How do you know any of this?
Personally, I’ll take the word of the OP, who was there, over your pulled-it-out-of-my-ass speculation and fabrication.
I laughed - I guess that makes me a meanie too.
If she wants to take TP because she doesn’t have time to stop, do it openly. She can tell the boss what she’s doing and ask him to take the cost out of her paycheck or bonus.
Yep. I have a zero tolerance for theft policy. Steal from me and you are fired. I have given employees cash in their time of need; theft is something I would never tolerate.
The OP was there, and said it wasn’t a joke, it was mean. The background story is irrelevant.
How do you know she didn’t do that?
Because that’s a completely ridiculous idea?
I will always remember the year my great grandmother gave me and my brother a clothes hamper. “Now you won’t be leaving your clothes all over the place!” she said.
I don’t think she meant it as mean as it came out, but we were just littl’uns, and we’d been joyously speculating on what was in the big present…
No need to be so defensive about being your office’s TP thief, TriPolar; even your handle choice betrays you. 
A little old lady brought a gift one year for one of my employees. It was a large box, beautifully wrapped. The woman it was meant for had the day off, so LOL left the package and went on her way, leaving us all puzzled.
Next day, we all watched her open her gift. The box was filled with HoHos, DingDongs, Twinkies, etc. The recipient was a very large woman. She began crying and went home for the day.
The LOL meant well, it turns out. Someone called her and gently tried to find out why she did something so cruel. Turns out she just thought someone that large must love snack cakes.
See, now that’s funny. 
One year (I was probably 5 or 6) my grandmother gave my girl cousins some kind of toy they were all happy about. I unwrapped mine to find… a toy carpet sweeper. When I looked at her with the WTF face, she all but shouted, “That’s because your mother’s always complaining about the messes you make that she has to clean up!” Nothing like crushing disappointment and humiliation in front of the whole family.
When my Mother in Law had a stroke, we bought a house and brought her to live with us, and took on caregiving for someone fully bedridden and who outweighed me by my body weight.
I understand it’s challenging to get her a gift. But boxes and boxes of chocolates? Really? Are you kidding me? The next three weeks was a continuous battle as she just wanted chocolates all day, every day. Sheesh.
And then her daughter gave her a lovely blouse. It will need to be severely altered (I can do that!), just so we can sort of, get it on. But when, exactly am I going to feel it’s necessary to wrestle her, at some discomfort into this garment, and for who’s pleasure. Tons of work for me, plenty of discomfort for her, for why? I didn’t alter it, and I never put it on her. And I never explained.
They weren’t meant to be mean, but they kind of were.
The OP reminds me of a few random things.
That time I was on the job out in the middle of nowhere and had to buy thousands of dollars worth of shit on my own credit card to get things done that had to be done right fricking now. Then the powers that be couldn’t figure out exactly what accounting process would be needed to reimburse me. I had to threaten to steal thousands of dollars worth of toilet paper, pens, and pencils 
Then there was the time my grandfather got a Christmas gift that he opened among the large family gathering. It wasn’t the gift so much as the box it was in (wrapped in christmas wrapping of course). The box containing the random trinket gift was a Summer’s Eve douche cardboard box. Hey, I was little kid and needed a damn box to put that gift in damnit. What did I know? The fact gramps could in fact be a douchebag at times just added to the hilarity.
Back to the OP. Yeah, that TP gift was mean. Even if she actually is the TP bandit a Christmas party ain’t the time to call her out on it. Of course it is a bit better than using the Christmas party as the time to announce who is getting fired/layed off (I am pretty sure I’ve read some story about that here on the Dope).
My husband and his sister are into “gag gifts”, which are either something really silly–like the sweater with a Cleveland Browns logo knitted into it that his sister gave him–or intended to ramp up speculation before the gift is given. His sister wrapped up a giant can of soup once, for instance.
I guess it’s all in good fun, but they did this stuff to each other as kids. It sounds kinda mean, to me. But I’m an only child.
And isn’t that what the holiday season and families are all about? 
Ok, it’s time to come clean. You are actually the toilet-paper lady, right?
Agreed. Fake lottery tickets are an abomination on the face of the earth.
I asked my husband for a file cabinet for Christmas this year - I want to do some serious filing.
I think the OP is kind of funny, too, and I have almost zero tolerance for mean practical jokes. She brought it on herself by stealing toilet paper from work (which, it seems we are almost agreed on, is not cool).
The meanest Christmas present - remember this video from a while ago? It’s the kid who thought he was getting an XBox, and his asshole family is yukking it up while he is just about in tears, he’s so disappointed.
You do know that a White Elephant gift exchange, by definition, includes one joke gift, like a used sock, don’t you? I wouldn’t do a White Elephant exchange in a school situation- a secret santa or whatever would be much more appropriate.
—Alice, who was once burned by a White Elephant exchange as a kid and was extremely embarrassed and pissed about it—
never mind, wrong post
My husband’s former workplace used to do one of those “Yankee Trader” gift exchanges, where you randomly assign the order of opening of gifts, and you can choose to steal the already-opened gift of someone who went before you and make them open a new one.
Our MO for these was to always hide a nice gift inside something awful. One year we put a DVD inside of a cheap plastic shower curtain. Another year we put a gift card inside a Queer Eye For The Straight Guy calendar (this was a tech company where the vast majority of the gift-openers were straight male dorks). The last year was the best. We’d gotten a hideous, frightening, fiber-optic angel doll as a wedding present from an elderly member of my husband’s family. It was probably the biggest box at the exchange, and we hid a Home Depot gift card in it. The guy who got it actually stole it from the person who originally opened it because he thought his daughter would like it.
We always told people about the gift card afterwards just to make sure they didn’t accidentally throw it out, so it’s not totally mean, but I always loved the WTF looks on people’s faces when they opened what appeared to be a terrible gift.