Well today was odd.
All morning today I was looking forward to dericious leftover beef fried rice that S gifted me last night while catching up on all my missed episodes of Weeds and True Blood (OHHHHHH SOOOKIEEEEEE). I came home circa 11pm after watching 5 straight episodes with a huge box of fried rice and a huge smile on my face. I left the fried rice in my room overnight because whenever I put stuff in the fridge I always forget to bring it to work the next morning, then I have to remind myself the next day to remember to bring my leftovers to work the next day, then the next day I forget to bring my leftovers to work again, and before I know it the food’s gone bad and I want to shoot myself in the foot. So to prevent that, lately I’ve just been keeping leftovers in my purse overnight so there’s no chance of forgetting to bring it to work the next morning.
That’s what I did with the fried rice last night, and I immediately put it in my office fridge as soon as I got to work this morning at 8am. (That’s really not that bad I don’t think — 9 hours sitting out in an air conditioned room. In poor countries they don’t even own fridges and they’re all fine.)
So I fridged my food all morning, and at 2pm I was so excited to open my takeout box of dericious runch. Except when I opened it, something was off. The rice was REALLY sticky. Like you know when you make rice krispie treats and you melt the butter and the marshmallows then you add in the rice krispies and you mix it all together and the melted marshmallows are all gooey and the rice becomes all gooey? That’s what it looked and felt like when I ran my fork through the rice.
That’s strange, I thought. But I just shrugged it off. I decided that if I microwaved it on high for three minutes everything would be fine and any potential bacteria would get killed off.
But after I microwaved it, it was worse. It was literally a plate of goo. Hmmm, I thought. and took a bite. It tastes fine………….. kinda gooey. But the beef tasted fine and so did everythinng else except for the rice. But I started to get a little sketched out and started IMing all my coworkers to come take a look and provide an opinion.
Opinion was not so positive. Coworker B threw up a little in her mouth, coworker K called me disgusting, coworker A told me I was going to get food poisoning, my SVP E told me I should have a post-it note on my forehead saying ‘ATE RANCID FRIED RICE’ in case I was found passed out somewhere in the hallway so the medics would know what to do, and coworker P came over to my desk, grabbed my plate, and threw the rice away in the kitchen trashcan as I desperately ran after her and screamed NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That was a sad moment.
Luckily, I still have another half a box of the leftover rice left in the office fridge for tomorrow.
Poverexic in NYC 