Sad day at work

Our illegal microwave is gone.

It vanished yesterday, thanks to the idiocy of people unwilling to clean out the illegal mini-fridge.

An explanation: Our 5-story building has two break rooms, one on the third floor and one on the fifth. Each break room has one microwave, which kind of leads to traffic jams at lunch time when there are several hundred people working in this building. So naturally microwaves occasionally appear in places they're not supposed to be, and everyone politely pretends they don't see them while at the same time quietly taking advantage. Mini-fridges also pop up here and there, and the same thing happens.

Well, we'd had an unauthorized microwave in an alcove in a hallway on the floor where I work for almost as long as I've worked here. A few months ago a mini-fridge appeared in that same alcove. It started getting used, of course (saves a trip up the stairs). Then last week, while it was packed full of food, it was accidentally unplugged. It is absolutely amazing how quickly the contents of a mini-fridge can rot when there's no power.

On Monday someone opened the fridge. The stench was unbelievable. So a request went out for people to remove their rotting food -- but no one stepped up to admit that any of the decayed items were theirs. Similarly, no one would admit he or she was the actual owner of the refrigerator. The apparent choices were (a) live with the stench indefinitely, or (b) ask Maintenance to deal with it.

And how did Maintenance deal with it? By hauling it to a dumpster. And, as long as they were removing it, the building manager had them take out the unauthorized microwave, too. So now it's back to stair-climbing and queueing up at lunch time.

I won't miss the fridge -- I didn't keep anything in it -- but, as a basically lazy person, I am going to miss that microwave.