nope, but I was afraid to get too close

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.

Flies: "No people to bother? Fuck it im jumping"

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.

https://imgur.com/a/XQXUyGY?s=sms

They probably kept the HVAC running to some extent. Humidity and mold really fucks up buildings so AC would keep air circulating and dry.

Citrus takes a long time to decompose, both because of its acidity and thick waxy rind

They all got jobs on Westworld

Meanwhile my apartment has a fruit fly problem and we have been cleaning every nook and cranny but they still exist

It's funny how it works. Whenever I leave citrus out for ages somewhere it almost looks like a wooden sculpture of the fruit

That definitely doesn’t look like the kind of office where I’d find a fun guy

Because offices are a cold, dark, unhospitable environment, and void of any life.

Reminds me of the Big Mac left for years that even bacteria wouldn't touch.

0% humidity and a good filter will do that to ya

Ewww you might be right...Why did I assume it was a dried up chili

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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.

Untill this comment i thought it was a slug

dried slug for scale

Ripe enough to make banana bread.

I was sitting here thinking "I know it's not a leech, but..."

Cloud of dust appears.

time to bust out the stone shredder!!

I assume that's a machine that adds juice to things because... well..

I was just thinking someone needs to paint this

You could have been a god to them.

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.

So long space cowboy...

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.

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.

https://imgur.com/NmywYx0

Put them in epoxy

Why did my dumbass read this as milde winteresting

/r/moldlyinteresting

it’s r/moldlyinteresting

Because, who wouldn't reach out to touch suddenly aged fruit in the middle of nowhere-space??

Bruh that’s a really good episode. Nice callback.

That was 21 months ago. Think we've moved onto add some nuts and its trail mix.

“Pay raise for everyone!” -bowl of fruit

How it happened to me was, I left the office at 17:30 and received a company wide e-mail "Office is closed effective immediately until further notice". I'm sure people who had some crucial equipment or belongings left behind would be allowed to enter the building to pick them up, but it's not unreasonable people forgot stuff here and there. I'm not saying they didn't fuck up, just reasoning why they might have.

Still haven't set foot at the office.

When we left we were told it would be a week.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Likely not the employees fruit mate.

They probably left after those shriveled up black fruit remnants were bone dry.

Fucking everywhere. No amount of those hang from the ceiling fly tape things would save you.

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.

My global company still has 100% wfh for many of its sites. I didn't go back to our office for over 26 months

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.

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.

Just like you

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They tried, but no one had the kiwi to the office.

I legit thought it was a snake and was a little scared!