Nurse Follies: Attack of the Leftover Lunch Goblin

Friday night, we ordered Chinese take-out. I ordered the standard fare of combo fried rice, where you are guaranteed no more than three pieces of shrimp in your box. They usually send your order in a huge container, with enough food to feed a small African country that is hard to pronounce.

More oft than not, you order, and mark your leftovers with your name, date the box, and write "SAVE" on top. It goes in the break room fridge and you go home. You don't bother to pack a lunch you know you are well covered. So, you get to work, get through report and the first four hours of the shift...running, fielding complaints from the patients, dealing with residents, and addressing any crisis that should pop up. The entire time, you are thinking about your leftover rice and egg roll and is patiently waiting for you in the dark recesses of the break room fridge. Midnight rolls around and you eagerly open the fridge, salivating at the prospect of reheated sub par Chinese food in your belly.

Guess what! Your leftovers are NO WHERE to be found. You brave digging in the back of the fridge, where the Gladware bowl filled with a furry, unidentifiable substance resides, but to no avail. Some bastard has eaten your lunch. It's already late, and no one else is open that will deliver you an alternative, and you are reduced to scrounging around in the nutrition room for something. Lunch choices for you have now been reduced to: crackers, peanut butter and jelly, low sodium soup, jello, and off-brand soda.

This is what happened to me tonight. My endless bounty of fried rice, that literally had my name on it, had found it's way into the stomach of a thoughtless dayshifter.

Ummm...gross.

It's one thing to have leftovers at home and have someone eat them. You are either related, or share body fluids of some sort...so it's not a horribly disgusting thing. However, why would you want to eat something out of a communal refrigerator, that someone you barely know has already eaten out of??? That's almost like wearing someone elses underwear.

Every time this happens, I consider making chocolate brownies with Ex-Lax, storing them in the fridge with my name on them, and wait for some asshole to just dig in. It would serve them right, but I doubt it would serve as a strong deterrent.

I'm just going to have to start bringing salads to work, because everyone knows that if it is green, leafy and/or nutritious, no one will touch it. The dozens of frozen Weight Watcher dinners that are collecting frost in the freezer should stand as testament to that. Why eat crappy, frozen, low fat noodle entree that tastes like ass when you can have someone elses fried rice?

Bastards.