Office Food Thief Regrets Stealing After Person’s Revenge

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The fact that even at a smaller company, people will straight up steal your food is an unfortunate revelation many of us make at our first job. Folks will simply lift your snacks and even entire meals out of the communal fridge and eat it like there is no tomorrow. So people have to start getting craft with revenge.

One office worker was plagued by a frequent food thief, so they decided to set up a spicy, habanero trap. Readers thought the capsium-ladden revenge was hilarious and others shared their own stories in the comments section.

While the vast majority of us would likely never even shoplift a candy bar, there is something about a communal fridge that unlocks some sort of inner bandit behavior. For example, one study found that around 18% of office workers admit to taking someone’s lunch from the fridge. While this is not a huge number, it’s worth noting that some thieves will simply never admit to it, even in anonymous surveys.

Remember that’s still roughly one in five. If you are in your office, you might be able to see five people around you just by looking. Statistically, at least one of them will, at some point, decide to help themselves to your lunch. Perhaps, even worse, you are the culprit. In which case, c’mon, bring your own lunch.

This particular crime relies on the thief knowing that, without clear, tangible evidence, most people will simply not risk making an accusation. After all, raising a fuss without proof is a surefire way to end up losing all credibility. So just by being careful, an office fridge thief can get pretty far, as long as they don’t get too greedy.

While it might seem minor, this sort of behavior can have large consequences

Image credits: Kristina Cortez (not the actual photo)

It’s actually surprising that companies don’t do more to combat this. After all, employees losing all faith in their coworkers will have repercussions beyond just the lunchroom. Once you add in bullying and discrimination, you can have a truly dangerous situation brewing. On a similar note, while OP’s revenge was pretty relaxed, all things considered, it’s not hard to imagine someone taking revenge a bit too far.

While it’s best to not be too sympathetic to thieves, there is also the workplace risk of someone with a food allergy eating the wrong thing. One would think, if you are deathly allergic, you would avoid random food, but one would think that one in five office workers aren’t thieves either. Yet here we are.

This is why many HR managers suggest raising a complaint early and not taking things into your own hands. At the very least, a company-wide email can be sent out telling employees to be careful to not “accidentally ” take someone else’s food. This way, the thief can’t use the “it was an accident” argument if confronted.

Broadly speaking, there are two anti-theft strategies

Image credits: Keegan Evans (not the actual photo)

However, as many of us might know, HR and management might take a bit too long to resolve this, so OP’s example is a classic strategy. Broadly speaking, workers who are the victims of this kind of theft take two strategies. First, they might try to hide or obfuscate their lunch to make it a less valuable target.

Others, including OP, will instead set a trap to give the thief second thoughts in the future. Spicy food is a classic example of this since it comes with built-in plausible deniability. After all, some people like their food to taste like an open inferno. This method comes with the added benefit of very possibly revealing who the thief is.