Sour Milk

So the other day I go into the kitchen at work and the fridge in there is making this awful noise, it sounded like there was a sick dog caught in it somewhere growling while throwing up. I thought it was going to die. After a few min this stopped and it appeared to be back to normal.

But then a few days later I notice that my milk is very warm in the morning and my soda is no longer ice cold. I figure someone must have not closed the door all the way, so I look for something blocking it from closing… nothing. It closed fine and closed every time. OK, well there are a lot of people that use the fridge, it must just be that it’s opened too much and it doesn’t get a chance to cool down. I found this to be wrong too when I checked the temperature first thing in the morning – it was still way warm. I’m one of the first people into the office so I know it hadn’t been opened more than 2 or 3 times before I checked it.

So the next day I bring in a thermometer to see for sure if the fridge was actually warm or if I was just imagining things. Sure enough – the temp in the fridge ranged from 45 F to 50 F. WAY too warm to keep anything that you don’t want to spoil. Oh good, now I get to throw my milk out.

OK fine no big deal, I’ll use the fridge in the kitchen down the hall. They won’t mind. So I use that one for a few days, and then this morning I go get my milk out of it and its like that fridge was too warm too. My milk was rotten. I had 3 more days before the sell by date, so I don’t think it was too old. I guess leaving it over the weekend in a fridge that apparently is too warm did it in. I wonder what the hell is going on with the fridges in this place – none of them seem to work. Grrrrr.

I can deal with warmish soda, I just throw it in the freezer – which works great (-10F) I might add – a little while before I want to drink one. But I can’t exactly freeze the milk, and it goes rotten if I leave it in the fridge at 50 F. Kinda annoying.

There isn’t anything that I can do about it either. I talked to a guy that works in my hall, and he said if we were able to get a replacement it would take months to get it anyway. And well, I leave this office in a few weeks so it’s not worth it anyway. Nobody else seems to care that their food goes bad, they just don’t store anything in there, but they haven’t tried to do anything about it. Oh well, hopefully someone important will put something in the fridge and it will go bad, and they’ll get something done about it. I guess until then I’ll just bring milk with me everyday or something… oh well.

-DCR