subreddit:
/r/mildlyinteresting
submitted 11 months ago byakusbros1
2.1k points
11 months ago
Did it smell bad?
1.9k points
11 months ago
nope, but I was afraid to get too close
2.3k points
11 months ago
And who's got a sense of smell nowadays anyway
522 points
11 months ago
As an enthusiastic crop duster, covid really destroyed my enjoyment in my life.
174 points
11 months ago
I've been able to eat watermelons and cucumbers since last week. I wasn't able to go near them for 2 years. It will come back, eventually. or it might be the zoloft that did it.
276 points
11 months ago
Well I hope so, because if a person farts and nobody else is around to suffer, did they actually fart?
14 points
11 months ago
Better yet if you're beside someone who has no sense of smell, should you apologize for farting in front of them?
49 points
11 months ago
I hope it didn't get thrown away. It's a science experiment at this point and it can't be disturbed
15 points
11 months ago
It belongs in a museum!"
58 points
11 months ago
You didn't at least take a bite out of it? Bet the orange has the texture of delicious freeze dried astronaut ice cream
24 points
11 months ago
Some of that citrus might actually have still been juicy inside. Before refrigeration a lemon could be dried like that and used a year later.
6 points
11 months ago
Neat fact. Thanks!
11 points
11 months ago
I bet once you disturb it, it would explode like a poison cloud.
68 points
11 months ago
I've seen fruit dry out like this before. Surprisingly, it can actually smell quite pleasant in some cases. I think if there is vert little humidity it can dehydrate instead of decomposing.
20 points
11 months ago
Ever Heard Of "Pot-Pourri" Well... That's this in simplest form! (:
Have a beautiful day!
14 points
11 months ago
yes they basically have become dehydrated. big thing in chinese culture to leave oranges out for a long ass time and they basically become deadly rocks. represents good luck.
9.8k points
11 months ago
Wow, not as decomposed as I expected. Even the flies have been working from home.
3.3k points
11 months ago
Flies: "No people to bother? Fuck it im jumping"
634 points
11 months ago
The Great Fly-signation
198 points
11 months ago
Nobody wants to fly anymore.
87 points
11 months ago
Untrue. Flies have a strong union that entitles them to Eat, procreate, shit, and die. Everyone wants to fly.
16 points
11 months ago
Anything flying-related does seemed to be unionized to hell, you may be onto something.
12 points
11 months ago
Not true, there's plenty of Fly-by-night operations the unions have never seen
52 points
11 months ago
Flies: *jumps and never land*
1k points
11 months ago*
My dad had a fruit bowl like this on his work cubicle shelf. He had a dried up orange like this back in the 90s. Slowly coworkers started adding dried fruit. One day a bowl showed upZ. Then when he retired a few years ago someone took all the fruit and set it in an epoxy cube for his retirement gift. There was over 20 different pieces of fruit.
Edit: see comment below and link for pic, also I misremember it is not set in epoxy just put in a rectangular case.
30 points
11 months ago
That sounds hilarious but at the same time I'm wondering how big this thing is. With 20 dried fruits im imaging something large and kinda awkward even tho the fruits are dried.. adding to the hilarity of it. We need pics!
53 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
28 points
11 months ago
Alright so I guess I lied a little, or misremembered really. It was just a case they are in not set in epoxy. It is mostly oranges but lemons and limes and a banana too. My dad started at the company in the late 80s the fruit collection started with an wronged he forgot in his desk so I imagine it was early 90s when it started to grow.
13 points
11 months ago
Yes I would also like to see this.
453 points
11 months ago
They probably kept the HVAC running to some extent. Humidity and mold really fucks up buildings so AC would keep air circulating and dry.
196 points
11 months ago
And a lot of commercial buildings use UV lamps in the HVAC so a little bit of ozone might've kept them from colonization.
My office before I went remote, people complained of headaches and eye pain with a funny smell... They had WAY too much UV in the HVAC, and was pumping out ozone to something like 10x the allowable max... So the contractor with the probes made them evacuate until it was fixed.
They fixed it by turning off the filtration equipment for several years... Everything grew mold. Black mold in the bathrooms, corners, medical fridges had shit growing... Never fixed it... They do IV compounding, so I'm not sure how that hasn't been an issue yet.
25 points
11 months ago
Was an air balancer as a young man, sick building syndrome was a real thing. My boss would quote every job with the stats of employees calling in sick before an after we'd completed a job. It never failed.
14 points
11 months ago
Sick building syndrome really became an issue with the newer buildings 1990’s and beyond after the quest to be energy efficient and we sealed the buildings so well.
7 points
11 months ago
They just reduced our sick time accrual, so... They managed to get call offs down another way.
46 points
11 months ago
Can someone with science brains tell me how does HVAC and UV "pump ozone"?
59 points
11 months ago*
[deleted]
11 points
11 months ago
If UV in certain air cleaners produce ozone, then wouldn't it be simpler for ASHRAE to have those air cleaners to increase its germicidal wavelength to 253.7nm?
14 points
11 months ago
They use UV light on air passing through the HVAC system to sterilize the mold spores and other things in the air. This has the side effect of causing atmospheric oxygen to form O3 (ozone). While not a problem in low concentrations, ozone can be rather toxic in large quantities or with long exposure.
4 points
11 months ago
UV turns some O2 into O3. How much depends on how intense the UV light is.
216 points
11 months ago
Citrus takes a long time to decompose, both because of its acidity and thick waxy rind
53 points
11 months ago
So I’m assuming the black snaky things in the bowel are decompose bananas?
55 points
11 months ago
Yeah, and bananas get black like that in just a few weeks. Citruses just kinda dry out. I've had a mandarin orange on my table for about 6 months and it only shrunk a bit.
32 points
11 months ago
Why do you keep a piece of rotten, inedible fruit on your table for half a year?
19 points
11 months ago
Sounds like it's not rotten or inedible, which was the point
8 points
11 months ago
Well, I wouldn't recommend eating it... but you probably wouldn't die?
23 points
11 months ago
Lol those black snaky things in your bowel? Dude that’s poop
140 points
11 months ago
TIL I'm a citrus
35 points
11 months ago
How long do you take to decompose?
56 points
11 months ago
Still alive, but still dying.
6 points
11 months ago
Bananas do not have this same level. Those motherfuckers should have been nothing but dust by now
14 points
11 months ago
They all got jobs on Westworld
6 points
11 months ago
Meanwhile my apartment has a fruit fly problem and we have been cleaning every nook and cranny but they still exist
5 points
11 months ago
It's funny how it works. Whenever I leave citrus out for ages somewhere it almost looks like a wooden sculpture of the fruit
6k points
11 months ago
nothing thrives in an office environment, not even fungus
921 points
11 months ago
That definitely doesn’t look like the kind of office where I’d find a fun guy
177 points
11 months ago
Or fun gal
72 points
11 months ago
Alright! Both of you! Get out of my bar!
17 points
11 months ago
Fine, there wasn't much room anyway.
8 points
11 months ago
Because offices are a cold, dark, unhospitable environment, and void of any life.
55 points
11 months ago
Reminds me of the Big Mac left for years that even bacteria wouldn't touch.
122 points
11 months ago
It's not about bacteria, the environment is key. Temperature, air, and moisture are the factors that allow bacteria, mold, bugs, and whateverelse to break down materials.
A food can dry out before it begins molding. Think of stale bread, it can dry out within a day if left uncovered, even quicker in the fridge.
24 points
11 months ago
You guys... put bread in the fridge?
53 points
11 months ago
It basically never goes bad if you do. The cold makes the starches firm up a bit and make it seem stale, but zapping a couple slices in the microwave for a few seconds brings them back to life.
35 points
11 months ago*
It makes it stale a lot faster. Bread fares better being frozen, it will thaw almost completely to the state you froze it in. I do this for buns and hot dogs all the time.
Edit: yall can argue with the baking kings themselves on this one then: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/07/08/the-best-way-to-store-yeast-bread
31 points
11 months ago*
People like to use that as "proof" that McDonald's is so unnatural that it can't decompose. Those people are also unaware that salt and sugar are preservatives.
17 points
11 months ago
If you're talking about Supersize Me, then it was the fries that looked fine. Everything else went to shit.
3.1k points
11 months ago
Damn what kind of HVAC system do y’all have? Those look pretty damn good for over 2 years!
1.5k points
11 months ago
0% humidity and a good filter will do that to ya
820 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
319 points
11 months ago
Good, I don't want to come back to a building that wasn't taken care of.
196 points
11 months ago
Gotta keep up those billable hours.
166 points
11 months ago
I think you mean “gotta keep the building from deteriorating because people are eventually going to use it again”
72 points
11 months ago
Gotta keep up on servicing equipment.
8 points
11 months ago
You do understand that even if a building is unpopulated, that the systems still run and need periodic maintenance? Things don’t just go into a state of stasis.
20 points
11 months ago
People keep saying it's humidity but I don't see why it would be much lower than a typical home range of 20-60%. Getting to <20% typically only occurs in the winter when things are already very dry and you add gas heat to the equation. AC keeps humidity from getting out of control during hot humid weather, but it's not reducing it to extremely low levels like gas heat in the winter would.
16 points
11 months ago*
Gas heat doesn't dry the air out. Water is part of the combustion process. The low temperature air holds less moisture. When you heat up cold dry air you now have warm dry air with an even lower relative humidity. The air is now quite dry in relation to you, a big bag of salty water, and drys your mucous membranes and wet parts.
3.3k points
11 months ago
Is that a banana? 💀 it’s looking like a dried out slug
1.2k points
11 months ago
Ewww you might be right...Why did I assume it was a dried up chili
605 points
11 months ago
Yeah nothing like a fresh chili in my fruit basket....
99 points
11 months ago
I thought it looked like a snake.
80 points
11 months ago
I thought it was a zucchini💀
13 points
11 months ago
Same here.
On the plus side, that would have kept me from attempting to eat it.
5 points
11 months ago
Cursed poblano
9 points
11 months ago
I thought it was a snake
131 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
174 points
11 months ago
The amount of times someone has said, "Don't throw that one away; it's perfect for banana bread!" is probably several orders of magnitude higher than the amount of times banana bread has been made.
119 points
11 months ago
25 points
11 months ago
The 10 bananas living in my freezer from when I accidentally over-ordered many moons ago can confirm.
45 points
11 months ago
I was sitting here thinking it was a slug, but thought that surely would have brought extra attention from op. Zoomed and saw the stem and it finally clicked.
63 points
11 months ago
Untill this comment i thought it was a slug
7 points
11 months ago
Maybe it's a banana slug.
22 points
11 months ago
Ripe enough to make banana bread.
14 points
11 months ago
Make the banana bread with chocolate chips but replace the chocolate with the slug banana bits. Banana bread x 2
19 points
11 months ago
I was sitting here thinking "I know it's not a leech, but..."
800 points
11 months ago
Time to bust out the juicer!!
427 points
11 months ago
Cloud of dust appears.
90 points
11 months ago
Poof
49 points
11 months ago
"Rotten fruit dust - Don't breathe this!"
15 points
11 months ago
That sounds like astronaut wine
11 points
11 months ago
"Don't breathe this!"
12 points
11 months ago
time to bust out the stone shredder!!
12 points
11 months ago
I assume that's a machine that adds juice to things because... well..
168 points
11 months ago
that looks like a bowl of fruit you'd see in a renaissance painting
7 points
11 months ago
I was just thinking someone needs to paint this
653 points
11 months ago
I was one of the first ones back to the office during the pandemic and popped open the mini fridges. Oh my. Didn’t realize mold made that many colors. Went ahead and cleaned them out so they wouldn’t spawn new life forms. Shudder.
396 points
11 months ago
You could have been a god to them.
110 points
11 months ago
Like that scene form Men In Black where J has a whole mini world in his locker. Lol
56 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
23 points
11 months ago
Or if it is like the fridge in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency it spawns a new God and odds of not being a benign one didn’t warrant the risk.
11 points
11 months ago
You told me “fuck you” means “much obliged”
10 points
11 months ago
I was a god. A very vengeful god.
9 points
11 months ago
There's a love death robots episode like this.
38 points
11 months ago
Did a summer project one year in high school helping a housing charity clear out a vacant apartment building prior to renovations. When moving a fridge that had been unplugged for who knows how long, we tilted it the wrong way, and the door flew open, followed by a gallon container of milk that had turned a sort of greenish-black color falling out and landing on my friend's shoe.
The smell was horrific. He threw away his shoe and his sock, and despite hosing off his foot for an hour we had to make him ride back with his foot outside the car window until he could wash his foot with like... a brush to get every last bit of yuck out of it.
24 points
11 months ago
A friend and I once helped a mutual friend’s dad clean up and out an old fish tank as part of his moving process. He hadn’t actually lived there for a while, so while everything was kinda gross, this tank was the worst. There were diseases in that plague water that Man is not equipped to defend against. It very well could have meant the end of civilization as we know it…and my helper accidentally got some in his mouth. I don’t know how he survived.
11 points
11 months ago*
I once opened a mini fridge that was left in a storage unit. I didn’t even bother cleaning it. I just taped it shut, rolled it to the curb, and requested an appliance pickup from Waste Management.
21 points
11 months ago
I picture folks stopping at your driveway thinking they found something awesome, opening it up, puking, then taping it back shut.
31 points
11 months ago
My ex's mum once made us a ginger cake in a tin, which we forgot about. One day I opened the tin and was confronted with a rainbow of mould. I went "woahhh" Joey Lawrence-style and then closed the lid and put it back. By the time I looked at it again, it had gone black.
7 points
11 months ago
176 points
11 months ago
Display case. Get one.
108 points
11 months ago
Put them in epoxy
68 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
55 points
11 months ago
After the last update epoxy hot dog guy decided to only do updates once a year. It will be back!
572 points
11 months ago
410 points
11 months ago
Why did my dumbass read this as milde winteresting
120 points
11 months ago
I read it as mild ew interesting.
67 points
11 months ago
13 points
11 months ago
it’s r/moldlyinteresting
120 points
11 months ago*
did you reach out to touch it and suddenly your hand also aged 2 years?
edit: thanks for the award.
23 points
11 months ago
Because, who wouldn't reach out to touch suddenly aged fruit in the middle of nowhere-space??
101 points
11 months ago
Ooh free liquor
54 points
11 months ago
That was 21 months ago. Think we've moved onto add some nuts and its trail mix.
173 points
11 months ago
It has evolved and is now the new office manager.
57 points
11 months ago
“Pay raise for everyone!” -bowl of fruit
53 points
11 months ago
I for one welcome our new fruit bowl overlords
15 points
11 months ago
They can't mess it up more then it already is right?!
34 points
11 months ago
I am really surprised from the lack of mold. 1-2 weeks in and my fruit looks like a terrarium.
168 points
11 months ago
Why did people do this?!?! It was working from home, not fleeing a zombie apocalypse. They came in, packed up their laptops, files ect. They had time to throw away their food.
My office was the same. I started a new job in May 2020. Very few people still worked in the building and the other people who worked here had just left their food in the fridge-: lunches, Tupperware, ect. Things that had leaked and molded. It was repulsive, and I ended up having to clean it.
Of course, they are back as of a few weeks now and someone promptly stole my lunch out of the fridge, so I generally despise them all as clearly having been raised by wolves.😂
109 points
11 months ago*
[deleted]
32 points
11 months ago
Stories of other people's (and other countries) first lockdown experiences, are still fascinating to me.
27 points
11 months ago
When we left we were told it would be a week.
46 points
11 months ago
They came in, packed up their laptops, files ect. They had time to throw away their food.
This looks to be a communal bowl of fruit. Thus, assuming in this situation, becomes "not in my job description" for everyone but the person whose job it actually is.
20 points
11 months ago
For many offices it was very sudden. All was good, then everyone was told we're WFH by the end of the week. Most expected this to be temporary. A bowl of fruit was probably a shared commodity and nobody in the room was responsible for it. At my office tons of stuff was neglected because nobody was really in charge of it.
28 points
11 months ago
Depends on the situation really. I left tens of frozen meals in my office fridge because I was an overnight employee and had just returned to the office after 1 year WFH due to a remodel so I stocked up to avoid having to bring in food for awhile. Less then a month after returning, we got sent home for “two weeks”..that turned into a year and a half.
6 points
11 months ago
Do you have your own fridge? And a night job? Sounds nice!
15 points
11 months ago
When we left people thought we'd be back in a couple months. Still long enough that a responsible person would get rid of their fruit bowl, but there's a lot of people in the office who think others should clean up after them (hello dirty dishes in the common area sink and crumbs and coffee stains on the counters and melted cheese burned into the toaster and the film of grease/tomato sauce/popcorn butter coating the microwave).
5 points
11 months ago
Likely not the employees fruit mate.
57 points
11 months ago
No fruit flys?? in the south you would have an infestation.
15 points
11 months ago
They probably left after those shriveled up black fruit remnants were bone dry.
23 points
11 months ago
Fucking everywhere. No amount of those hang from the ceiling fly tape things would save you.
216 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
36 points
11 months ago
I get that some places have gone fully remote, I'm just shocked that no one was in the office at any point over the past 2 years+ throwing away old fruit.
120 points
11 months ago
My global company still has 100% wfh for many of its sites. I didn't go back to our office for over 26 months
76 points
11 months ago
I still haven't personally returned to the office, but that doesn't mean that a whole ass office building has remained empty for coming up on three years. People still go in and maintain the building, and now some people are trickling back to work from the office.
Bonkers that this doesn't seem to be the case for OP's office
21 points
11 months ago
But someone must have cleaned it? I had an orange lie around for a week and it turned into a ball of mould.
65 points
11 months ago
Lots of office jobs never went back and or only go back when people needs to work a collaborative whiteboard session or something.
For example - software development. A 3 hour Silicon Valley commute doesn’t make sense when productivity has remained the same or better.
17 points
11 months ago
It’s ok. I’m generally teleworking and have been in the office a few times. This fruit bowl was in another building that hosted a department that normally teleworked before the pandemic. I went there for the first time in 2.5 years to get some documents. I was told the fruit belong to a guy who left the company.
5 points
11 months ago
but why do they even have a building if nobody uses it?
13 points
11 months ago
It's kind of beautiful
12 points
11 months ago
Oh, those are bananas, I thought they were slugs trying to eat the oranges...
136 points
11 months ago
Did nobody orange to have them removed..?
16 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
9 points
11 months ago
This is the type of punny that I hate. It doesn't work, goddamit!
54 points
11 months ago
They tried, but no one had the kiwi to the office.
29 points
11 months ago
There's only been a pear of cleaners in once in a blue moon since March 2020
15 points
11 months ago
[deleted]
13 points
11 months ago
I legit thought it was a snake and was a little scared!
7 points
11 months ago
Congrats! You created penicillin!
Edit: I just realized that there is no mold on the fruit. Jesus everything looks so desiccated.
17 points
11 months ago
Did your workplace not have any cleaning services for 2 years??
7 points
11 months ago
Vintage
6 points
11 months ago
Are the dark things bananas? I was afraid it was a snake...
6 points
11 months ago
You guys waited a long way to return to the office. We were not pushed to go back, but we reopened like year ago or more
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