GRR! Food thief!!

calindi

I am FURIOUS!  And yes, capitals are necessary!

Someone in my office keeps taking food from the fridge.  I bought chocolate pudding two weeks ago, and by the end of the week 3 out of the 6 had been taken.  I bought pizza on Monday, ate half and left the rest in the fridge - by lunch on Tuesday it was gone!   My colleague bought string cheese - 5 of them went missing the last week!  Someone took the very last one and left the bag.  Last week, my other colleague had prepared his own lunch in a tupperware, and THAT went missing!

This is RIDICULOUS!  We're all grown ups, and there's only 15 of us in the office.  Most of us are friends.  There are only two people who I could fathom would do this, but even still it's a stretch.  I just don't see how a grown up can take someone else's food - maybe once, but regularly?  Seriuosly?!  SERIOUSLY?!

Any suggestions on how to catch the thief?  We can't make them sick as it's against the rules (we already debated the old 'ex-lax sandwich') and we'd get in major trouble.  We were wondering if there was a way to put food dye in the food so it would mark the perpetrator?  The problem is they mostly seem to be taking pre-packaged snacks, so I don't know how to get an exploding dye pack in... or even where to buy one...

nottheonlydreamer44

Oh HELL NO!

Cate you know what I am going to recommend as your way of finding out who is stealing your food. You can either 1) leave a passive aggressive note on your food when you leave it in there and tell them that God is watching and he doesn't like people breaking one of the commandments.

2) It will mess up your food but this is probably the easiest way especially if there's 15 of you in the office.  Bring in pizza, lasagna, whatever but it needs to be food that someone could eat and put back. Take your part of it and perhaps mention how delicious it is to the people in your office. Then before you put it back in the fridge put some unscented anti bacterial soap on it or douse it in the hottest hot sauce you can possibly find. Habenero works well. Make sure its on something where the person won't really catch it. (As long as it's something gross and virtually unnoticable unless you eat it it will work.)

Then you wait. Obviously whoever eats it is either going to immediately get sick/be looking for water to kill the fire in their mouth or they will never ever touch your food again. Win/win.

Problem solved.

loopy82

This makes me glad I am in an office all by myself. Duck tape your food together. That will make it difficult to get to. Put something sticky all over the outside of the packaging. Start bringing terribly snacks. Maybe write on the packaging that one of the items contains ex-lax and only you know which one it is.... is threatening ex-lax against the rules?

loopy82

I also like the insane hot sauce idea. That is not something that is made to make someone sick. If they eat it and don't like habeneros, well you do and maybe they shouldn't have been eating your food.

KimberleeW

I like the hot sauce idea.

we had someone at my workplace do the same thing, a couple that works here would bring tv dinners and by lunch both would be empty and in the garbage, every day for about 2 weeks, notes didnt work...etc... finally someone mentioned seeing one of the cleaners eating the same type of tv dinner that went missing one day, and when the manager confronted him he fessed up.

calindi

The problem is they're all individually packaged food, like the pudding snacks or the string cheese.  So it would be hard to 'dose' any of them with anything.

I've walked around looking at people's garbage cans, too, but no luck.  Like I said, there's only 15 people here!  It's not like they can hide!

KimberleeW

any way of pytting foodcoloring on the outside of the package? it would dye their hands, and make for an easy id

breezerb

My office had one of those. 

I started writing my name on everything with a Sharpie. And put a big note on the front of the door saying "If you didn't put it in here, don't take it out.  Don't eat food that's not yours. We have noticed and you're being watched"

It pretty much stopped after that. 

MLekathLEEN

Someone did that with our fridge until someone left that basically said "HEY STUPID (yes the note had "stupid" in it) STOP EATING OTHER PEOPLES FOOD!"

I've never had a problem with food theives (that I know of). I wouldn't leave a note ON your food (see picture below) I do like the hot sauce idea with open item foods. You just need bait

Beads921

Occasionally food will disappear from the fridge here, but not often. I usually put my entire lunchbag in the fridge, making it way harder to get at the contents. You could do that, and add a small padlock to your bag - you know, like the ones on luggage? I'm sure that would be an effetive deterrent.

calindi

It's not my lunch going missing - that would be easier to secure (locked lunch bag) or mark with cayenne pepper or food coloring.  No, this is usually individual containers (like pudding or string cheese).  Anyone had experience injecting food coloring into these things?  I don't have a needle or anything, but I bet it'd be funny to inject coloring into the string cheese.  They'll peel it, and get it all over their hands.

loopy82

Maybe people need to start locking their snacks in lunch bags.

[Deleted User]

This happened at the Hospice I worked at years ago.  Things were disappearing from inside people's lunch bags.  It was actually pure luck that someone happened to walk in and catch the thief...turns out it was one of the chaplains!  He actually was fired for theft (turns out he had a "past" life that wasn't so great, either).

It started happening at the next company I worked for as well.  I was there for 7 1/2 years and we didn't always have the same people working there, so there were numerous thieves (unfortunately, there were over 100 people working there, so it was more difficult to catch anyone).  I finally just started bringing only what I wanted to eat that day and then finally ended up keeping a cooler at my desk with those items cause the theft didn't stop.

You could always try opening the snacks and repackaging them in your own stuff (pudding cups fit in the glad or ziploc containers that you can wash and reuse over and over; string cheese could be put in snack-sized ziplocs).  Hope it all stops for you soon - I know how frustrating that is.

leia1979

Let's bring back the lunchbox. Lock those snacks up!

I mostly buy nonperishable items, so I keep them in my desk. I think we actually have the opposite problem here. There's a bunch of stuff in the freezer, and I'm not sure whose it is. Occasionally I look and wonder if I bought that.

Put your name on everything. Maybe they'll feel guilty if they know whose food they're taking!

calindi

But it just makes me furious that I can't trust my colleagues!  Sure, I could put it in a locked lunch bag, but then I have to unlock it every time I want something.  Is it too much to ask that 15 grown adults respect each other enough to not eat everyone else's food?  I mean, I can see it happening once but multiple times?  And half the food?!

Hazel_B

if it is happening on a regular basis, is it possible to set up some sort of camera?

But I do like the hotsauce idea.

desertsun

Can you have a staff meeting about it? Maybe if you can get your boss on board and have him let everyone know theft is a firing offense, it will stop.

I understand your frustration, but you can't, by force of will alone, make people behave the way they should.

If you can't get your boss involved, then just buy a lunch bag and deal with it.

calindi

The boss is out of the office for a week because his wife had a baby this morning (yay!) and my direct boss has no seniority over others in the office, he's just the head of my department (which consists of him, one other colleague and me, and that's it).

The office admin posted a sign to the fridge saying, "DO NOT TAKE FOOD THAT IS NOT YOURS!"  but I don't think it will do much good.  I mean, they already knew they didn't bring in the string cheese, right?  Idiots.  I'm going to talk to the CEO when he gets back in 2 weeks if it's still going on.

In the meantime, I'm writing my name on each individual container of pudding.  And I'll hunt down trash cans if everyone takes one!

Penny66

 Before you come into work you can carefully open the container of putting and put a lot of food coloring in it. This will work the best with a chocolate pudding because you won't be able to see the dye. Use a glue gun to seal the package up again. Leave the pudding in plain sight, hopefully the perpetrator will take it and you will catch them. If they eat the pudding, turn different colors and they still do not stop I would put the hot sauce in the pudding. 

 My friend had a lunch thief where she worked, this guy would steal sandwiches, pizza, anything he could get his hands on he would eat. My friend got tired of this so one day she made herself a "tuna fish sandwich" but instead of using tuna she used cat food. She put the sandwich in plain view, a few hours later the guy comes in and eats it, she notices it and leaves a sticky on the fridge that says something along the lines of "Hope you liked my cat food sandwich."

Also Cate, I like your new Siggy picture. You guys look adorable!!!