Leftovers at Work

In this day and age, it's important to find ways to stretch that dollar as far as possible. Something we all have to spend money on is food. I'd even go as far to say most of us eat food every day!

As my wife will tell you, I hate wasting food and I try to be frugal whenever I can. Sometimes I'll eat leftover Chinese food a good 10 days after it's born-on date. With fish-related leftovers I'll usually give it 5 or 6 days and then really make sure I microwave it to make sure all the "baddies" are eradicated. "Oh today is the 25th and the milk 'expired' on the 13th? Hey it still smells ok, bring on the cereal bowl!"

I follow these guidelines at work and all my coworkers know it. When I first started my current job a few years ago, I made sure to get it all out on the table. For example, I noticed a couple of my female coworkers had gone out to lunch at Chili's and came back empty-handed. I asked them how their lunch was and -- knowing out of 2 females one of them should have leftovers -- what they did with their leftovers. They told me they each left half of a chicken sandwich since they knew they would not eat them later. I looked at them in disbelief and said "PLEASE don't ever leave your leftovers from lunch at the restaurant again. I will gladly take them off your hands as long as they weren't molested too badly."

Ever since that day I get offers from all my coworkers to take their leftovers off their hands. Hey I'm not saying you should try this out or anything, I'm just saying it works for me and I've probably saved somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.3 million by just letting it be known to my coworkers that I'll eat any leftovers they don't want.