

An office worker in San Jose, California was cleaning out the staff refrigerator and the noxious smells she created caused the closure of the building, required a HAZMAT team and sent 7 co-workers to hospital! My question is -- How long had it been since that fridge was cleaned?

To be fair it was the mixture of cleaning chemicals that the woman used that caused the problem and not the stuff in the fridge. I would like to say in my own defence that I have never had to use harsh chemicals to clean my fridge. This particular appliance must have been in some god-awful condition to necessitate the use of potentially poisonous cleaning products. How hard is it to remove your junk from the fridge at work? Were these people part of some terrorist cell? Why on earth would you leave something you brought to work in the fridge until it was on the verge of intelligent thought? I feel bad for the woman who took it upon herself to venture into the wasteland of the office fridge and brought the world down on herself. Not quite the thanks she was probably hoping for.