I am having this same problem, Rations I get from working do not add themselves to my total rations but remain unusable items in my backpack. I am playing on the mac build if that is pertinent.
As far as I can tell, none of the jobs that paid rations went into storage, the last game over my "RATIONS" counter in the escape menu was zero and my backpack had "food rations x8" in it.
