Does anyone prohibit people from popping popcorn in your office?  I recently have tried to cut down my snacking and used to pop popcorn in the afternoons as a PM snack (I try to wait until most people leave but....).  I was talking about this with a friend of mine who has a co-worker who continually burns popcorn.  Then one of our other friends noted that his workplace expressly says no popcorn or any other food with a smell that can linger.  They have an open floor plan and you can smell everything.  We had a similar policy in my law school library, but that one went further to prohibit food that caused loud chewing. 

 I was just curious what other people did. 

Our microwaves have a popcorn button.  Popcorn isn't usually the offender.  However, a few weeks ago, one of our supervisors burned 1/4 Lbs of fish of all things in a microwave.  The whole 18,000 square foot building stank for about 2.5 hours.  The penalty is ridicule from one's peers.  We have no specific rule governing use of the microwaves.  Yet.

We had a similar "policy". The offender who burned the popcorn faced Eternal Humiliation in the face of his/her co-workers, but nothing more serious than that. We did have one case where the same person burned the popcorn repeatedly, but all that was done was the supervisor had a sit down with that person and that was that.

We haven't had the burning popcorn issue. We have had the blowing up other items and then not cleaning up the mess in the microwave. I have sent out a  "let's play nice in the sandbox" email about all of us need to clean up after ourselves so that others can use the microwave.  It is amazing how quickly people came and told me who the culprit was and how things have been fine since because everyone was talking about who did "the crime".

 

 

We  had some complaints from about the popcorn smell shortly after all the news coverage on workers getting sick from the butter flavoring. I think people thought they were being poisoned if they smelled it.

However, we recently received complaints from our cleaning service because dropped popcorn kernals stick in the carpeting and the vacuums don't pick them up, so the cleaners have to bend over and pick them up by hand.  You don't think our employees would pick up what they dropped, do you?

And don't get me started on the inside of the microwave!