Please date all food items in refrigerator or it will be tossed, after 3 days

[FireStarterRN]

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.

[caliotter3]

Some people are actually this inconsiderate. She sounds very passive aggressive.

[Batman24]

As this was a new rule I would have checked with everyone before throwing things away. Even if it wasn't a new rule I would have given everyone a chance to fix the problem because I would feel really terrible throwing out someone's lunch and Tupperware. What a waste of money.

[Indy, LPN, LVN]

Here's what you do. You make a nice little 1/4 or 1/2 sheet of paper sized sign that says THIS BELONGS TO (put your name). DATE: ________. IF YOU THROW THIS AWAY BE READY TO EAT KNUCKLES." Laminate it. Put dry erase marker in front pocket of lunchbox or purse, whatever. Date the laminated thing with the marker, attach sign (which you can punch hole in) with a rubberband or something, and stick it in the fridge.

JCAHO said fridges have to be clean. They didn't say you couldn't threaten people who throw your only food out for that shift.

I haven't done this, I admit. I wrote my name on my lunchbox, in sharpie, along with a note that said "do not DARE throw my lunch away!" and a mad-looking frownie face.

[gentlegiver, ASN, LPN, RN]

I put my lunch in the fridge once (labeled), and they tossed it anyways. Seem's that the rule can be changed to tossing everything if feel like it. Another time, we had our coffee cups in a cubboard we were given pirmission to use, came in to work and found that they changed the rule there too and threw out all our cups. No warning given. Very Angry Nurses let me tell you!