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calindi
member
GRR! Food thief!!
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...
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...
This discussion has been closed.
Re: GRR! Food thief!!
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.
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.
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!
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.
*No pony, no I do!*
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
Life is good today.
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.
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!
I haz a planning bio
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.
My Bio - updated 26/3/2011
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.
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!
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!!!