No Curry!

[blahblahblah2014]

AIBU to be a bit at the following message that has today appeared on the wall in the kitchen at work

"No smelly food to be heated in microwave - Take your curry back where it belongs.....................................at HOME"

??

Hang on, racist?! How exactly?

Yeah, maybe.

It's been a long day at work

Cup a soups smell and look like vomit. i can't be near people drinking them. I think had i have been pregnant it may have sent me over the edge.

I agree with Suburban, i do think the message 'take your curry back where it belongs' is, if not racist, certainly intended to echo the sentiment of get back where you belong/go home.
For some reason the same message said about fish, just wouldn't have the same historical connotations, and to be honest, i don't think the author would have written the same statement about fish.
But i also don't work in your office to know how racially diverse it is!

Take a tin of sardines in. Open the tin and eat half at lunch time, then leave the opened tin in your pigeon hole in the staff room all afternoon. No one has ever done that where I work. Nope, never.

I can't believe you are reading racist comments into this only on mumsnet - it is clearly stating that food with strong smells should not be heated and eaten in an open plan office. I can fully understand that; I think it is horrible when people eat at their desk and inflict their smelly food onto everyone else in a working environment.

In the olden days no one was allowed to eat at their desk .

But surely the people who think it was racist are stereotyping Asian people?

Or have I got it wrong and you're not assuming the curry belonged to an Asian person?

Worra 40 - Rest of the Thread - 30. Match point :)

I smell people's food all the time at work. Some of it fucking stinks but I wouldn't tell them not to use the microwave! That being said I do like the smell of curry

Do they eat their stinky food at their desk.

IMnotsohumbleO desk eating should be banned. For stinkiness and productiveness reasons

So long as the microwave isn't actually in the open plan workspace...

DP has been low carbing so I give him lunches to take to work to avoid the temptation of the snack box.

Apparently his chilli with cauliflower 'rice' didn't go down well with colleagues, who thought someone had farted in the kitchen

DP can't use the microwave at work anymore because some daft eejit put a spoon in it. I was quite disappointed as I wanted to send him in with a nice smelly madras...

I'm not assuming the curry belonged to an Asian person, but I am assuming the writer of the note was making an association between curry and something that doesn't belong here.

As I said, happy to be proved wrong. Maybe, like worra with her last post, I am reading too much into this

The writer of the note (the way I understand it anyway) was simply saying keep it at home...ie don't bring it into the work place.

Because of this thread I now want curry...

Microwaved...

I don't agree with you, worra.

I think it's all in the "take your curry back home where it belongs".

The note doesn't say, "Please don't bring strong-smelling foods into the workplace", which would match better with your assumption about the note-writer.

But then, we're all assuming here, aren't we?

Yeah true. Who knows what goes on the mind of a weird curry hating note writer

I'd be scouting everyone's handwriting and sprinkling curry power on the keyboard of whoever it matched up with.

Take the sign down. Have a curry, or fish, or eggs if you fancy. Encourage others to do the same. You've been provided with a micro by your employers. To me that means they're happy for you to heat up your own food at work, whatever it may be.

Fuck Me....

"Take your smelly home cooked meal back where it belongs - back home.*

If you really read any more into it than that, then you've probably had your brain too close to the glass while watching lunch rotate.....

Now fish - that should be banned from microwaves!

Someone in my office microwaves tinned sardines

And puts the unrinsed tin in the bin.

Boak

Curry I can cope with.

I always reheat my currys in a pot as I find the smell lingers in the microwave longer than most things. You get a huge waft of it every time you open the door.

It's not great when you are heating up your porridge the next morning.

IMO that's all there is too it, curry stinks eat it at home.

That's just anti-social AnUnearthly.

I don't think the person who put up the notice was being unreasonable. Or racist.

How selfish, microwaving smelly food in an open plan office!

We had the same problem at an office I worked in a few years ago. The bank of desks my team worked on were near the kitchen area. Some of the smells were nauseating - curry and fish chief amongst them. We tried notices - with names so that the perpetrators could discuss it with us! - and finally resorted to lying in wait to discover who was repeatedly inflicting the smelly food on us. One day I caught the person who microwaved the worst smelling stuff and politely asked her to desist because it made the office smell awful.

Her reaction? Flounced off to HR like a spoilt child, claiming that she'd been "bullied and singled out". Silly cow. Her complaint didn't go anywhere, but faced with people like that, is it really surprising that the people who have to put up with other people's food smells can be a bit curt in their written communications?