I would suggest putting your name on the meal for another reason. I routinely bring food, then don’t eat out. Then I bring in the meal for the next day, forgetting I have one.
Not only would your name keep people from stealing your food, but it would keep you from looking in the freezer and thinking, “Now which of these is mine?”
You guys…
I hang my head in shame. I STEAL FOOD AT WORK. Its true. And I really have no excuse because my work caters in lunch everyday AND fully stocks FOUR kitchens full of junkfood. Yet I still surreptitiously throw that little splash of illegal milk into my coffee everyday. Its not mine, someone else bought it and put their name on it. I feel so frigging guilty now.
Never again.
My dad had someone stealing his chocolate bar out of his lunch every day…not a huge thing, but annoying. He bought a dairy milk bar, carefully unwrapped it, turned it over, and hollowed out all the little squares. He then melted ex-lax in the microwave, and filled up the little squares again. After cooling and a careful re-wrapping, he popped the bar into his lunch and went to work the next day.
When he went to get his lunch…the chocolate bar was gone.
Needless to say, later that afternoon, the culprit was painfully (!!) obvious. Dad and the guys had a good laugh and nobody has messed with his lunch since!
At my old job, we were required to put our name on everything that went in the fridge. (I generally put mine on a post it and taped it to the item so there was no possibility of someone saying they didn’t see the name or they thought it was theirs.)
Eating or drinking something with someone else’s name on it was an immeidate termination offense and everyone had to sign a document to that effect during orientation. You just had to find the culprit who drank your diet Coke and you could have them fired! We generally did not have any trouble with it. Although, I used to keep ONE diet Coke in the fridge, with my name all over it, including a post-it taped to the side. I brought one in every day and had it at lunch. There was someone who would drink my diet Coke before I went to lunch and replace it with another one, on which they had taped a post it with my name. The problem was that when I went to lunch and wanted my diet Coke, it would be all warm since it was just put in there by who ever drank my nice cold one. It was REALLY annoying! And I could never find who did it. I ended up complaining loudly to everyone who would listen each time it happened that drinking a warm diet Coke sucked and if I ever found out who was stealing my nice cold diet Coke I would have them fired. It started happenening less frequently and then I left the job so it didn’t matter anymore. I guess I can be happy knowing that jerk is drinking his own warm diet Coke now. Harrumph.
P.S. ouisey, Shame on you! See what trauma you are causing your poor co-workers? No more. Flog yourself with a wet noodle and call it good.
Granted, but if you do it the way I suggested, who’s to say it wasn’t spoiled when it was purchased?
IANAL, so I’m in no position to speak to the legality of the matter; but would a lawsuit like that really have legs? I mean I’ve heard of thieves suing homeowners for bodily harm incurred during a crime, but what statute addresses being grossed out by spoiled Chicken Fettucine Alfredo?
(Serious question, BTW, not rhetorical.)
I once took food from the office freezer. For weeks there was an unopened box of 10 ice cream sandwiches, no name on it or anything. It was in there for so long that I figured it had been abandoned so one day I decided to open it myself and eat one. I checked the freezer the next day the entire box was gone. Either the rightful owner finally claimed it or everyone else started thinking the same as I had been.
Spoiled food can kill you. I wouldn’t mess around with that kinda stuff, even as payback. (Add my name to the “wet blanket” list, I guess :))
I like the “boobytrap with the musical thingy” idea - totally bust the culprit.
There’s a fine line between somebody’s food and abandoned food. I used to work with people who made a habit of forgetting about their food in the community fridge to the point that we couldn’t fit new food into it. We finally had to adopt a policy of tossing everything in the fridge and freezer out every Friday. One guy who was one of the worst offenders got 6 or 7 tupperware containers tossed on him, after being notified multiple times it was going to happen. He had the audacity to ask for the containers back after I rescued them from the garbage, bleached them out, and started using them myself (I have a very high gross-out threshold).
Fnar
I’ve got it. How about you get one of those locking cash boxes. They’re less than $10 and probably big enough to hold around 3 frozen dinners at a time. You could just put the whole thing in the freezer.
I don’t know about where you work, but around here, the fridges are cleaned every week. Whatever is in there is tossed, no questions asked. Is it remotely possible the cleaning crew tossed them? Personally, I like the idea even if I have lost a couple of lunches that way. It keeps the place from stinking.
I can never get over the outrage and audacity at anyone who would willingly steal the food from another worker in an office. What type of mentality, I wonder, does it take to pilfer someone else’s store of food? Would they not then feel inclined to filch your smokes, your drinks, your office supplies, your car, your money or anything they feel like taking? These are people you do not want wandering unsupervised about your home and properties.
**Omnivore, ** on the subject of stealing food,(slight hijack here), my home was once broken into for the second time in a week. Not finding anything they wanted or could steal, I came home to find that the asshole had gone into my fridge, cooked my bacon and eggs, and eaten them off the one good china plate I own. And grease was everywhere! Talk about audacity!!!
Something similar happened to me just this Friday.
I stopped at the grocery store deli for an eight piece box of fried chicken, intended for dinner for my family.
I left the box in a bag, tied up the top of the bag, and left it in the fridge.
Three hours later I opened the fridge to find my bag had been opened and three pieces of chicken…grrrr all my white meat…had disappeared. All the teachers left earlier than me that day so there was no telling which one snatched and ran.
What pisses me off most is that these teachers make four times what I make as an assistant, and one of them couldn’t be bothered to purchase their own lunch!
What is it that makes another person feel that they have the right to someone else’s food?
Ugh. I’ve never had this problem with food at the office (thank God for not eating lunch!), but drinks are another question entirely! I used to bring in my supply of Dr Pepper for the week every Monday morning, and sure enough, they’d all be gone by, say, Wednesday. Never did figure out who was taking them, but it wasn’t any of my coworkers. C’mon, guys, is it that hard to just use one of the 3 vending machines in the building? :mad:
Well yeah…you have to actually pay to get a soda if you take one from the machine…
I think I’ve told this story on the boards before, but I’m proud of it so here goes.
I had a frozen calzone stolen from the freezer at work. Fortunately for me, the freezer in question is not accessible to most of the building, so I was able to determine the culprit rather easily. When I confronted the fiend, he admitted his act and offered to repay me.
I said “Fine, 20 bucks”
He said, “No way that thing cost 20 bucks” (he didn’t even know what a calzone was!)
I then launched into a tirade about the time it took me to go to the store, pick out the item, drive home, bring it to work, not to mention that I had to buy a different lunch from the damn vending machines to replace the one he stole, yada yada yada.
He paid me the $20 and no one has messed with my food since.
I think this one pissed me off the most!! Obviously a great big box of chicken is intended for later, or for some other grander purpose than just lunch - probably dinner for the family. And they not only took, but took the white meat!! ARGH. Damn, somebody messing with my fried chicken better look both ways when crossing the street after work.
And a teacher! The horror!!
I have a pretty funny story from my place of business. To set the stage, minor food pilfering is common. For example, a friend of mine had to resort to nasty notes to keep people from stealing his apples.
One of my other co-workers is a health food/work out fanatic. She plans her meals carefully and is nearly obsessed with food. Breakfast first thing, a little cooked egg whites and fruit at 10, lunch is a perfectly balanced high protein low carb affair with a salad and she has a snack of something like canned tuna and fruit in the afternoon. I’m just relating this so you understand how much food she keeps in our work refrigerator all the time, including a bottle of salad dressing.
So, there she is in our little breakroom, preparing a meal and another coworker comes in and starts complaining about food theft from the refrigerator. My coworker, who has suffered some food loss in the past is eager to commiserate. The newly arrived woman reaches into the refrigerator and pulls out a salad in tupperware and then reaches into the refrigerator and pulls out MY coworker’s salad dressing (clearly marked with coworker’s name) and proceeds to liberally douse her salad while continuing her rant about stolen food!