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By Brett Bundale, THE CANADIAN PRESS

A story about a missing lunch of shrimp fried rice is captivating social media and shedding light on an often overlooked but highly contentious aspect of office politics: fridge etiquette.

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Interactions around the office refrigerator — replete with passive aggressive Post-It notes and decomposing leftovers — reveal human behaviour in the workplace, experts say.

Eddy Ng, a professor at Dalhousie University’s Rowe School of Business, said the shared fridge is a microcosm of office dynamics, serving to accentuate interpersonal skills, communication styles and personality types.

“It may seem pretty trivial but it can manifest into something that is bigger than just stealing lunches,” he said in an interview from Halifax. “It accentuates peoples’ personalities and attitudes towards their colleagues.”

It’s also the scene for a comical tale about stolen shrimp fried rice that has gripped social media for days and spurred an online exchange of woes from cubicle-land.