# People stealing my lunch, is it ok to make a cat food sandwich? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 7, 2009, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169 "2009-09-07T16:15:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/181 "2009-09-09T01:31:08Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Sorry, nothing further to update. I don’t know who took the sandwich but it is gone and has not been found. So the plot thickens, or the cat food coagulates, as the case may be. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/182 "2009-09-09T01:55:45Z")
I’m following this thread with great interest. Has it been established that the thief is actually **eating** the pilfered lunch? ---
**Author:** ![nikonikosuru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@nikonikosuru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nikonikosuru)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/183 "2009-09-09T02:06:59Z")
DigitalC, has it only been your lunch that has been stolen? Do you think whoever it is know that it’s your lunch they’re taking? ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/184 "2009-09-09T02:09:05Z")
Question: What’s the grossest thing you can think of that someone would eat unwillingly yet someone else could ostensibly eat on purpose? Answer: Semen > [@Muffin](#): > > A partner at a law firm at which I used to work has admitted to raiding the fridge and his clerks’ \*\*desks desks \*\*for food. Wow. It’s one thing to steal from coworkers, but stealing from their poor _furniture?!_ That’s outrageous! > [@Muffin](#): > > Yes, I apologized and paid him for the purrrloined stakes. I see what you did there. ---
**Author:** ![ToeJam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dfb087/32.png) [@ToeJam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ToeJam)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/185 "2009-09-09T02:10:13Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > As for your example, give me a break. When you get home from work so hungry that stealing food seems like a good idea, get back to me. Otherwise, don’t bother me with your useless comparisons. “Hungry” and “hungry enough to steal and risk losing my job” are two entirely different things. To me, it can all be summed up by the idea that he was a Teenager/it happened so long ago. People can change over time, and those who tend to be younger, tend to do things that aren’t the smartest or most well thought out choices. I have friends who are great people now, mature and successful, but back when they were in high school- they were terrors. If you feel it needs to be a lunch time story to make sense, then here’s one. I have certain religious obligations, of which, I do not eat meat on certain days, and I don’t eat beef. Most of my friends know this and totally respected my views. Some times though, one of them would touch their roast beef sandwich and then touch my food, knowing that I couldn’t very well eat it then once it had been touched by the beef. I would either have to throw away the food (or more commonly), I’d just offer it to one of my friends if they wanted it. If they didn’t want it- I’d offer it to the person who touched my food. I certainly didn’t need to eat my lunch, and I did not mind going hungry. Sometimes he would do this intentionally simply because he wanted to eat my bagels or whatever I had, other times he would take the food and just throw it away, and laugh at the fact that I had such a funny dietary/religious restriction. Where’s the logic in that sort of thinking? It was just a Teenager doing something stupid and not really considering all the aspects of their behavior. If you’re hungry, you take it, if you’re not, you don’t. It’s very simplistic behavior, and not really one that needs to be analyzed too much. I just chalk it up to immaturity, and then move on. Teenagers can do stupid and immature things w/o thinking it through. (On a side note- eventually the person realized that I wasn’t going to get frustrated by his attempts to ruin my food, and after about 4-5x of him ruining my food, he realized he was just being an asshole and the others in the group pointed this out to him in more certain terms (by calling him an asshole). He never really messed around w/ my lunch after that, though he’d still chuckle about my dietary restrictions every so often, when he saw me eating bagels or some other vegetarian dish every so often. We became good friends after that, and I’m sure he remembers the incidents now if I brought them up, but we’ve both moved on from that point- so I see no reason to bring up old fires and run around trying to burn bridges right now). ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/186 "2009-09-09T02:10:16Z")
> [@PeskiPiksi](#): > > This is hilarious, and reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell. > > Entire frozen chickens kept disappearing from the freezer. Grandmother could think of no one to suspect except the maid, but didn’t like to say anything without proof. Still, maid came \>this\< close to being fired. > > Until one day my grandmother is walking into the kitchen and spots the family dog (a quite-brainy Dalmatian–there’s lots of stories about his antics) walking up to the freezer. She hides and watches as the dog uses his mouth to open the freezer (something none of them had any idea he could do), pull out the chicken, _close the freezer door behind him_, and trot off into the living room, where he proceeded to bury the chicken in an indoor flower-bed type thingy they had. > > Grandmother later dug up about 10 chickens in various states of decay. He wasn’t eating them…just stealing and hiding. > > The maid, fortunately, never knew how close the dog came to getting her fired. Your grandma had a maid? My grandma had to steal her own chickens. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/187 "2009-09-09T02:21:45Z")
When I was a kid I had a bit of a klepto streak. In 9th grade I worked at a grocery store, and while I never stole food from coworkers I did steal food from the store itself for lunch. There was a rule that if your lunch was something from the store and not from home, you had to keep the receipt with it all the time, but since it was a grocery store anything you’d bring from home would probably be from the store anyway, so the whole receipt thing was fubar. To get caught you’d basically have to be seen removing a food item from the shelf, carrying it to the break room, and then eating it. At the time, the store was “the man” to me so I had no problem “sticking it to him” by stealing the occasional Lunchable or frozen cheese-stuffed pretzel. Stealing, for those who haven’t tried it, is fun. I could imagine getting addicted to it, a la Winona Ryder. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/188 "2009-09-09T02:39:12Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > Question: What’s the grossest thing you can think of that someone would eat unwillingly yet someone else could ostensibly eat on purpose? > Answer: Semen Some people enjoy the taste of semen, as I was reading the first thing I thought of was a “Don’t eat that steve” combo of potted meat product, beggin strips, pickled pork rinds, and natto. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/189 "2009-09-09T02:47:29Z")
[ > [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > I wonder if DigitalC is currently being strangled by someone whose breath smells of 9 Lives. This sure is exciting, though! My coworker’s breath smells like cat food. ---
**Author:** ![PeskiPiksi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e495f1/32.png) [@PeskiPiksi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PeskiPiksi)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/190 "2009-09-09T02:53:48Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Your grandma had a maid? My grandma had to steal her own chickens. Yeah, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. They weren’t rich by any means (not poor, obviously, but not rich, either)–this was the South in the 1950s. It was not at all unusual for even middle-class stay-at-home Mom families to have a maid, and my grandmother worked, too. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/191 "2009-09-09T03:15:24Z")
> [@nikonikosuru](#): > > DigitalC, has it only been your lunch that has been stolen? Do you think whoever it is know that it’s your lunch they’re taking? I too am curious. [QUOTE=salinqmind] I’m still wondering how a cat can steal a steak out of a refrigerator. [/QUOTE] I heard of a pair of cats who tag teamed fighting a gopher, and could open the fridge. One would pull on the door, the second open the latch. ---
**Author:** ![Fell\_through\_the\_Ice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9adbd/32.png) [@Fell\_through\_the\_Ice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fell_through_the_Ice)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/192 "2009-09-09T03:17:55Z")
> [@Ro0sh](#): > > To me, it can all be summed up by the idea that he was a Teenager/it happened so long ago. People can change over time, and those who tend to be younger, tend to do things that aren’t the smartest or most well thought out choices. Yeah, pretty much that. It was very unlikely that I would get caught. It was a pretty big county office building and I was just a part-time summer temp. I doubt most people who worked there permanently were even aware of me. Multiple floors, multiple breakrooms and fridges…I simply got away with it and was totally under the radar. I’m quite sure that it never occurred to me that the people working there might blame their co-workers - people they actually worked with. Until this thread, I actually never even thought about that. ☹ Now I feel even worse - I wonder if anyone got accused/fired over it. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/193 "2009-09-09T03:31:30Z")
> [@nikonikosuru](#): > > DigitalC, has it only been your lunch that has been stolen? Do you think whoever it is know that it’s your lunch they’re taking? My lunch has been the only one there since i started taking lunch to work a few weeks ago, maybe everyone else learned to keep it at their desk or gave up on bringing lunch. They wouldn’t have known it was mine unless they kept a close eye on the break room. Unintended consequence: tonight as i was making my sandwich for tomorrow kitty sat there watching me expecting food since she got the leftovers last night, i’m going to test the waters with real food and see if my trap had the desired effect. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/194 "2009-09-09T03:44:36Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > You probably meant that in jest, but when I was working for a law firm, I had to stay late one evening and, walking by the kitchen, I see one of the head attorneys just taking things from the fridge - yogurt, soft drinks, a hostess cupcake - that I know are from other employees. > > (And yes, I told those employees the next day, and although they found it kind of funny that I had “caught” the thief in action, they never said anything but at least no longer felt the need to accuse/wonder about their other co-workers.) We’ve had threads about people stealing food in the workplace before…and sometimes it does turn out that it’s one of the Big Bosses making the Big Bucks who’s doing the stealing. I wasn’t jesting, I know it’s a possibility. I think that this is a very telling indicator of how some bosses feel that they’re entitled to take anything they can from their employees, even though they know how little the employees make. ---
**Author:** ![Fell\_through\_the\_Ice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9adbd/32.png) [@Fell\_through\_the\_Ice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fell_through_the_Ice)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/195 "2009-09-09T03:52:03Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > i’m going to test the waters with real food and see if my trap had the desired effect. So, what do you think might happen tomorrow? ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/196 "2009-09-09T03:54:17Z")
Just come to work early, and see which person is followed by cats. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/197 "2009-09-09T03:59:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Unintended consequence: tonight as i was making my sandwich for tomorrow kitty sat there watching me expecting food since she got the leftovers last night, Cats can be amazingly dense, but they can also learn from ONE event. One of my cats made a vocalization that sounded exactly like she was saying “Mama” once, and I made a big fuss over her, so she learned that this noise meant that she was gonna get petted and loved on. This same cat quickly learned that when I opened the fridge, I was going to take out Yummy Food. Maybe tomorrow should be Take Your Cat To Work Day. The cat will know who has the cat food sandwich! ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/198 "2009-09-09T04:09:13Z")
> [@Fell\_through\_the\_Ice](#): > > So, what do you think might happen tomorrow? Hopefully they either decided my food sucks and won’t steal it anymore or they realized what i did and won’t risk it again. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/199 "2009-09-09T04:12:33Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Hopefully they either decided my food sucks and won’t steal it anymore or they realized what i did and won’t risk it again. Bring a toothbrush and have your resume updated. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169/200 "2009-09-09T04:16:21Z")
I dont think the cat food will do the trick. Someone dense enough to steal the only lunch in the fridge every single day isn’t going to be deterred by a weird-tasting sandwich. They need to either be outed (caught in the act; either the dye thing or some kind of alarm) or actually punished (hot peppers). How many people are there in this office? Maybe if the inside of the bag were coated in ink or dye, you could tell who it was by checking hands/shirts/pants. Perhaps something sandwich-looking could be concocted that, when removed from plastic wrap, would spill something brightly colored everywhere. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-stealing-my-lunch-is-it-ok-to-make-a-cat-food-sandwich/509169.md?page=11)