4mo ago

How are people so chill about co-workers stealing food?

Seriously I see these posts all the time about people who have a co-worker who steals food so they make gross food to 'get back at them' cause HR doesn't do anything.

Legit question but how do you not just freak out and yell at the person? If a co-worker stole my food the 1st time I'd yell at them and curse them out, the 2nd time I'd threaten to shove the food in their fat face next time I see it happen. If HR didn't do anything I'd threaten to quit and sue if they claimed I don't get EI because it's a toxic work environment.

I just don't get how people are so passive when co-workers literally steal from them? I'd be fucking livid.

70 comments

Because that's not how the corporate world works. You want to freak out and yell at them? Go ahead. Maybe they don't eat someone else's food for a week. Meanwhile you'll be hunting for a new job. You threaten another employee? You'll be lucky to be employed at the end of the day.
Life is a series of tradeoffs. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Tim may steal food, but that doesn't mean it's throwing off the status quo. You yell at Tim, you're upsetting the status quo. So go ahead, and have fun with your pink slip. Hope it was worth it.
Or you can keep your lunch at your desk.
- Good lord this makes me happy I've not worked in corporate and stayed in blue collar work.
  Someone steals food in a shop, that someone's gonna have a bad day and the boss yells at anyone "whining", including the guy who got his ass kicked.
  
  That sounds awful all around
  
  The only time I've ever had my food stolen was when I was working as a deckhand on a tug. I've been working white collar jobs for the past 25 years and haven't had to deal with it since.
  Also, my solution was to spray degreaser on my food the next day and wait to see who complains. Turns out, I'm the one who got in trouble for that even though I put a 'do not eat' sign in the food.
- Nah you're just complacent, old man
  
  Correct, that is another way of putting what I said.
  If the choice is:
  Have a stable job, continue paying my bills on time, enjoy the coworkers I do enjoy, continue on with my life -or-
  Have a few seconds of glib satisfaction after yelling at a coworker
  I mean, yeah, I'm gonna just keep my lunch at my desk.
  
  The one true way is to find a new job if your coworkers/boss/the job itself is mistreating you.
  We did not mistreat you, so don't take it out on us.

Yall dealing with people stealing food? Ive worked in an office setting for almost 20 years and ive not once ever heard of someone taking someone elses food
- Where I work there was a night guard who would go around at night and steal food from alle the office break rooms. They installed combination locks on them ans gave the code only to people in the department. When they found the culprit, they fired him. Which is the only sensible thing to do when someone is stealing on the job.
  
  Steal from the company, not from the employees.

I'm guessing that they don't know who stole the food
- I would still make a big deal about it, and demand a solution
  
  So say 100 people work at this company, the other 98 not involved don't want to listen to you rant and rave either. They might understand, but the more you escalate the less they want to deal with your shit either.

Maybe because the only co-worker food theft stories that get upvoted and therefore seen are the dramatic ones about passive-aggressively making gross food for the food thief. And who knows how many of them are true stories and how many are creative writing projects for internet points.
- Making inedible or spicy food to catch a food thief is a trick as old as time and I have even done it myself. There is no other way to catch them out usually.

My cop relative said everyone working in police stations keeps their stuff in lockers because cops constantly steal from each other. Not just food.
- This is the least surprising thing I have learned today.
- What do you expect when most cops are criminals
- ACAB, eh?

I empathize with your outrage. I once worked at a place with 100+ employees and high turnover, and people would steal lunches there. When I first heard about it I was horrified. The reality is that the company doesn't care, and unless you're the person whose lunch is being stolen, most co-workers won't care either -- they wouldn't even know how to help you.
A solution could be as simple as a camera pointed at the fridge, along with firing any thieves. IMO the fact that most places don't take it seriously is evidence of how little they care about the employees.

Never ever been in a place where people take food that isn't theirs. I cannot even comprehend it. And if it happened more than once I'd keep my food in a backpack at my desk.
Is it yours? If no don't touch. Simple as that.

If they're any good at it, you won't know who stole your food. If I did know who the thief was, yelling/cursing/threatening would get me fired. It's easier to keep my food at my desk in an insulated lunchbox with an ice pack.
And finally, HR doesn't give a flying fuck about your lunch. They would laugh in your face if you threatened to sue them.
- I would only use them if they denied me EI after leaving the company and claiming I left due to the toxic environment. In Canada that's how EI works, you can get it if you quit if the working environment is illegal or toxic etc
  
  Not familiar with the acronym "EI"
  Employment insurance?
  Idk, if they fired you for screaming and threatening someone, seems like they'd have an argument that you were the toxic one. The company didn't steal your lunch. Even if you could prove you made every possible effort to report the thief and handle it through official channels, falling back on screams and threats would really detract from any argument, IMO.
  I'm not Canadian though so I can only say I personally wouldn't intentionally burn bridges like that over leftovers. To answer your original disbelief that anyone could be so passive about accepting lunch thefts, I've not had it happen with any frequency that would make me put my employment at risk by acting out.

A guy I worked with had his lunch stolen from the freezer one day. He walked around and found the empty container in the trash of a new guy. He was canned that day.
- Be wary of such proof.
  As a young kid in the 80s, I went to stay for three days at an adventure centre. One barn was converted to house bunk beds and there were about 20 kids of about 11 years old. Everyone else was there for a week and I joined midway, and found it difficult to integrate.
  One kid, the only one who had shown me any welcome, had his woolly hat stolen. Another kid suggested searching everyone's bags for it. There was general resistance, most kids thought he'd lost it somewhere and that never happened.
  When I got home the following day and unpacked, I found the hat in my bag. Someone had planted it there, probably the kid who suggested searching bags. Taught me a lot about people, that did.

Stealing food is theft - it may be petty theft but it's still theft. If you report it to HR and nothing is done then you can sue the company for a hostile work environment.
If you use laxatives, excessive spice, whatever and injure a coworker then you can be fired with cause and possibly be civilly or criminally liable if the damages are significant enough.
- If you report it to HR and nothing is done then you can sue the company for a hostile work environment.
  Good luck
  Filing a lawsuit over a sandwich (or threatening someone, as OP mentions) is a comical overreaction anyway. There are a dozen simpler ways to solve the problem.
- excessive spice
  Why? I could just say that "wow, my friend gave me some spicy peppers because I like spicy food, but this is way overkill. I'll have to go get takeaway."
  Not tasting food before eating it is not a crime.

- Sounds like the thief won. Made you change your habits.
  
  As opposed to continuing to bring the thief food?

I mean the real answer to your question is that those posts are all fake because the internet loves stories about revenge on such a small scale they can't be disproven.
But I want to know what kind of job keeps you by the fridge 24/7 so you can always witness food theft. Most people don't work in the break room, so they have no way of knowing who to yell at when their food disappears.

Um yea I think thats just social media attention seeking. I don't think that is any more common than something like shoplifting.
Reddit loves to upvote drama.
- That doesn’t say much, shoplifting is super common.
- Maybe it varies by industry, but I've been a white collar desk jockey for 18 years and I've never once heard of lunch theft in real life, only seen on social media.
  
  Theft of both food and desk items was a huge issue at two different large office jobs I had. In the second one, HR and management didn't care until someone stole the electronics from the break room and they finally put up cameras. I think the correlation is that those big offices had large phone sales and support staff that works in the building. Those roles underpaid, under-appreciated, and have high turnover. I can definitely see some of those people being on their last rope and not giving a shit about stealing from either the company or people they feel have "cushy" jobs.

gain a tolerance to very hot food. problem solved.

The average person wants peace in their life.
These are the fringes that the malicious operate best.
Because it's not really worth the hassle to you.
Most actually don't want to yell and scream at someone, to escalate a situation, to involve themselves with "authority figures" that do nothing but work preserve the hierarchy around them.
It's exhausting just to exist while we suffer this way of life. People just gotta pick their battles because we are losing the class war.
Because they feel safe to antagonize relentlessly.
these malicious actors know the average person wants this peace. They pick and poke ceaselessly like the vultures they are. What are you gonna do about it? Nothing.
Even if you do stand your ground, you will be vilified for putting the front of their face into the back of their skull.
Or if you yell and scream, others will think you're crazy/dramatic/unreasonable regardless of the circumstances.
Or perhaps you plead uselessly to your indifferent "authority figures" who only exist to exploit you in the most efficient way possible. Utterly toothless. Can you be surprised? We are not free while living like this.

Because they don't know what i put in there.

Where I work HR put a big sign on the refrigerator door about not stealing food
- Did it help?
  
  It was stolen

I agree. It's theft.
HR should absolutely get involved because it's going to really affect the working environment. And if you're hungry as a result, you're really not going to be doing your best work.

Put in laxatives or something that fucks them up
- That's poisoning and you absolutely can be held liable for any injury you cause.
  Also, it's a completely reasonable reason to fire you.
  
  What do you mean? It as a laxative to help me poop. Why are you eating my medicated sandwich?
- Careful, people have been terminated and been sued for this kind of behavior.
  You can make it very very spicy, however, as long as you're willing to eat it too
  
  What if you love shitting and are willing to shit too?

I think I'd just bring extra food the next day so both I and they can eat. Clearly someone isn't able to bring their own food for whatever reason, and I can't really blame them for choosing to eat when the alternative is starving, even if it is annoying that I missed my lunch that day.
- This is the most legitimate answer.
  Our children always went to school with extra (our dinner the night before was their lunch for the most part, we always tried to make extra).

I always keep Lunch in my backpack at my desk or eat in a cafeteria. The best way to be chill about a problem is to avoid having the problem.

Are you really going to yell over someone accidentally taking the wrong ham and cheese sandwich?
- If it's in my lunch bag that doesn't look like theirs, then yes I would

How else are they going to identify middle management prospects?

I'm with you. They're literally taking your sustenance. This is way serious.

The only work theft I ever tolerated was coffee creamer, because we all knew who was addicted to coffee, and we all sort of stole in a circle from each other for a day or two when we ran out of our own.

When you find out the person stealing food is skipping meals to feed their family.

Y'all need to start rubbing your ass on decoy food. Go ahead, eat my butt croissant.
- You handle my ass pennies.
  
  I have wondered since that episode aired how many people were inspired to do it for realsies.

Because here it's not normal to leave food at work.
That's why I can be so chill at it.

70 comments