On Reddit's Microsoft "subreddit" community, a job candidate for a position with the tech giant's United Kingdom offices asked for advice for his forthcoming interview.
One self-described employee with Microsoft's game studios in the United States, "HelenAngel," chimed in that her best advice for new hires is to "[not] be one of those people that takes a milk carton and uses just a little bit of it for your coffee/tea and then puts back the opened container on the counter or the drink fridge."
Apparently, Microsoft employees have been burned by spoiled milk before. So unless an employee opens the milk carton themselves and sees that it's totally fresh, they'll assume it was left on the counter to go bad and just open a new one.
Which means that it's actually better to either chug a lot of milk or just pour it down the drain, because no Microsoft employee will drink any opened milk containers.
"The Orphaned Milk Carton culture is somehow deeply ingrained in our worldwide culture," HelenAngel writes.
Apparently, added user "landwomble," it's such a known issue that Microsoft's internal Yammer social network has a group dedicated to documenting these lonely milk cartons, entitled "Milk cartons of the Pacific Northwest," in tribute to Microsoft's Washington headquarters.
"I reuse milk cartons left in the fridge, what's the probl... Be right back, gotta hurl," quipped user "MySecretAlwaysAngry."
Because these are all anonymous comments on Reddit, it's difficult to know the full nature and extent of Microsoft's dairy challenges, or whether the whole tale is merely fabrication of an imaginative, milk-obsessed troll. In any case, we've reached out to Microsoft to get more clarity and will update if we hear back.
And if you know more about Microsoft's milk culture, feel free to reach out via e-mail.