OK, how would your interpret the note on the breakroom fridge "Please date all food items in refrigerator or it will be tossed, after 3 days" You've been working somewhere for 10 months and no one has ever mentioned anything in particular about the fridge rules. You usually bring your lunch to work and put it in the fridge along with all the other unlabled food items, without a problem, assuming that you are required to label anything that you plan to store in the fridge for more than 3 days, or it will be tossed.
You are working on a very, very busy shift and aren't able to get to lunchbreak until 1:45 pm because of several factors including needing to prepare one of your patients for transfer to a larger facility. You finally break free and go to the fridge to get your 2 tupperwares, one with that delicious homemade lasagne that you made the other day, the other with that excellent salad you brought. You open the door of the fridge and find it totally empty. You stand in shock and ask someone "Where is my lunch?"
You are told that someone must have cleaned out the fridge and thrown everything away. You look in the trash, no signs of your containers. Your blood sugar is probably 70 at this point, btw.
You go to the nursing station and ask what happened to my food!? The unit secretary, who has already demonstrated the fact that she is in a foul mood today informs you that you should have labeled it, you're out of luck.
Hello! Is there a problem here? Uh, I've been here all day, is there a particular reason why the current shift was not informed that someone (One of the techs and the assistant charge nurse) was going to throw away everything in the breakroom fridge, including with my two nice tupperware containers and their most excellent contents?
Needless to say I gave everyone, including my manager, an extensive earful of my livid feelings on the matter, much to the bemusement of my co-workers.
im a fridge nazi at my job, anything unlabled most go. I do however wait until after everyone has had there dinner break and ask those on my shift if anything belongs to them before i begin trashing things...
I agree that there's nothing nastier than a stinky fridge, but having experienced the tossing of my containers of yummy food may I say "THAT stinks!!"
I must also say, though, that I hate hate hate opening the fridge at work and there's like 50 previously opened bottles of water and pop in there. Not sure why that seems yuck to me??
We have an LPN fridge Nazi on our unit.....I will usually toss my frozen stuff in the freezer. I have never had a problem with losing anything but then again I usually keep cans of soup etc on hand.
(I have always said a staff who goes hungry in a hospital just isn't very resourceful.) After all there is usually cereal etc around.....
at a job where i worked the fridge was one of those little ones that was not self defrosting and it had to be defrosted q 2weeks...anything that was in there was tossed unless it was dated/named
one of the cnas who did this would save the plastic containers but some of the other ones would not..it was not a happy chore
once at the same facility i brought some of the fish i had cooked and left it in the fridge..when i went back at 2am to get it whoof it was gone...container in there with top secured but my fish was gone,,it has been 10 years and i am still mad
Anybody who would throw away someone's nice tupperware containers is not nice. And when the fridge cleanout was about to occur how difficult would it have been to make an announcement over the speaker or tell the nurse at the desk so s/he could let people on the floor know. I can see the misunderstanding and am sorry your lunch got tossed. I suppose the communication problem has been cleared up by now.
If you get stuck w/this thankless task, you will definitely NOT open up a closed container that seems to "growing", nor will you want to clean it out for the owner. That's beyond disgusting. I'd throw it out unopened or smelled.
To me, it was the height of disrespect to not check with the people who were working that day before throwing out their food and containers. That is just unacceptable.
Finally I got the tech who was involved to show me where the discarded trash bag was in the dirty utility room. I'm really disgusted with the attitude I received from those who just went ahead and did this without mentioning it to their co-workers ahead of time who were there that day. It is rude and thoughtless.
To me, it was the height of disrespect to not check with the people who were working that day before throwing out their food and containers. That is just unacceptable.
Finally I got the tech who was involved to show me where the discarded trash bag was in the dirty utility room. I'm really disgusted with the attitude I received from those who just went ahead and did this without mentioning it to their co-workers ahead of time who were there that day. It is rude and thoughtless.
When the decision was made to clean the fridge, I'll bet those involved made certain their own stuff was not tossed.
Specializes in UR/PA, Hematology/Oncology, Med Surg, Psych.
The way the fridge issue was solved at my job was that we posted a big note on the fridge one Monday that everything left at 4:00 on any and all Fridays would be tossed. That gave everyone ample notice.
The way the fridge issue was solved at my job was that we posted a big note on the fridge one Monday that everything left at 4:00 on any and all Fridays would be tossed. That gave everyone ample notice.
I wonder if this same assistant charge nurse would sign off medication orders that she wasn't clear about? I hope not. Why the lack of communication about the cleaning of the fridge. At the last place I worked the unit secretary would always warn everyone ahead of time, and usually post a note of the impending fridge cleaning.
The amazing thing is that I did not get one conciliatory word from this assistant charge nurse, someone I'm friendly with btw. She just said "Anything not dated gets tossed, so now you know". No 'Gee, sorry about the misunderstanding' or 'Gee, I didn't know that you weren't aware of the fridge policy here'.
Nope, she acted like it was a big ol' joke, certainly no skin off her back.
AnxiousStrawberry
62 Posts
im a fridge nazi at my job, anything unlabled most go. I do however wait until after everyone has had there dinner break and ask those on my shift if anything belongs to them before i begin trashing things...