You know, if the worst thing that’s happening in your life is that you caught a glimpse of someone else’s breastmilk in the work fridge last week, maybe you should thank your lucky stars and go do something useful in the world with all that spare energy.
The Boston Globe’s “Miss Conduct” responds to a hyperventilating office worker:
A co-worker recently returned from maternity leave, and upon opening our office refrigerator today to grab my yogurt, I came face to face with a bottle of what appears to be breast milk, labeled with this woman’s name.
Although I breast-fed my children and am an ardent supporter of it, I always took pains to be discreet about it at work. If I pumped milk in the office, I stored it in a paper bag or small cooler so others wouldn’t see it. What is your take on this? Should we all be exposed to her daily output of breast milk every time we venture to the fridge?
H.M. in Quincy
Your co-worker’s behavior is seriously inappropriate, and I hope it can be attributed to the emotional upheaval of having to leave her baby and to the million-and-one things she must be trying to keep track of right now.
One does not store bodily fluids – even sacred, precious, life-sustaining bodily fluids – in containers where others might see. Reasonable discretion and unreasonable body shame are not the same thing.
Look, you’re uncomfortable about this, and you’re a breast-feeding veteran; imagine how childless colleagues, male and female, would feel. Worse yet, imagine a colleague both childless and clueless piping up at the morning staff meeting, “Hey, Sue, I ran out of half-and-half. Hope you don’t mind I used some of your soy milk!”
This must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances. I think you should address the matter with her, since you have lactation cred yourself, and she won’t think you’re a child- or body-hater. Explain to her how you handled the situation for yourself, and why.
This calls for a big steaming cup of Get The Fuck Over It. Which is why, I suppose, I’m not paid to be a newspaper etiquette maven.
What’s the worst etiquette advice you’ve ever heard?
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Dammit, should read comments before posting. Thanks Katarina.
Becca, people do look at things in work fridges. Get over it.
Another longtime fan/lurker here … just thought I’d put my two bob’s in:
1. I agree wholeheartedly with the majority of commenters here… so what if there’s milk in the fridge?
2. That being said, everyone here came down pretty hard and aggressively on BeccaTheCyborg for expressing an opinion that was different. And not in a particularly inflammatory way either. Just saying…
Sorry Becca.
gringo: I strongly disagree. For a start, it wasn’t just a neutral opinion, it was a comment about how “gross” baby food is. In this space, that remark is deeply inflammatory and uncivil, no matter how many cuss words it doesn’t contain.
I asked a question about responsibility – did not attack Becca, and nor did anyone else – and she then launched into a second screed about how breastmilk is just like farting, and added a very ill-considered slam about “PC”.
Only after she had well and truly played her antifeminist hand did people draw the line and clearly tell her that was not OK.
I hardly think expecting co-workers to be remotely polite about something most people find deeply unappealing (or alternately, very personal) is somehow oppression
The oppression is in the social/economic norms, whereby showing some rack for advertising, fashion, pron, whatever is apparently liberal choice; whereas thinking: ” I need to feed my child, I will put some of my milk in the fridge for later on” somehow = OMG OFFENSE!!
DO most people really find breastmilk deeply unappealing?
If people is taken to include infants & mothers, we’ve an obvious NO here.
If people is taken to mean adult co-workers, I’m very over this idea that being Not With Baby means that my brain somehow shuts down when sexist stigma against the mothers & infants is invoked.
I accept that a mother may well need to keep her milk in the fridge, whereas that guy in HR who left his mould cultivating take-away curry in the fridge needs to get his act together. Why is lactation allegedly more unappealing than slobby housekeeping?
Worst etiquette advice I’ve read – well, on balance I think it’d have to be the advice quoted in the post.
In a way, it’s understandable that people instantly react with ‘ew’ to boobmilk, coz we’re flooded with messages that bewbs are for fondling/jizzing on. Being reminded that they have food emissions takes the indoctrinated sexeh out of em. However, if you have this ‘ew’ reaction and someone points out why your reaction is pretty sexist and shit, don’t keep trying to justify it. Get over it. We live in a sexist, patriarchal world in which we’re bound to make many obnoxious mistakes.
You know the way on slogan t-shirts, you have band names or logos or phrases plastered across your yabbos? Wouldn’t it be great to make a shirt that says ‘boobs are for milk’.
Etiquette: Once a man on a train advised me to take out my piercings or I’d never get married. Thanks, random Russian dude.
Everything today seems to be centered around a person’s “right” to do or not to do something. My question is what has happened to common courtesy? As a common courtesy I do not think that it is appropriate to be placing your bodily fluids in the refrigerator on your job rather it be breast milk or other bodily samples. There is just a time and place for everything and breast milk next to your collegues muffins is just not cool. I am sorry for all of you loving parents out there and coincidentally I am one myself, but just because you have kids does not mean that the world should revolve around you and your kids. Please use some common sense and practice some common courtesy and keep your breast milk between you and your loved one.
Asked and answered, Stan, quite some time ago. Please read comments (and the next thread) before replying.
Breastmilk is not a waste product excreted from the body, it is food for babies. As food it has every right to be in the fridge along with all the other food. We keep cows milk in the fridge, which is food for baby calves and I don’t hear anyone complaining about that.
I’m going to wilfully misinterpret this, and decide that Stan in fact means that the entire workplace structure of modern capitalism should be rearranged such that women can easily keep their babies and toddlers with them at work. No expressing required, and no one else needs to see breastmilk.
Though that would still leave women who need to express milk out in the cold. (Preemie or sick babies, babies with cleft palates, babies who can’t latch, etc.)
Good thing you were never around me and my kid, Stan. Many thousands were exposed to the hideous, stomach-churning sight of human milk. They’re all emotionally scarred, each and every one of them. Some of them were even children. Oh, the humanity.
Guess we should have both stayed locked inside for a year and a half, eh? Where we belong.
Probably lucky he wasn’t in the shopping centre where I saw the woman breastfeeding her baby while walking along, chatting to a friend and watching her older children run ahead. Now that’s multitasking!
That is such a good point. Nursing mothers should take their milk out of the fridge when all the other milk is taken out and not before.
Nursing mothers will probably want very much to take their milk out of the fridge when all the other milk is gone, because otherwise it’s going to end up in people’s coffee.
breast milk, unless it is your own or your mother’s, is gross. Just like hair, menstrual blood, sweat, other excretions. Or, if you want to argue that it’s a food rather than an excretion, fine, it’s just as gross as the gross pork casserole that my coworker brings in for lunch every monday. Gross. Other people’s bodily fluids are gross. Other people’s foods are gross. Other people, particularly coworkers, do gross things and are gross.
That is not to say that breast milk shouldn’t go into the office fridge. To suggest otherwise is to ignore reality, necessity and equity. But to say that your breast milk won’t be gross to other people is also to ignore reality. Every time I see my co-worker’s pork casserole, I want to vomit. But I leave it in the fridge, recognising its right to be there.
“You’re a feminist. You know that women are oppressed. And if you’ve been paying attention, you know that mothers, particularly nursing mothers, are discriminated against in the USAn workforce. (Perhaps less so here, but it certainly still happens.”
It seems to me that it wasn’t so long ago that a breast-feeding politician was booted out of parliament in Victoria (apparently the baby wasn’t a member or something and shouldn’t have been there) and a women breast-feeding on our parliament steps was asked to cease and desist (right next to an advertisement picturing a barely dressed young woman). I believe discrimination most definitely still occurs here. :-(
As for the “ew” factor: I had an experience not long ago that may shed a little light on it… I defrosted some 10 month old breast milk the other day, to put on my toddler’s conjunctivitis (there is STILL no better cure than ONE application of breast milk, even 10 month old frozen breast milk!) and was surprised to find myself experiencing my own “ew” factor. I found myself not wanting to touch it, wanting to get the contact over with as soon as possible. This is the same reaction I get with things like my dog’s poo, and vomit, and raw meat. The whole time the logical side of me was screaming that I was being an idiot, that it was MY milk, and magical stuff at that, but to my shame I could not suppress the “ew” feeling.
This made me wonder as to the source of my feelings and I came up with two theories: a) this “ew” feeling was indoctrinated into me when I was far too young to remember it and I’ll never be rid of it, or b) there was something that felt intrinsically wrong about breast milk being outside of me rather than going straight from breast to baby that I was picking up on.
Funnily enough, I did not have the “ew” feeling when I was lactating. It only occurred when coming into contact with my breast milk in a different context (frozen, non-food use) many months later.
So I get the “ew” feeling, I really do. But that the feeling is present does not make it reasonable, and unreasonable feelings are the ones we don’t act on, we drink the great big cup of Get the Fuck Over It, get on with our lives, and allow others to do the same.
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Dammit!, if it was me I’d ask for a little. Doesn’t anyone else find it a little odd that we would actually prefer to drink milk for the breast of a stinking polluting cow (unless of course said coworker fits this description). I don’t even consider it a bodily fluid. People, get over your bloody ‘boobie obsession’ and find a life….like under a rock or something! 18 years old and already im keeping it real better than some chick with rugrats of her own……i dont know, this world….
The thing I notice is that the coworker saw a bottle, labeled with the woman’s name. The letter doesn’t say it had any other label. “Appeared to be breast milk” could just mean it was filled with a white fluid. But the coworker assumed that it was breast milk, and then wrote the letter about how the woman should have hidden the bottle to prevent speculation from occurring inside the coworker’s head.
Coworker should’ve minded their own business.
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