Lunch theives, I need a way to lock my lunch.

In My Humble Opinion
41

Who in the heck do you people work with???

They steal your LUNCH!

That’s beyond ick! And anyone caught doing such a thing would be immediately fired, either by HR or me.

If someone started stealing lunches out of the ‘refer’ they would be so ostracized that I very much doubt they would be let into the building. They sure as shit would never get any help from me ever again.

Honestly, do these people have no self control, no common decency?

It stuns me that anyone would steal someone else lunch. You work with children?

42

Call centers are notorious for this kind of crap–everybody I know has had their lunch ripped off at least once. Last time it happened to me I posted the following on the fridge: “To the jerk who stole the sandwich out of my zippered lunch bag: I’ve had my lunch stolen before, so I make a habit of putting a nice little loogie on every sandwich I bring here. I have no problems eating my own saliva and such, and it makes it almost worth going hungry today knowing that YOU ate it too! Bon appetit, shithead!” Nobody’s touched my lunch bag since… :eek:

I did something similar at another place I worked, but instead of loogies I wrote down that I had put a bit of my own blood in there–welcome to the wonderful world of Hepatitis! It’s not true, but I figure the culprit’s stomach was NOT feeling really good that day…

Good times, good times… my aunt once discouraged a cow-ork from drinking all her orange juice by liberally dosing it with alum–it was pretty obvious who the culprit was after he hijacked the bottle… :wink:

43

I will post a cautionary tale about sending dire warnings to the public mailing list.

I worked with a very, very sweet woman. She was adored by one and all for her kind personality. She became pregnant, and eventually was at the very pregnant stage. She and her husband were pinching pennies to save up for the new baby, so rather than buying an ice cream downtown as an afternoon treats, she stored a box of ice cream sandwiches in the office fridge.

At some point, someone stole one, matter of fact it was her last one.

She expressed her righteous indignation via an email to the whole (70 person or so) department. We were all very sympathetic and couldn’t believe someone in our group could do such a horrible thing to such a nice person.

Our manager discretely called her aside to explain she should not persist in tracking down the culprit - it had been one of the “big bosses.” :rolleyes:

44

As Czarcasm warned, tampering with food using things like laxitives or other non food ingredents is illegal, and can be punished severly. Laxitives in large doses can be dangerous.

As TheLoadedDog mentioned, Super hot spices may do well in revealing your thief. With such additives you have full deniabilty.

Here are some links to get started…

These look good…

Here are a few other possibilities…

45

These kinds of threads seem to pop up with appaling regularity. I’ve only worked at one place where lunches went missing on any kind of regular basis. We had a ‘Grazer’ (so-named in another thread), who would sneak bits and pieces from various lunches till he had himself a full lunch. A sandwich from this lunch, applesauce from that lunch, chips from a third lunch, and so on.

It just amazes me what people will do for a tuna sandwich or last night’s leftovers. First of all, it’s wrong.
Second, aren’t they afraid of getting caught? I’d be terrifed of chowing down on my ill-gotten goods and having the rightful owner walk in and catch me.
What the hell is wrong with people?

46

I used to work as a clerical temp the summer after I graduated from HS (my main marketable skill being able to type at 95 wpm and knowing how to use WordPerfect), and often brought in sandwiches or leftovers from home to save money, as I was paid a whopping $5/hour (in 1988). Then one day my sandwich (which I had put in a plain brown bag with no label or anything) was eaten. The raider left me my soda, though. (I guess RC Cola wasn’t up to their high standards of cola-ness.)

I didn’t starve, but I did have to go out to get a sandwich at a deli, which cost me almost 2 hours’ worth of take-home pay in midtown Manhattan.

I strongly suspected it was one of three superstitious secretaries that frequented that corner kitchen of the office. By “superstitious” I mean that they all went to fortunetellers on a semi-regular basis and discussed horoscopes, Tarot readings, dream interpretations, and talked about hearing ghosts at home and whatnot, which drove me nuts. We were pretty much the only ones keeping lunches in the kitchen fridge on a regular basis, since most office workers in Midtown go out to get lunch to catch their daily 15 minute dose of natural light.

Rather than confront them (and not knowing which one it might have been anyway), I drew “lidless eye” and Egyptian Ankh symbols on my next lunch bag with the warning THIS LUNCH IS CURSED in black magic marker. And then, being a lazy bastard, reused the bag as much as possible.

I ended up going through 3 or 4 bags like this, but made it through the rest of the summer without losing my lunch (so to speak), and as an added bonus, those three secretaries would stop their mystical talking whenever I came into view.

To be fair, they were perfectly civil and nice otherwise, and after reading some of the other accounts of lunch poaching by “big bosses” in this thread, I feel kinda bad now about freaking them out when I consider the possibility almost 20 years later that, well, maybe it was someone “higher up” that did it… Especially when I consider the rejection of my RC Cola, and also recall that the only person who ever commented on my “cursed lunchbag” was a VP who saw me taking it out of the fridge one day, and said to me, “Cursed?! <laughs> Do you really think that will be effective?” Hmm… :mad:

49

Screw a cloth bag, that’ll never work, they may have scissors in an office!

I’d look for a wire cage for a small animal. Easily AND successfully lockable, and probably not too expensive! Has the added bonus of letting the hungry lunch stealer see it’s baked potatoes all the way through! But he can get none!

Failing this, I would observe which entrees never get taken, save the boxes, then do a little repackaging so no one can tell it’s really the baked potato! Bwaaaahaha!

50

NurseCarmen, if you’re still around, I hope you did find a solution to your problem of 7 years ago. :slight_smile:

51

This. If after 50 posts you don’t realize this is the only answer, you deserve to have your lunch stolen. Even most leftovers can be unrefrigerated at room temp for ~4 hours. I do it every day, no theft problems whatsoever.

52

50 posts and 7 years. :smiley:

53

After someone stole my lunch, I kept packing a nice lunch for myself, but I wrapped it in an ancient looking, tattered plastic bag that made it appear as if it had been in the work freezer for months! I also made sure to use old Tupperware and put crumpled napkins in the bag to give it the appearance of being a less than desirable lunch.

54

Wow, another zombie thread.

I take my lunch in an insulated lunch bag with a freezer brick and leave it on my desk.

But if you have to use the communal fridge and someone’s stealing it, I’d put 5 in there, open all the boxes and lift all the edges so no one else can tell them apart, but spike one with some serious hot chilli sauce. bad stuff, take your breathe away stuff. Put a mark on that container and wait for it to go and see who screams.

55

Frankly, if anyone wants to steal a seven-year-old lunch, they’re welcome to it. :slight_smile:

56

Crap! I wish the front page would show the thread start date. Got all the way to 48 (where the heck is the number sign on a Mac keyboard?) before I noticed.

57

I either missed this thread the first time around or forgot it. I’m glad it got bumped, it was a great read (over lunch, natch).

58

Yeah, but whose lunch was it?

59

7 years. Can food really last that long?

60

Put it in a container labelled “Human Brainzzzz”. Because everyone knows that zombies like to steal fresh brain lunches.

61

Do not eat 7 year old food.

But I’d put a little sign on my stack of 6 meals: “One of these has been tampered with, and I’m not telling you which one, or what I’ve done to it. Steal at your own risk.”