Here, people are willing to steal anything that doesn’t have a name on it. I guess if they know who they’re stealing from they have a conscious.
I believe you. I used to pump at work. The content of the containers I put in the fridge was clearly breast milk. It is not homogenized and doesn’t take long for it to separate. On more than one occasion my milk would be gone. It was kind of creepy actually because everyone knew it was breastmilk, and everyone knew it was my breastmilk since I was the only one lactating. I’m told it is rather sweet (kind of a hint of mango-flavor to it), but still, I ain’t your wet nurse. You could at least ask to drink from the source. 
According to “Friends,” it tastes like cantaloupe juice.
Ironically, there are very inexpensive heat pads that you can buy and nuke that are more effective, more comfortable and retain heat longer. Get an office pool and buy each of these offenders one of them. In an office of 20 people, it would be about 50 cents per person.
Am I the only one whe has ever encountered the perpetual mooch?
I forgot my lunch, are you gonna eat all that?
This tastes like crap, can I have the food you were gonna eat tomorrow?
That looks good, can I have some?
I can overlook someone occasionaly useing my stuff or accidently thinking my lunch is theirs because I forgot to label it. I’ve met plenty of people who will eagerly use what others bring if it’s viewed as fair game. I use to leave an altoids tin by the register and too many people from other departments got wind of it and would come over to help themselves. When I stoped bringing them in one guy commented that he was a little disappointed that they hadn’t been there for a week. “Feel free to fucking buy some then”
If someone was taking something that was clearly labeled with my name on it on a regular basis I’d find out who was doing it and give them a piece of my mind. Inconsiderate pricks.
Is there anything technology can’t solve (and it is pink!)?
The Sock Thing…
The heating-pad sock is, generally, a sockish tube filled with uncooked rice. Dry, uncooked rice holds heat for quite some time, and is reusable as long as you don’t over heat in one go.
The drawback, as noted, is the smell. You can’t wash it, because, being uncooked, the rice would soak up the water and swell up until the ASPCA is knocking on your door wondering why you’ve a dead cat 'round your neck.
So if you came across one unattended, and decided to toss it into the sink and soak it under the faucet because “it smelled like it was burning…”, well, you’d just be turning someone’s heating pad into lunch. How could they be angry?
InkBlot
p.s. I second the nomination for lunctime deserters. We have two microwaves, so it isn’t always disabling, but once I came in for lunch to find someone’s meal in Micro #1. So I use Micro#2. Three hours later, I come back to the breakroom to buy a cola, and in Micro#1? The same meal from lunch. Ewww…
I walked in to work monday to the distinctive aroma of burnt popcorn. I can understand how one could burn it slightly but to burn it so badly that you completely burn all the contents and scorch the inside of the microwave and stink up the building for days/weeks/months means you are probably setting it for much higher than the recommended time, why do people do that?
We have a very small business but we’ve had pretty much all the problems mentioned, especially the not cleaning up after yourself.
We have someone at work whom we refer to as a grazer. He will graze on anything and everything in the fridge, sometimes just taking a taste but it doesn’t matter who the food belongs to. I was totally pissed one time when I bought a huge calzone and could only eat half of it. I put my name on the box and intended to finish it the next day. I came in to find half of it gone. The entire thing was huge, so half was a meal but a quarter was only a snack. So I had to go get something else to eat that night because the snack sized calzone wasn’t satisfying. He confessed that he ate it but he said he wasn’t sure I’d be back the next day to eat it (I was on the schedule!), or that I even wanted the rest (I put my name on it!).
Another thing that bugs me that hasn’t been mentioned are the people who put open glasses of some usually very sticky liquid back in the fridge and positioned so that when you reach in to pull out your food it knocks over the glass, which you then have to clean up because you spilled it.
Or they put fast food covered cups in the fridge that stay there for days, c’mon people you are not going to drink that flat watered down soda 4 days from now! They also put them in the freezer where they stay until the freezer is too full for actual food and someone gets pissed and cleans out the freezer and tosses them.
Finally, there’s the rearrangers who decide to straighten up the fridge and in so doing they take your food out of the bag you had it in and put it all in various spots in the fridge (never together). Others come along and see a loose container of yogurt or a candy bar and figure it’s fair game. There’s also rearrangers who, seeing that you got the best spot for your food, move it to some other spot so they can put their’s in your spot. Usually they have to jam it into the new spot causing breakable things to break, squishable things to squish and containers to pop open and spill. So if you can find your food, it’s often a mess. That lovely unblemished pear I brought in now looks like it was worked over by the mob.
I have often heard people speak of adding something like laxitves to food as revenge on the theving bastards. This is not a recomended course of action. You can be sued for this, for food tampering. I believe in some states it is a criminal offence.
Super hot sauce, OTOH, is a legitimate food additive. The more the better. Enough of the proper Scoville rating and quantity, and it shant be long before the screams and crying reveal the perp. And revenge shall be yours.
Co-workers with food agendas/amateur doctors/mockers of culture and custom - Jeez, you think that was long enough? This is actually a spectrum of Lunch Disorder, so I felt a need to encompass a full rainbow of irritation.
OK, you’ve got the folks promoting one food agenda over another. You got the vegetarians who rant on and on about the dangers of meat and how unhealthy it is. They come in two basic types, really - the Overweight Carb Lover, with resemblance to the Michelin Man, and the Scrawny Freak, who is also typically paler than most members of his/her ethnic group, scrawny (duh!), speaks in a weak and quavering voice, and is in danger of being blow over by high winds. Um, yeah, resounding pictures of health you are… You’ve also got the people pushing bizarro diets, like the one based on your blood type (WTF?). You’ve got Atkins Acolytes, and South Beach Bimbos.
You’ve got the** Food Conspiracy Theorists ** - the ones who insist on bottled water (once upon a time we had one that would only wash her hands in bottled water, not tap!), the ones who leap up and scream EEEK! every time some news story goes out about this or that additve, or pesticide, or contamination hits the media. It’s a wonder these folks can find anything to eat. Or drink. Or come within 10 feet of. “Don’t eat fish - the government puts mercury in it to keep us stupid and compliant” (What, you discovered this through personal experience?) “Don’t eat non-organic fruit - the government sprays it with chemicals to give you cancer and keep the drug companies in business” (Or something like that)
You’ve got the Sweetener Police - I was going to call them the “Sugar Police” but that doesn’t capture the entire scope of the problem. These are the ones who will insist than a spoonful of sugar in your beverage of choice today will cause diabetes tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, in fact. But you can’t use diet anything! That has artificial sweenteners which cause cancer (the pink stuff), or turns into formaldehyde and causes brain tumors (the blue stuff), or neurological damage (the yellow stuff). Eat any of that, and your nose will run, your feet will smell, your head will swell up and explode and you’ll drop down dead right there! Oh, and caffeine is bad for you, too - causes lumpy breasts, high blood pressure, and little green men. But decaf is worse - they use CHEMICALS to take the caffeine out – which is usually about when I get rude, turn my back on them, and leave.
Amateur doctors - not only do they feel free to ask nosey questions and diagnose what they perceive to be your ailments (free of charge! Uninvited!), but they have no qualms about prescribing without a license. With total disregard for any REAL medical advice you might be operating under (because doctors only make money when you’re sick, so they don’t want you to get well). Dietary prescriptions are bad enough - drug prescriptions are even worse. “You look a little stressed dear, I’m sure your blood pressure is up - you should give up salt.”, “You shouldn’t eat dairy, no wonder your sinuses are giving you trouble. Just throw out those antibiotics and ignore the green pus dripping out of your nostrils - you don’t have an infection, it’s that yogurt you ate two days ago.”, “You have a rash? You must have celiac sprue - give up bread immediately! Or you’ll die!”, “You look a little upset - I’m just giving you some free adivce. Because I care about you. Maybe you need Prozac. And Jesus.”
And finally we have the Culturally Intolerant - “Mulims don’t eat pork? That’s stupid! What do they have with their eggs besides bacon?”, “Jews don’t eat cheese with meat? You mean they eat a roast beef sandwhich without cheese? That’s just wrong. How do they stand the taste?”, “Mr. Rama won’t eat hamburgers? But he drinks milk! That comes from a cow! Hindus are so stupid! All those cows wandering around India and no one eats them!”, “My GOD what’s that? It’s got tentacles! My GOD YOU’RE EATING SQUID! You Chinks will eat anything, won’t you?”, “Chitlins? You eat hog guts? You’re from a really backward part of the South, aren’t you?”, “Hey, Nguyen - that’s not dog, is it? The pound says a couple of their strays went missing, did you have a barbeque last weekend?” – well, you get the idea. Maybe if I was in Bumfuck, Iowa this could be partially excused on ignorance but we’re talking the downtown area of the third largest city in the US, a town known for it’s wide variety of ethnic restaurants.
and
You owe me a new irony meter.
But is it ‘food tampering’ if you’ve done it to your own food and someone steals it?
You could always say you were constipated and had to disguise the taste of the laxitave.
It would be the thief’s fault for stealing food.
[QUOTE]
Cause they’re stupid? Microwaves do vary so 3 minutes on one isn’t the same as 3 minutes on another. They probably select a number thinking they’ll be back but then forget. Isn’t it weird how people can’t wait 3 freakin minutes
ditto
Now that’s some dishonest petty bullshit. How about asking the guy to replace your food that he ate? As in “Well Dipshit, I’m not sure how you made that error since I was on the schedule and my name was on it, but that’s okay. You can replace my food you ate and it’s cool.”
YEah, that sucks. Open cans of soda are just as bad.
We also get people putting back a soda bottle with two or three sips left. Our solution was someone would clean out the fridge every couple weeks and all that crap goes away.
Again that’s some inconsiderate bullshit. Stuff in a bag shouldn’t be seperated. Better to throw old stuff out.
The other problem is people just plain forgetting they have something in the fridge. They bring leftovers in tupperware then go out for lunch and a week later their stuff is still there. Or Yogurt cups or anything. I’ll confess I’ve done this with small stuff. LAter I’m looking at it wondering if it’s mine. One place I worked at kept a magic marker tethered to the fridge to put your name and the date on things so the fridge cleaner wouldn’t throw it out.
By George, I think you’re right.
My sister did exactly that. Not only did the person not eat her food ever again but barely spoke to her again. Bonus. The story goes that she used a bit too much and the person was pretty sick one day.
1: Make some little spiced balls of dough or some such, fry them
2: Take them to work for lunch
3: When they go missing, enquire loudly as to where your fried silkworm pupae have gone
4: Observe culprit by signs of dry heaving
Something that worked for me in college…
Mom would send care packages with yummy cookies. After getting tired of having everyone come by to steal them, we came up with a new plan…
Food coloring!
She made them green or blue and tried for the most horrible colors we could get. Nobody wanted to eat them but me. Lovely.
I’ve got another one:
The Soda Freezer. You know–the guy who gets his soda out of the vending machine or brings it from home, decides it’s just not cold enough for his tastes, and puts it in the freezer “just for a few minutes, to cool it off.” Invariably he goes off, gets involved in something, and completely forgets about the soda. Several hours later the next person comes along, opens the freezer, and discovers that a sticky carbonated grenade has gone off in there, completely coating the inside of the freezer (and everybody else’s frozen food).
This morning, when I packed my lunch, I put some novelty rubber dog poo, wrapped in Saran Wrap, right on top. My lunch was still there, so that seems to be working.
Broomstick, I swear you jinxed me!
You see, I usually bring a six pack of soda to work and drink a bottle or so a day. This morning I found someone had worked one bottle out of the six-pack, drunk half of it, and placed it back on its side, next to the remaining two bottles in the six pack. I did briefly consider making a run to the liquor store at lunch and bringing back an additive for the rest of the bottle, but that would be a little too unethical. I may stick a note on the remaining half reading “You may as well finish it off. Next time, please ask.” Monetarily I’m not out that much; it’s the plain rudeness and ignorance which bug me.
CJ