When I did airline reservations about ten years ago, I once saw a large handwritten notice taped to the front of the shared industrial-sized fridge in the employee lounge. Said note read: “Whoever took and ate my chicken sandwich on Wednesday also took and ate my medicine at the same time. I hope you recover from the side effects and learn your lesson about stealing other people’s lunches.”
Dunno if it was for real or not, but I’d certainly like to think so.
Someone on this board posted regarding this same subject a year or so ago. Lunches were disappearing from her office fridge, and she devised a way to catch the thief.
The poster made a “hairball” sandwich. That’s right, she cleaned out her hairbrush and carefully tucked the hairball into an appetizing-looking sandwich and stashed it in the office fridge for a couple of days. The sandwich was stolen, and they caught the perp when she bit into it and screamed. The perp was then fired for office theft.
I haven’t see anyone mention what I assumed was the old standby for stopping lunch theft: TABASCO SAUCE!!
Then of course you just wait by the water fountain…
Romana
Apple-juice in a (sterilized) specimen jar, in your lunch bag. For some reason, even when people know it’s sterile glass, they can’t get past it.
Actually, I’d be more inclined to steal something with Tabasco sauce in it. Mmmm…Tabasco.
Here’s my story:
This past summer I worked in a standard office building setting. We had no problems with theft, but one day I brought in a bucket of ice cream to share with others. I didn’t know people in my building all to well, so I just left a note telling others to help themselves. Nobody took it up, so I finished it myself over the course of a week.
My friend once told me about some kid at school who kept getting his lunch stolen by the big bad bullies. So what did he do? He put laxative chocolate bars in his lunch bag! Bwahaha, those kids were sick in the bathroom for hours.
Ah, how revenge is sweet.
Gawd…every thread tonight reminds me of a Friend’s episode:
Dr. Leedbetter: I-I'm sorry. I, I-I-I believe I ate that.
Ross: You ate my sandwich?
Dr. Leedbetter: It was a simple mistake. It could happen to anyone.
Ross: (getting upset) Oh-oh really? Did you confuse it with your own turkey sandwich with a Moist Maker?
Dr. Leedbetter: No.
Ross: Do you perhaps seeing a note on top of it?
Dr. Leedbetter: There may have been a-a joke or a limerick of some kind.
Ross: (getting angry) That said it was my sandwich?!
Dr. Leedbetter: Now-now calm down. Come look in my office, some of it my still be in the trash.
Ross: (jumping to his feet in anger) What?
Dr. Leedbetter: Well, it was quite large. I-I-I-I-I had to throw most of it away.
Ross: You-you-you-you (trying to remain in control) threw my sandwich away!
[Cut to an outside shot of the museum.]
Ross: (losing control, we hear him shout outside) MY SANDWICH?!!!
[Cut to a shot of a park.]
Ross: MY SANDWICH!!!!!! (Ross's scream scares a flight of pigeons away.)
That IS [sub]low[/sub]
We have a community refrig for about 60 people. Gets a bit cramped, don’t ya know!
My solution, eat out every day.
Biggest problem we have is keeping the refrig cleaned out. It’s so full of old stuff there are constant emails for people to remove their old meals(?).
After years of working swing and midnights, I promised myself when I got a job working daytime I’d ALWAYS eat out. 
As BC would say, I feel yore pain!
I once had a calzone in the fridge at work stolen. The thief was a moron because it was in our team’s fridge, which no one else has access to, and it was on a weekend, so there was only 1 guy per shift.
I confronted him on Monday, and after he admitted it, I said “You owe me $20”. He was shocked and said “There’s no way that thing cost $20.” I replied “you owe me for the calzone you ate, the time I spent shopping for it, the gas I used to bring it home and to work, the replacement lunch I had to buy from the vending machines, the time it took me to walk to the vending machines,and the crappy feeling I had about co-worker theft.”
Surprisingly, he paid up.
I think that the contaminated food revenge plot could be sorta fun. Coca cola’s sweet syrupy taste would undoubtably hide the flavor of syrup of ipecac.
Nobody steal my lunch… of course I eat things that my co-workers won’t touch.
Stuffed vine leaves, (goat) feta cheese, houmos, pita, olives, tzaziki…
No… I’m not Greek. I just eat that way.
The revenge ideas are hilarious.
I solved the problem of theft and science experiments in the office fridge - I pack my lunch in a 6-pack cooler. I bring a bottle of water and I keep it all cold with a bag of ice cubes on top. Never have a problem…
That was me took your lunch.
I figure if you’re dumb enough not to label it, then it’s up for grabs. And I have ignorance as my excuse - I was sure it belonged to that last guy we fired.
My coworker keeps a jar of one of those ultra-hot sauces in the fridge. You know the kind - one drop will make you cry? Kind of a cross between food and bowel surgery? Anyway, whenever he has leftover pizza in the fridge, he gives one piece a good dose of that stuff. He’s never had a problem…
Blame Misha.
Me, I’d go for the ole standby, Visine. Colorless, scentless and apparently the standby of generations of bartenders. Just douse a sammich with some, then make it look appealing. I’m told that hours of uncontrollable diarrhea is the result.
I must admit, the hairball sandwich posting really made me gag. Nice !!!
Cartooniverse
I despise food that gets left to die in community fridges. Not someone’s Hot Pockets that they bring in on Monday and deplete during the week, but leftovers. Someone goes out for Thai, Mexican or whatever, can’t finish it, brings it back and puts it in the fridge “for later”. Then it sits there and sits there and sits there until it becomes sentient.
Once I was working craft service in a studio where the CS room had such a fridge. I was caught trying to clean it out and was shrieked at and told “That belongs to other people!” I knew when certain items had been put in, and I had serious doubts as to whether anyone was going to eat a chimichanga that was six days old.
The last office job I had, the fridge was crammed. I couldn’t fit a pop can into it. Seriously. A sign was posted stating that anything left in the fridge on Friday afternoon would not be there on Monday morning, but I think it was there for decoration.
It’s hard to beat fresh habanero peppers. I love spicey food, but I will be obviously suffering if I eat just a bit of uncut fresh habanero. Buy one, dice it up (wearing gloves, of course), and add that to your booby-trapped sandwich.
Good thing about the fresh habanero as opposed to an extremely hot sauce is that it is relatively innocuous - no tang of vinegar, no forboding aroma. The one time I was tricked into eating a habanero (I was dared to, and being the kind of guy who enjoys munching on jalapenos I thought I could handle it, had NO idea how powerful this evil pepper is) it wasn’t until I had chewed it several times that I realized it’s full power. After that I was in extreme pain for a couple of hours, despite drinking almost a gallon of milk. If you put some on the sandwich there is a good chance the thief will get more than one bite before he realizes his mistake. He will be easily spotted by his/her flushed and sweating face, labored breathing, and frantic pawing at his/her mouth.
Occaisonally, when the smell becomes to rank, I will clean out the work fridge. I put up a sign saying when I will clean it (always 4 days in advance) and that everything is getting thrown away.
No one has ever complained to me. If they did, I would refer them to my sign, and to the company sign that states employees are not to leave things in the fridge overnight.
The office I used to work in had an honor vending area- one guy would shoot out to SAM’s Club and buy a bunch of snack and pop and charge $0.25 for anything. We’d just make a tic-mark on a list next to our name and he’d come around on pay-day. At the end of the year, the surplus cash was used for a big’ol lunch. There were only 30-40 of us, all pretty good folk and many were friends outside of work, so it worked out. All of a sudden, though, he started noticing dollar bills missing from the cubby-hole beneath the snacks where he kept some petty-cash (for change and what-not.) Similar to zut, I’d recommend not trying to thieve from engineers- that’s all our office was, and, being the NA Technology Center for one of the worlds largest glass companies, we had all sorts of fun little toys.
We stuck our dept. video camera in one of the cases of pop and had it hooked to one of the ultra-sonic sensors, usually used to detect glass on a conveyor, which one of the EE guys supposedly did something with the PLC and we had a motion-activated surveillance. Sure enough, in a few days, we had footage of one of the cleaning guys, a kid maybe 17-18 or so, reaching into the till.
We took it to the security folks and, this is the best part, he called the kid in that afternoon. The security supervisor clears off his desk and sets a tape label simply: Surveillance Video smack dab in the middle of it. The kids walks in, the guy points to the tape and says “you know what we saw on this?” and the kid breaks down and starts apologizing immediately and swears it was an accident, he was just stupid, he’s sorry, etc, yadda, yadda. Never even saw the tape, but we had a confession. 'Course, the tape only showed his jacket clearly, not who was wearing it, but it was good enough for us.
Where I’m at now has four huge 'fridge’s accessible to, literally, thousands of people and a cafeteria that is open 24/7 and I’ve never had any problems with lost food.