Stacy Innerst

What's in your fridge? In the interest of full disclosure, we at the Post-Gazette business section are divulging the contents of our mini-fridge, recently emptied and inventoried after a long period of neglect and decay: One piece of blueberry or blackberry pie, covered in green mold/fungus, still in a disposable Glad bowl One slice of what apparently once was lasagna, covered in white mold with green specks, still stored in a disposable Glad bowl One spinach/green salad, stored in a styrofoam container, uneaten, condensed into a dark green gelatinous mass One bottle of chocolate milk (16 ounce, plastic), unopened, good through April 16 One bottle of white milk (16 ounce, plastic), good through late March One bottle of white milk, same size, unopened, dated in February, separated colloid with sour milk chunks on the bottom and an opaque liquid on top Four bottles of Pepsi/pop, still nearly full One unopened bottle of tea, still good One 1/4-full carton of tea, with the name "Jim" on it (apparently for reporter Jim McKay, who left in December) Various individual packs of butter and jelly One unopened bottle of milk, still good.

It's a riddle that far too many people know the answer to: Where, tucked deep inside the most dignified and prim of workplaces, can you find a gleaming white chamber of horrors?

Need more clues?

"It's rare that I put anything in there, because I'm afraid," said Danielle Royal, 34, of Sewickley.

"You don't need to open it to smell it," said Judy Barefoot, 35, of North Versailles.

It's the office refrigerator, of course: a simple appliance that can turn into a Pandora's box of spoiled and stolen food, not to mention employee disgust, anger, even vindictiveness.

Blessed are the few who have regularly enforced cleanup days, where all the contents of office refrigerators are thrown away on a daily, weekly or bi-weekly basis.

More often, it seems, the office refrigerator breeds conflict, along with bacteria.

A survey by the American Dietetic Association and ConAgra Foods found that 44 percent of office refrigerators are cleaned once a month and 22 percent are cleaned only once or twice a year.

Refrigerator abusers seem to be divided into two types: the sticky fingered and the stinky fingered. In other words, those who take food that is not their own and those who leave food in the refrigerator until it begins to decompose.

Ms. Barefoot said she has lost several cans of soda pop to pillaging colleagues. And then there was the missing cream cheese incident.

"I was pregnant," she said. "I was mad."

Speaking of pregnancy, an e-mail of questionable veracity has circulated for at least a decade, supposedly from a breast milk-pumping woman informing her colleagues that one of them had stolen milk from the refrigerator meant for her son.

"I will label these things from now on," read the e-mail, "but if you found your coffee tasted just a little bit special, you might think of calling your mom and telling her you love her."

An episode of "Hill Street Blues" depicted a similar scenario, with Lt. Howard Hunter drinking a pilfered "apple juice" while Sgt. Henry Goldblume hunts for a missing urine sample.

In certain circles, there also is a more insidious form of food stealing rumored to exist: food tampering.

"You don't know what people are going to do with your food," said Tawana Seals, 35, who works for an insurance company, Downtown. "I might have a co-worker who doesn't like me, but I don't know they don't like me."

But while stealing and tampering are certainly annoying problems, they don't pose the same public health hazards as those created by the food forgetters.

From time to time, a brown bag festering in a desolate corner might be the result of an innocent mistake. "People put things in there and they forget," said Barb Manning, of Elizabeth Township. "They get pushed back and they don't really see it."

But sometimes, there are systemic problems. When food goes into the fridge as communal property, such as sandwiches from an office luncheon, it often stays in the fridge because nobody feels responsible.

"I know there's some fresh fruit in the refrigerator [from an office function] that's been there for about a week," said Ms. Manning. "I know that's going to be a problem."

But why wouldn't somebody just throw out the fruit, like ostensibly would be done in a home refrigerator?

"I don't touch anything that's not mine," said Ms. Barefoot, a co-worker of Ms. Manning's.

It's what economists refer to as a collective action problem. Although a clean refrigerator would benefit the group as a whole, workers don't see it as in their individual self interest to clean it themselves.

The smellier a refrigerator gets, and the more in need of a good cleansing, the less anyone wants to get near it. A stinky standoff ensues.

Eventually, there comes a point when a reeking refrigerator starts to lose its appeal for food storage.

In Ms. Barefoot's office, the stench sometimes gets so bad that she can smell rotting food even with the door closed.

"If it's like that, I just don't put my food in it," she said.

Ms. Meyer, 40, of Cranberry, who didn't want her first name used, has freed herself entirely of the office refrigerator.

Fed up with smells, stealing and space issues, she developed a new system: bringing an ice pack to work, and storing her lunch in an insulated bag below her desk.

"I used to put my lunch in there and now I don't even use it," she said. "It's disgusting."