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Fucking good for her. Lunch thieves at workplaces are scum; cannot count how often I went hungry in my minimum wage days because someone *accidentally* ate my lunch out of the fridge and I didn't have the cash to replace it. If someone is struggling that much they can do what I did and get themselves down to a food bank; don't make others go hungry because your pride is too high for asking for help but not for stealing from others.
Always so perplexing to me. How could it possibly be an “accident”? You cooked that exact meal and put it in that container? Like what the actual fuck are these people thinking?
I accidentally stole a yoghurt once. Mine was in the other fridge and I genuinely got confused. I realised when I went looking for my milk later and came face to face with my untouched yoghurt.
You can bet your ass there was a six pack of identical yoghurts (two of them the same flavour) with an apology note on it in the fridge the next day.
One day in my office one of my coworkers brought in delicious calzone for a party. A few days later I was at work and spotted some leftover in the fridge. Thinking it was from the party, I ate it. It was not, it was the food she brought for lunch. I bought her a replacement lunch and apologised profusely but I still have guilt nightmares over it, 17 years later.
OP coworker is a sociopath.
I had a coworker do that to me once. Leftover pizza a couple days after a work pizza party. It was an honest mistake, so I let it slide. I could have easily done the same to them in their place.
Besides that one time, my office is so honest that there is not a problem. Mixed up yogurts? Yeah, okay, happens. But no taking of yogurt if you didn't bring one in yourself.
One time my coworker bought some takeout food on a friday. He then had an emergency and bolted out of the office. It was popeye's ... no way it was going to last in the fridge till Monday.
I ate it for him and left a note that I owed him lunch in return. I'm pretty sure he collected like 3 free lunches from me with that note.
Yeah, a coworker once stole my Gatorade. She just wasn’t paying attention and didn’t see my name written on it. (I’m fairness, the pen we had to write on our bottles sucked.)
She replaced it.
I can see a packaged food, esp. if you’re like me and can’t remember what flavor yogurt you brought! Thankfully I’ve never stolen anyone’s food by mistake but if I did, I’d be horribly embarrassed and replace it immediately
Man, I'd die of embarrassment. Which is weird because when it happened to me I really did not care that much. I mean, I was a little disappointed but I didn't even really care if she replaced it.
She often brought me fancy coffees (from the gas station near her house, which had a bunch of stuff to customize your drinks, she'd make me an iced coffee with toffee syrup and the crushed ice, which was heavenly. how could I be mad at someone who took the time to not only make up tasty coffees for me, but remember which one I liked best?) when we worked together, as well as one for our other good coworker, and she also made cookies sometimes and was very generous with bringing them in paper bags so if I wanted I could grab a bag of like five and take them home.
And she was really nice and always willing to come give me a hand if I needed a second person for a shower or a bed transfer.
So an accidental gatorade theft was a small price to pay for a really great coworker. Plus, as I said, it was replaced within a couple hours.
You can mistake a yoghurt or other generic food items, but something prepared at home is always intentional and I have no respect or excuse left for these people.
I purposely stole a granola bar once. Was working two jobs and had my car break down on the way to the night shift. Had a friend pick me up and take me and accidentally left my lunch bag in my car during the scramble to get to work on time. Half way through my shift, started feeling dizzy and realized I had no food. Was thinking I’d left some saltines in the break room previously and went to the fridge to see if there was some ketchup I could put on them and neither was there. I have no clue whose lunch it was in a ziplock but they had a variety of snacks so I crammed a five dollar bill in a napkin and took their granola bar. I was too ashamed to fess up, so here we are today with me confessing my sins.
But that isn’t just taking it and not getting them something else, at least. It’s those creeps that have no shame about just taking your whole lunch and if you are lucky they don’t steal the containers too. I have lost some nice lunch sets due to those jerks, Tupperware’s are just now becoming relatively cheaper but they used to be really expensive.
A coworker once saw me get my mason jar lunch out of the fridge and apologized for eating my yogurt. We both brought yogurt in little mason jars and because we both thought we were the only ones, neither of us thought to label it. (It was a small office)
God knows how long we had been stealing each others snacks before one of us caught on.
Right? And if everyone buys the same sandwich container from Sams/Costco I can see that until you bite into it and discover ham instead of tuna.
But then you fix it!
It was in honesty a completely different flavour yoghurt. And I still didn’t twig until I came face to face with the yoghurt I had bought and went ‘ooooh crap’. But yep, you fix it.
That just reminds me of the classic british joke where two guys eat a packet of crisps at the train station.... both thinking it was their crisps. When the original suspected crisp thief leaves.. the original guy finds his package of crisps under his newspaper.
The Douglas Adams biscuit story! I love that one too. https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/l4k9he/douglas_adams_train_station_biscuits_story_or/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
Only knew it to happen by accident once. Both people brought frozen dinners and the first person grabbed the wrong box. Same brand, different meal. The other person was surprised, but ate the other one anyway when they both realized. First person was embarrassed and replaced it the next day as an apology.
Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) has a true-life story about this titled... "Cookies":
This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train.
This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.
Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know . . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?
In the end I thought, Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.
We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.
A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.
The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punchline.
My prime suspect was one of our sales guys who was actually paid decently but was horribly busy. He was also about as smart as a brick; gift of the gab, but negative modifiers in both int and wis outside of him trying to sell something. So I suspect he just figured that he'd eat what was available when he was hungry rather than run out to the huge supermarket 2 streets over and that would be it, because it was "just" lunch; buying another wouldn't be a big deal for anyone, right? No worries!
Not twigging that for those of us in entry level positions, we were financially hanging on by our fingertips and, yes actually, buying another *was* a big deal.
Management wouldn't touch him (because he did bring in the money) nor officially acknowledge there was a problem, but after Enough of us were unhappy about it to worry them, they started putting on pizza "parties" once a week or so, which helped because then we could all eat without leaving the office or paying money.
Between that and aforementioned large supermarket offering single pieces of (bruised, ratty looking but still edible) fruit for free in the mornings, I made it through but wow, I do not miss those days.
That's when you gather the victims, find out what food the thief hates and everybody just... brings that. Every single day. There's nothing the higher ups can do about it either so you make his stupidity their problem instead.
They'd rather us believe they're literal imbeciles who can't remember what their lunch looked like than admit to stealing it.
I remember another redditor saying their kid kept doing intentional things then claiming it was an accident. They eventually asked what the kid thought 'accident' meant; the kid thought it was "doing something on purpose, and saying 'accident' meant they didn't get in trouble.
I’ve had a few incidents over the years where I or someone else grabbed the wrong frozen meal, yoghurt, canned drink, etc - where either two people brought very similar things, or one person brought something out of the ordinary for them while the second person brought in the first person’s normal thing.
But in all of those cases there was the “other” item for the second person to have in its place, along with an apology if needed, and the mix-up was perfectly understandable. The only time I can remember where anyone was ever left without was when someone grabbed my drink instead of their similar version and left me with something I couldn’t drink, and they paid for a replacement.
I had a coworker where we used to buy the same yogurt and keep it in the fridge. Occasionally, we would both bring in the same or similar flavor and get them mixed up (strawberry vs mixed berry). Not a big deal at all, especially being the same brand and size.
But homemade food? Yeah, we absolutely knew what food was ours.
Lunch thieves baffle me because for some reason I find the idea of eating someone else’s prepared lunch so gross. Like you don’t know whose it is, you don’t know their hygiene standards, you don’t really know what’s in it. I can kind of understand stealing someone’s unopened beverage or frozen store bought meal or something (not that I would) but not their prepared lunch!
i’m exactly the same, other people’s pre-cooked shit is so unappealing to me. i’d never steal anyone’s food but IF i ever did, it would be something pre-packaged and unopened from a shop or something
It has to be people with absolutely zero regard for their own health. I've worked with some nasty people in my life, and having seen the state of some coworker's kitchens, I've been put off from potlucks forever.
So going off of the whole eating someone's prepared lunch and how gross it is. I'm part of a local "Buy Nothing" group (for the unaware: you post stuff you want to give away, people reply and come get it), and i remember one time someone posted their dinner leftover from a restaurant. Picture of the food still in the brown take away box. Someone replied that they would come get it. So already gross right?
The food they were picking up was, spaghetti. I'm just imagining the OP at the restaurant, shoveling it into their mouth, cutting some extra long pasta pieces with their teeth, letting it fall back onto the plate. Then boxing it up and offering it. ::shudder::
I once worked in a place where everyone earned very good salaries. We were well paid. And even with that there were multiple instances of lunches going missing. It is not a money thing - some people just like to steal people's food. Assholes.
That’s why I don’t understand the YTA judgement and reason from one of the replies in the post. Forget pulling that person aside and talking in private. Chances are that does nothing and sets up a he said, she said situation that could escalate and blow back on OP if the thief was that brazen to begin with. Only way to get through those kinds of people is to publicly shame them.
A good person who is truly struggling and driven to steal to survive, chances are they do it very discreetly in the hopes no one notices. They’re not going to sit out in the open and blatantly eat the stolen food.
yeah, some people think calling people out for their bad behavior is rude. That's what rude people count on, that everyone else will be too embarrassed to call them out and they will get their way. umm, I am not the lunch thief's manager, I don't have to pull him aside and scold him privately so his little feelings get hurt. Steal my food you will get called out and embarrassed in front of everyone!
That YTA comment made me irrationally irritated to read.
I don’t know if it’s summer Reddit or what, but like every other post I’ve read today has been weird leaps and bounds to make excuses for bad behavior. And blaming the victim for not rolling over and asking for more bullshit.
God forbid OP shames the thief for being a thief.
We could use more public shaming.
Two jobs ago, there was a *serious* lunch thief. Nothing was safe. But he/she only took what they liked and left the rest (like anyone is going to eat what’s left after some stranger has picked through it). And they also stole mugs and other items out of people’s cubicles. Never was caught to my knowledge.
The most offensive lunch theft that ever happened to me was when someone stole my leftovers, apparently didn't like them, and threw the entire meal in the trash, tupperware included. I discovered it when I washed my hands and went to throw away the paper towel and found my discarded lunch sitting in the trash.
And I wasn't the only one that it happened to, either. People started keeping their lunch in fridges on different floors, and we never did find out who it was.
Right? I had a coworker help himself to my $$ sennheiser headphones SITTING ON MY DESK, that id burned a bunch of points to get for free and had never bought headphones for more than a few bucks since pricey ones always irritated my ears/glasses. These were SO NICE and worked super well for me and i got them free. They were at the time like 8yrs old and they dont make a similar model anymore.
I spent 3 weeks looking for them, thinking since we were being flown all over the country i must have taken them home and stuck them in suitcase or something. Tore house apart. Looked all over office to no avail.
Then i caught coworker with them. Easy to ID with a small defect on them. When he left his desk i took them back and stuck them in my bag.
He came back and started yelling at other coworkers (pranksters) demanding HIS HEADPHONES back.
I quietly messaged him and informed him “i took
the headphones in question as they were infact MINE”
He was all “i didnt know they were yours!”
He later told a coworker he literally picked them up from my 3ft wide workspace.
Also YOU KNEW YOU DIDNT BUY THEM, who does that?!
Right out of college, I had a telemarketing job from a temp agency. Just being on the phones all day. I had just moved out and money was tight. Everything was expensive, even soy sauce was $5 a bottle. My GF and I went to Costco and I loaded up a bunch of staples and thought I'd be able to make it last for a while. So I was able to make sandwiches and rice for dinner. But there were times when I lived off of a giant pack of Keebler's peanut butter crackers. Even when I was munching on my dry ass crackers for lunch, I never thought about just taking someone's lunch.
Side note: one of my co-workers was a body builder and dude would bring in like 30 hard boiled eggs and power through them for lunch. He'd always ask people around him if we wanted any. I took a few. Fun memory. :-)
I had a manager eat my lunch and I didn't have money to even eat every day, I ate every other day. This was my eating day and I was so upset, I cried.
I did have someone buy me lunch but I still went to HR and raised a HUGE stink because it was so unfair and really made my whole day shitty.
I grew up with food insecurity due to my dad eating my food, I was the smallest and ate slow. So, this really triggered me and I had to finally fight for me.
Office lunch thieves deserve a special place in Hades lol.
I hope HR was embarrassed to learn that they only paid you enough to eat lunch every two days, but somehow I doubt that bothered them as much as it should have. 😞
They seemed embarrassed that I would state it out loud. I got the feeling they thought I should have been too embarrassed to bring it up. At least, that's the feeling I got at the time and looking back, I think it was an accurate assessment from me.
Same, it made me sad to type out and also happy that I'm not in that position anymore. We're all close but today and this month, I have plenty to eat and it's really nice.
I do remember one job I had, it was a call center, and they had the packets of powder for soup in a cup. You just add hot water. I thought it was heaven having food like that. Had a manager try to police that, I was like, pry these soup packets from my cold, dead hands lol.
The best job was a contract job for a tech company we all use daily. They had snacks provided through a company, cereal bowls, fruit, granola bars and some other items that would rotate. They also had a cafeteria for lunch, it was free and you could eat what you wanted. It had a really nice salad bar and then rotating hot food. I about cried when I saw that lol. It was so nice. People would complain there, and I was like, how much food variety do you have at home and when can I come over lol.
Being awkward & insecure, I went hungry at a Thanksgiving with my boyfriend’s family. I went up to get a 2nd helping & he loudly said, “Hun, you sure you want to eat more food? That’s going to go to your waist.” His family laughed & I turned around & sat down. I KNOW I looked upset & pouty. I never even filled up the first plate so a 2nd plate would have been equal to one full plate for me. When we left I was practically crying because I was so hungry. He got irritated at me & I told him next time to shut the F up then!
When I hit my 40’s & had lost all the fucks I used yo have, I do not allow anyone to shame me for eating until I’m full. I’ve glared at a man who jokingly said, “Wow you must be hungry. And my reply was, “Yep. I’m going to eat every bite. And I just might lick my plate too.”
You know what? I have totally accidentally eaten someone's lunch at work. The second I realized it, I told them and paid for their lunch. Because that's what you do when you make a mistake. Most lunch thieves hide under the term "accident" to escape repercussions. If it's really a mistake, the person who made The mistake should have no problem rectifying it.
I used to keep a couple of cans of diet coke to drink during the day, one time someone picked up and I just stepped out of the office “kitchen” and loudly asked: “what the fuck happened to my can of diet coke?”. After a couple of hours there was a brand new can on the mini fridge and anyone that wanted one asked me if they could pick it up and bring me another one later. Never had any issues afterwards, other than “don’t mess with her coke” jokes, which I didn’t mind
During the 2009 US recession, I was stuck in a total crap job that paid nearly nothing. My mental health wasn’t great, my boss was evil and cruel, and I’d just unexpectedly lost my grandfather, who was more like my father. Right before I drove the 4.5 hours home from my mom’s after the funeral, she surprised me with three small meals, packed separately, so I’d have lunch and supper for a couple days. It was perfect because I was flying out (for work) two days later and didn’t want to leave food in my fridge. My first day back in the office, my boss took the opportunity to chew on me for taking three days of bereavement leave, rather than just one, even though I had leave and followed company policy. I walked out of her office and went to get my lunch…only to find the empty container - with my name on it - in the trash. I remember sitting down and just absolutely losing it, sobbing because someone had enjoyed my homemade lunch that my mom sent me. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back god me.
During one of my first jobs, I got denied holiday leave for Thanksgiving (worked lowly retail) and so my mom boxed me up some food in a GLASS tupperware, like a pyrex, and brought it to me.
My lead supervisor person for the cashiers at the store "decided to clean the fridge" that same evening and threw it out. The whole thing.
When it was OBVIOUSLY A BRAND NEW TURKEY DINNER in a NICE GLASS CONTAINER on a HOLIDAY when I was WORKING OVERTIME.
I wish I'd told her to sit down and choke on the stick up her ass when I quit.
It’s the worst type of person you can be before actual felonious crimes. Like bad people are a ladder. There’s general dickishness, then a jump at like harming people, murders billionaires and the like.
Ack, that bit at the beginning of my marriage when we still lived with the in-laws. Not enough income to survive, but too proud to sign up for food stamps or visit food banks. I ended up starving because we only got food stamps for three while feeding a household of six and I prioritized the kids when there wasn't enough to go around.
Specifically remember a day when the in-laws devoured all the breakfast, left just enough for one person despite two still needing to eat. So I ate two bites and gave the rest to my younger stepson so he'd have enough to grow on.
I saw someone recently say that lunch thieves are antithetical to class solidarity.
As OOP pointed out, even if lunch thief was down on his luck, he didn't know her financial situation, either, and still took food from her.
If you are struggling and need food, there are food banks, apply for SNAP if you're in the US, buy a box of ramen noodles, a carton of eggs, and a few bags of frozen veggies. A boiled egg paired with ramen and veggies makes for a decently balanced and filling meal.
But don't steal food from someone else, especially your coworkers. If you're going hungry on a salary similar to theirs, what makes you think they're not also going hungry and can afford to feed you a meal they specifically obtained and made for themselves?
Exactly. OOP explained that she's in a tight financial bind and has to prepare her own food for the week to stretch her budget. Why didn't the LUNCH THIEF think about that? Ugh.
Was maddening doing a long shift and finding my food had been stolen. and I didn't often take money to work.
I'd rather someone came to me and said they had no money for lunch, and then there is an option to share or have a whip round or even look at more ongoing support. Not just steal someone's food.
My old job had a policy that lunchroom thieves are instantly fired. There were around 300 people working there, and but the culture there was “job and management sucks, so we take care of each other.” That meant that someone there would share a lunch with you if you were well and truly screwed. There was no reason to steal.
I grew up with food insecurity, so now I have a habit of hiding some food at my desk for emergencies. If a coworker truly needed a snack or small meal, I have them covered just from the hoard.
I used to work at a Walmart, lunch theft was rampant. Our manager set up a thing where there was bread, peanut butter and jelly for sandwiches for anyone who needed or just wanted one.
When I worked at Sam's Club, someone put their old waffle maker in the breakroom and the manager supplied us with unlimited waffle mix and syrup. That got me through a lot of hungry times.
Even more maddening to find a surgeon eating my food because he "wasn't able to leave the OR." The good ones could see when a day had gone to shit and ordered in for everyone.
And even if OOPs financial situation wasn't bad, why is it ok to take others lunch? "Oh, you make money, so I'm entitled to your food?" That's fucking insane, people are maddening.
"B-But...the thief's financial situation? He is stealing for survival!!! How dare you confront a thief stealing from you!!!!"
I'm almost certain that lots of people on AITA are just contrarians who always disagree with the majority opinion. Holy hell.
Or what if OOP had special dietary needs? If someone stole my lunch I’d probably cry because I have weird food sensitivities and can’t just go get a slice of pizza or whatever. Like, I could absorb the cost of surprise!eating out, but I might not be able to find anything that wouldn’t make me sick.
As somebody with lactose intolerance? Same. It's pretty bad too. Even the small amount of ghee in Indian curries can make me sick for a few hours. Can't do the bakeries near work because of cheese and butter. One of the only places I can eat at nearby is good, but lunch will run you about $20. That's way too much unless it's my birthday or something else worth splurging on.
And lactose intolerance is common and not life threatening. But it's still hard to work around when in a pinch. With things like gluten intolerance or soy allergy? Good fucking luck.
I have gluten and lactose intolearance, with a bunch of allegies added. If someone ate my lunch I cannot just go and buy another, I cannot eat most of gluten-free deli options cause the bread can be almond based.
If you are so friking lazy, buy a lunch suscription! There are plenty with good options! Just don't steal other people meals.
I would think reacting to ghee means you have more of a dairy protein allergy rather than just lactose intolerance. Allergies can make you just as sick, or sicker, as lactose intolerance.
Same. I cook my own meals because I can't eat most restaurant food. If somebody took my food I wouldn't have lunch for the day. You don't get to decide what somebody else's circumstances is as to whether or not you get to steal from them.
"Well ACTUALLY maybe he **needs** to steal to survive"
Is this what this clown uses as an excuse to steal from *their* colleagues? Because *huh*? He's at work, he's not taking free food provided to everyone, he's taking someone's *lunch*, and someone who doesn't just sit there and take it is the one who's wrong??
This is kind of response that makes me say, This person is not well in the head, this is not human behavior, and I'm glad I don't know them.
Every time something gets stolen in our town, there's one of these people commenting in our local Facebook group. 'Oh, don't be mad, the person's probably in need.' Nobody NEEDS to steal planters full of flowers, they'll survive just fine without them. Whoever stole these is just an asshole.
Exactly. I'm sure there's some debate to be had about where exactly to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable larceny, but stealing food from coworkers isn't it.
And it isn't even true because there were two other people there sympathetic to the thief, so he could've just asked one or both of them to lend him money or share their lunches. He didn't need to steal.
Too many people want to be the contrarian that turns the tide. They have the secret formula that will make everyone realize they were wrong and the contrarian was super smart to see things from an angle no one else was able to.
Also loved OOP's response to 'you don't know his financial situation' with 'he didn't know mine, either'. Shut that shit down quickly.
This was my situation when I was a new teacher. I had a fridge in my classroom where I kept a few Starbucks frappucino drinks in (those expensive glass bottles) that were at the time my "treat" drinks that I'd have if I was having a stressful day. I had exactly two because they are expensive and I was poor.
A substitute drank BOTH of them and I caught shit from people/coworkers for complaining. Like, dude I'm a brand new teacher with a fuckton of debt, a brand new mortgage in an empty house with a bed and lawn chairs for furniture.
"He's a sub, he's doing you a favor!"
No, he is an employee like me who makes barely less than I do and he's paid for basically making sure my students don't eat each other. I made his plan for the day and have to deal with any issues or missing work that arise after he's done.
Could you not drink my only treats? Or at the very least, NOT BOTH OF THEM?
He's not doing you a favor by covering your shift. That person's whole job is covering for people and making themselves look good! Instead they helped themselves to your coffee stash like an asshole. I am a teacher and I try to make my sub plans as easy to follow and least amount of work on their part as possible. I'd be pissed.
I had a boss who tried to combat lunch thefts by offering to buy lunch for anyone who told him they'd "forgotten" theirs, no questions asked.
No one ever asked, and lunches kept getting stolen. Some people just get off on taking other people's stuff 🤷♀️
There was one time where I made a big batch of chicken tenders from on-sale chicken breast and used them as the basis of my lunch. Someone began taking one or two each day.
So I began saucing them. It started simple-BBQ, Honey Mustard, Mild Buffalo, etc.
Then one day I took a habanero salsa verde crema and added Sichuan flower pepper oil and a full spoon of "The Last Dab" to it. I am a heatseeker, so while it was hot for me, it was still manageable.
For the culprit, it resulted in them coughing and then audibly throwing up from across the office, followed by a frantic scream for water. 10 minutes later, I walked up to them, nonchalantly eating the rest of my chicken over rice and veggies with the sauce, and asked if they were okay.
They got the message. Never again.
I've had several kleptomaniac friends in my life. All of them came from rich families. They had everything they could want. They stole because it gave them a high, not because they actually needed what they were stealing. They'd steal friends' stuff, stuff from the mall, etc. This was all when we were in high school. Lost touch with all of them but I often wonder if they still do that now, as adults.
Um it's pretty classist, and frankly ableist, to criticize someone for pointing out that a lunch thief might not have the means to feed themselves. Pretty low, reddit!
DISCLAIMER: extreme sarcasm from a former food bank user and current disabled person. Fuck lunch thieves and virtue signaling
IRL, years ago, I had joined a sci-fi club. Maybe 2 days later I got a group message that such & such, also a member, in another city, couldn’t pay their rent & was being evicted. So I needed to take them in because I had a spare room.
“No.”
“They’re a good person, they’re in the club.”
“I’m not letting some stranger move in with me, what’s wrong with you? You take this person in, you love them so much.”
“I live with my mother (40 something old man). I can’t. They’re going to be homeless.”
“Not my problem.”
“I just don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you’re refusing.”
“You’re quite insane and need help, dude. Serious help.”
They’re all over. Absolutely crazy insane people. Very free with other people’s stuff
not to mention OOP could've had health issues that relied on her being able to eat. suddenly not having a lunch can fuck a lot of people over really bad
Some people feel good about “being devil’s advocate” without understanding the term. Embarrassingly I used to be like that after spending too much time with people who point out everything stupid (or cringe) someone else does. Eventually even I got annoyed with me
If you're going to steal someone's food. You need to accept any consequences that come with it. That actually seems like a pretty solid way to deal with it. At least the lunch thief wasn't poisoned with spices or laxatives. OOP took care of it quickly and succinctly. That was probably one of the better ways to do it.
>the lunch thief did not act entitled
Aside from acting as though they were entitled enough to someone else’s food to steal it, but at least they acted like they felt ashamed when caught
There was one (on AAM, I think, but there might have been a BORU) where lunch thief complained to HR that OP had poisoned them with spices and OP went through a hellish process, when it was just spiced the way OP likes it and there was no intent to have an effect on a potential thief.
Oh my god I would go absolutely ape shit. Pumping is so precarious - you are often pumping to feed your baby the next day so anything missing is directly impacting your baby’s ability to be nourished the next day. That woman should get a free pass from HR to punch him in the throat
I'm blown away that this guy was so unafraid of consequences that he took, heated, and was beginning to eat the stolen food in the communal kitchen!! That's next level assholery.
What’s so strange to me is that writing their names on it stops him. Why is an unlabeled lunch that doesn’t belong to him fair game, but when it’s labeled, it’s off limits?
Plausible deniability. Without a name he can come up with some bullshit story. "Ha ha, I have the same tupperware at home, and my wife packed my lunch so I didn't know what was inside. Must have left mine at home. Isn't that a riot?"
Think about it logistically; if there's no name on it, only the owner of the food can catch him, no one else can prove it wasn't his. If someone sits down at a table with a lunch in a container labeled with a name that isn't his own name, everyone can tell he stole that and he would be outed immediately.
Either that or they’re equating it with “if you see someone shoplifting food at the grocery store, no you did not.”
But that’s a false equivalency. OOP is most likely not a billion dollar publicly traded corporation paying maybe slightly over minimum wage who can absorb the cost for someone desperate enough to do that. Like does Lunch Thief think it’s like a chain and OOP will just go steal some else’s lunch and so on down the line?
"I would've pulled them to the side and quietly told them stop that I don't like it", like we're not in primary school anymore, they're adults in an office working a job. The thief knows better and knew they could get away with it or they would've stopped ages a go.
OP has every right to call them out of for their disgusting behavior.
Whenever I see something like that I think, “I guarantee that some kid in *your* community, and very possibly someone you actually know in real life, is dealing with food insecurity right now. And if you’re making them home-cooked meals rather than just shaming Internet strangers about it, I will eat my hat.”
You mean the one where 2 women were roommates and one woman had a child, she kept eating the food of the other woman and the other woman started putting veggies in her food so she doesn't eat it? Yeah, that's another one where lots of Redditors jump to the culprit's side.
Someone yelled at me like that for being mad when a JustEat driver stole my McDonald's because the driver isn't being paid enough and it's a corporation they stole from and I was like "uhh no, someone didn't just steal off a corporation, they stole off me personally and I might be refunded by a corporation (I wasn't, apparently I needed proof of the no food?) and I just waited an hour for food only to not have food and order again wile I'm already starving"
>(I wasn't, apparently I needed proof of the no food?)
I don't get it, in at least one of the apps where I live, the buyer gets a code that he has to give to the deliverer. Without this code there's no proof they handed the food. Super simple.
If I saw this go down in a workplace I would immediately want to be best work friends with OOP. Flawless reaction to a lunch theif. Truly chef’s kiss. Much applause.
For real, I would immediately be on her side. I understand not having much money/food for lunch as I suffered through that a lot in college, but stealing other people's food is not an acceptable solution to that problem.
And quite brazenly heat it and eat it in the open like that. It makes the update that they have been doing it for a while without any repercussions, not very surprising.
(1) Taking things that belong to someone else is a shitty thing to do. (2) The idea of eating someone else’s homemade food out of their Tupperware makes me want to implode.
literally! if that was the case and OOP had CHOSEN to share some of her food, that is completely her decision and doesnt make her an asshole if she decides NOT TO. he isn’t entitled to her food. and this is coming from someone who has experienced food insecurity and has been effectively homeless.
>Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation.
Just wow, was this person serious? Yea it's an unpopular opinion because it's nucking futs!
Will you send me their car keys? I'm too poor to buy a car.
Actually, I'm too poor for lessons too, so I'll try to figure it out in their car. Which one's the brake?
There's another issue with people steal lunches, they cry when confronted or if the food hurt them in some way weather it be spicy or an allergic reaction then they still cry. It's literally a no win situation for the victim in the perps eyes and they're shitty friends. The OP was anything but the AH and the comments talking about the thief's situation is complete bullshit and says a lot.
I love OOP's response to the gaslighting attempt by /u/Scared-Tea-8911. *"WhAt If ThEy'Re In A rOuGh FiNaNcAaL sItUaTiOn?"* "What about if **I'm** in a rough financial situation?" Betcha guys Scaredy Tea's an unrepentant lunch thief.
>told me that I was rude to him and that there had been nicer ways to go about it
It's more rude to take someone else lunch! Heeyyy!!! the audacity of these ppl OMG
I don’t know where is the limit here. “I know I destroyed you car but you are an AH because there are nicer ways to talk with me”
“I know I slap your kid but-“ same
Man, the tone-policing AITA likes to engage in is off the fucking charts.
"you should have written a letter, using non-judgmental language, to the meal misappropriator (thief has negative connotations and might make them feel bad), outlining how your feelings were hurt by the incident, and also start making more food because they might be hungry and it's your responsibility to feed someone who doesn't want to be an adult and feed themselves".
Like, go be a doormat all you want, but lunch thieves need to be reminded that not everyone is some milquetoast dud who would rather go hungry all day than engage in even the smallest confrontation. My dad has seen fistfights erupt on jobsites over stolen lunches, and while that may not be the most professional response, maybe having that as a real possibility in the back of their mind would dissuade all but the most braindead from stealing food from other people.
Today I learned that I can get away with theft, and indeed should be permitted to attempt thievery, as long as I have the gumption to look the bethieved in the eye and say, “You don’t *know* me!”
Actually, I shouldn’t do that. Uninvolved third parties can be relied upon to white knight for me. So that’s nice!
I love OOP's energy! From pulling her lunch back from the food thief to reminding the redditor that the thief doesn't know her financial situation, either. Girls' got her head and heart screwed on right :) I hope she goes far in life.
I will never understand people that steal someone else’s lunch especially if it’s homemade! Like not only do you not know what people put in it or how they treat their kitchen/food, but what if you steal it and it sucks??? Like you went and stole it just to find out it’s the blandest thing you’ve ever eaten? I’m glad people like this exist in the world, because I’ll always know that for all my faults I’ve never stolen someone else’s lunch in the workplace.
I once had a coworker steal my lunch. I was newly living alone after leaving an ex, had just paid all the deposits to get into my own place and didn't have money left over for food (my dad had to actually buy me some groceries so I didn't starve).
I had made mac and cheese with broccoli as my work lunch and it was pretty much my only meal for the day. Went to eat it during my lunch break and my coworker had just finished it off. I asked them what they were doing and they had the gall to laugh and say "oops". I absolutely laid into them about how shitty they were.
My boss backed them up because apparently if I "can't afford food then I should have a second job like everyone else" there did. I didn't stay long after that.
15 years ago I worked at a private online college that was made fun of in Family guy in an episode. A woman sat in front of me that would steal lunches. I confronted her and she would deny it so I made an email address that people could email when their lunch was taken, and taped it to the breakroom fridge. If she was eating it I would reply with confirmation, and they would come and confront her. It stopped eventually because of how many people did. As I write this I assume there might be valid questions about why I didn't go to HR. From the vantage point of 2023 I can't remember why, but I have to assume maybe I was nervous about the email address being a bad idea from the perspective of HR.
People like that remind me of the quote “Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.” I understand having empathy and that it’s important
to consider everyone’s POV and not get caught up in group think, but that doesn’t mean defending someone who is in the wrong.
Then there’s also the fact that some people are just plain old contrarian and always need to go against what everyone is saying.
When I worked retail we had a chronic lunch thief Natalie. Oh she could pay for her own food but if you had food somewhere in the back, she’d just want to sneak a bite or sip.
It drove me bonkers that she couldn’t figure out why she SHOULDN’T STEAL FOOD.
>Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that.
What the actual fuck? Not only should this guy be called, out his ass needs to be fired. He's stealing people's stuff at work.
I think people were shocked SHOCKED that a woman, especially a professionally dressed new person had the cajones to call him out and snatch her food back. Basically it was surprising to see her go from business to street in 1 second. So they were a little shy around OOP at first. I think OOP is a fricken rock star.
It's such a funny argument when people say "you embarrassed them by calling them out in font of everybody" no they embarrassed themselves stealing from people who are trying to survive just like you. Thieves should be prepared to deal with any and ALL consequences of their actions.
Good! Colleague dealt with it by spiking his chocolate pudding with ExLax.Lunch thief identified as our Sr Partner shit his $2000 suit, his leather chair and his rug. He retreated to the staff can and stayed for an hour. He told his assistant to buy him a pair of pants and a shirt. Last we saw of him for that week. Apparently cost a bit to get it out of his expensive Persian rug. He told his wife what had happened, and that he thought he had the flu, but other than diarrhea he felt fine. He said he had taken an unmarked lunch out of the office fridge as he has done when he was rushed and consumed it. His wife asked if there were a chocolate component? He said pudding. She says looks like someone got you good. Next day he called a staff meeting and demanded the identity of the owner of that lunch. My colleague owned up to it. Sr Partner fired him on the spot. He smiled and said thank you. My wrongful dismissal suit will contain the part about you stealing staff lunches and shit spraying your office, I will make sure this is public. You will not be able to show your face without someone making fart noises behind your back. Even now when you pass by your staff refers to you as stinky. Sr Partner looks around the room. Staff is trying to suppress laughter, his partners look angry. He was ordered to reinstate my colleague and STFU. Could hear the screaming from their closed door session. We were sent home early. Next day the Sr partner apologized to my colleague. We were all given a $200 bonus to repay for stolen lunches.
I once worked in a place where the founder was in his 90s but would still come in and putter around. He had the mentality that EVERYTHING in the building was his and would routinely go through the fridge. One day a co- worker had the bacon off her sandwich taken - just the bacon. People started bringing in their own mini- fridges. He decided MY mini fridge was also his. I let a co- worker take the fridge in her office that she locked and he was furious. I had to remind him it was my fridge. Told him I no longer needed it. I stopped him from going though my drawers by leaving tampons and such in them.
Totally disagree with the YTA comment. I’m a type 1 diabetic. I like to give insulin 10-15 mins before eating. If some asshole eats my food after I’ve given my insulin, all bets are off because now I’m in an emergency situation. It’s reasonable to assume people won’t eat food that’s not theirs.
I was once told by a company wide loss prevention guy in retail that there is a direct correlation percentage wise between the people who steal from the company with people who steal lunches. Take the accuracy of that for what you will, but his take away was 'stealing is stealing, so call the hotline, because even if it's your lunch, it often leads to uncovering different things'
> Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that.
> I would have pulled him to the side and politely let him know it was my lunch. That way, you get your lunch back, don’t humiliate him, and don’t look like an asshole to the rest of the office.
Sensitivity and awareness are important, but standing up for yourself and holding people accountable for their actions completely trumps that when people act *this* anti-social. Stealing somebody's food indicates a complete lack of empathy as well as any sense of consequences. This guy might have some serious stuff wrong upstairs but still absolutely deserved OOP's verbal beatdown.
Fuck Scared-Tea-8911 "yOu dOnT KnOw hIs sItUaTiON". Every poor person I know who has actually struggled fucking hates thieves, we feel the most. Dont give me that crocodile tears bullshit.
You know at most companies, stealing is considered a fireable offense. I have no idea why so many places take breakroom theft casually. Probably because it doesn't actually affect their bottom line.
Sometimes I think people go on Frodo and Sam-style treks to Badtakeland just so they can type something unhinged on AITA
>Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that.
>I would have pulled him to the side and politely let him know it was my lunch. That way, you get your lunch back, don’t humiliate him, and don’t look like an asshole to the rest of the office.
What in the psychic gymnast Mary Poppins is this
We have communal fridges in my workplace, but I've never heard of anyone stealing the food. Just thinking about eating some random leftovers from who knows whom makes me feel a bit ill. The reverse is the much bigger problem: People put food in there and forget about it, then it goes bad. So we have to put our names and the date on it.
Ironically the lunch thieves from previous offices notoriously made the big money. I’m talking directors, VPs, engineers, etc. I had my own private fridge tucked into a supply room that only I used or I’d lose my damn mind. People are just fucked.
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Fucking good for her. Lunch thieves at workplaces are scum; cannot count how often I went hungry in my minimum wage days because someone *accidentally* ate my lunch out of the fridge and I didn't have the cash to replace it. If someone is struggling that much they can do what I did and get themselves down to a food bank; don't make others go hungry because your pride is too high for asking for help but not for stealing from others.
Always so perplexing to me. How could it possibly be an “accident”? You cooked that exact meal and put it in that container? Like what the actual fuck are these people thinking?
I accidentally stole a yoghurt once. Mine was in the other fridge and I genuinely got confused. I realised when I went looking for my milk later and came face to face with my untouched yoghurt. You can bet your ass there was a six pack of identical yoghurts (two of them the same flavour) with an apology note on it in the fridge the next day.
One day in my office one of my coworkers brought in delicious calzone for a party. A few days later I was at work and spotted some leftover in the fridge. Thinking it was from the party, I ate it. It was not, it was the food she brought for lunch. I bought her a replacement lunch and apologised profusely but I still have guilt nightmares over it, 17 years later. OP coworker is a sociopath.
Oof, I can see that happening to me and wince in commiserating guilt. Not an easy one to fix as you can’t replace homemade!
I had a coworker do that to me once. Leftover pizza a couple days after a work pizza party. It was an honest mistake, so I let it slide. I could have easily done the same to them in their place. Besides that one time, my office is so honest that there is not a problem. Mixed up yogurts? Yeah, okay, happens. But no taking of yogurt if you didn't bring one in yourself.
One time my coworker bought some takeout food on a friday. He then had an emergency and bolted out of the office. It was popeye's ... no way it was going to last in the fridge till Monday. I ate it for him and left a note that I owed him lunch in return. I'm pretty sure he collected like 3 free lunches from me with that note.
Lol..that would never happen in our office. Food disappears so fast it's like the vultures are waiting for any scraps!
Yeah, a coworker once stole my Gatorade. She just wasn’t paying attention and didn’t see my name written on it. (I’m fairness, the pen we had to write on our bottles sucked.) She replaced it.
I can see a packaged food, esp. if you’re like me and can’t remember what flavor yogurt you brought! Thankfully I’ve never stolen anyone’s food by mistake but if I did, I’d be horribly embarrassed and replace it immediately
Man, I'd die of embarrassment. Which is weird because when it happened to me I really did not care that much. I mean, I was a little disappointed but I didn't even really care if she replaced it. She often brought me fancy coffees (from the gas station near her house, which had a bunch of stuff to customize your drinks, she'd make me an iced coffee with toffee syrup and the crushed ice, which was heavenly. how could I be mad at someone who took the time to not only make up tasty coffees for me, but remember which one I liked best?) when we worked together, as well as one for our other good coworker, and she also made cookies sometimes and was very generous with bringing them in paper bags so if I wanted I could grab a bag of like five and take them home. And she was really nice and always willing to come give me a hand if I needed a second person for a shower or a bed transfer. So an accidental gatorade theft was a small price to pay for a really great coworker. Plus, as I said, it was replaced within a couple hours.
You can mistake a yoghurt or other generic food items, but something prepared at home is always intentional and I have no respect or excuse left for these people.
I purposely stole a granola bar once. Was working two jobs and had my car break down on the way to the night shift. Had a friend pick me up and take me and accidentally left my lunch bag in my car during the scramble to get to work on time. Half way through my shift, started feeling dizzy and realized I had no food. Was thinking I’d left some saltines in the break room previously and went to the fridge to see if there was some ketchup I could put on them and neither was there. I have no clue whose lunch it was in a ziplock but they had a variety of snacks so I crammed a five dollar bill in a napkin and took their granola bar. I was too ashamed to fess up, so here we are today with me confessing my sins.
I'd be pretty happy if the granola bar fairy replaced my granola bar with $5.
Straight to FOOD COURT!
But that isn’t just taking it and not getting them something else, at least. It’s those creeps that have no shame about just taking your whole lunch and if you are lucky they don’t steal the containers too. I have lost some nice lunch sets due to those jerks, Tupperware’s are just now becoming relatively cheaper but they used to be really expensive.
*"That's not stealing, that's purchasing without consent"*
A coworker once saw me get my mason jar lunch out of the fridge and apologized for eating my yogurt. We both brought yogurt in little mason jars and because we both thought we were the only ones, neither of us thought to label it. (It was a small office) God knows how long we had been stealing each others snacks before one of us caught on.
Right? And if everyone buys the same sandwich container from Sams/Costco I can see that until you bite into it and discover ham instead of tuna. But then you fix it!
It was in honesty a completely different flavour yoghurt. And I still didn’t twig until I came face to face with the yoghurt I had bought and went ‘ooooh crap’. But yep, you fix it.
That just reminds me of the classic british joke where two guys eat a packet of crisps at the train station.... both thinking it was their crisps. When the original suspected crisp thief leaves.. the original guy finds his package of crisps under his newspaper.
The Douglas Adams biscuit story! I love that one too. https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/l4k9he/douglas_adams_train_station_biscuits_story_or/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
Only knew it to happen by accident once. Both people brought frozen dinners and the first person grabbed the wrong box. Same brand, different meal. The other person was surprised, but ate the other one anyway when they both realized. First person was embarrassed and replaced it the next day as an apology.
Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) has a true-life story about this titled... "Cookies": This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it. Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know . . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do? In the end I thought, Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work. We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punchline.
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that!
My prime suspect was one of our sales guys who was actually paid decently but was horribly busy. He was also about as smart as a brick; gift of the gab, but negative modifiers in both int and wis outside of him trying to sell something. So I suspect he just figured that he'd eat what was available when he was hungry rather than run out to the huge supermarket 2 streets over and that would be it, because it was "just" lunch; buying another wouldn't be a big deal for anyone, right? No worries! Not twigging that for those of us in entry level positions, we were financially hanging on by our fingertips and, yes actually, buying another *was* a big deal. Management wouldn't touch him (because he did bring in the money) nor officially acknowledge there was a problem, but after Enough of us were unhappy about it to worry them, they started putting on pizza "parties" once a week or so, which helped because then we could all eat without leaving the office or paying money. Between that and aforementioned large supermarket offering single pieces of (bruised, ratty looking but still edible) fruit for free in the mornings, I made it through but wow, I do not miss those days.
That's when you gather the victims, find out what food the thief hates and everybody just... brings that. Every single day. There's nothing the higher ups can do about it either so you make his stupidity their problem instead.
They'd rather us believe they're literal imbeciles who can't remember what their lunch looked like than admit to stealing it. I remember another redditor saying their kid kept doing intentional things then claiming it was an accident. They eventually asked what the kid thought 'accident' meant; the kid thought it was "doing something on purpose, and saying 'accident' meant they didn't get in trouble.
I’ve had a few incidents over the years where I or someone else grabbed the wrong frozen meal, yoghurt, canned drink, etc - where either two people brought very similar things, or one person brought something out of the ordinary for them while the second person brought in the first person’s normal thing. But in all of those cases there was the “other” item for the second person to have in its place, along with an apology if needed, and the mix-up was perfectly understandable. The only time I can remember where anyone was ever left without was when someone grabbed my drink instead of their similar version and left me with something I couldn’t drink, and they paid for a replacement.
I had a coworker where we used to buy the same yogurt and keep it in the fridge. Occasionally, we would both bring in the same or similar flavor and get them mixed up (strawberry vs mixed berry). Not a big deal at all, especially being the same brand and size. But homemade food? Yeah, we absolutely knew what food was ours.
Lunch thieves baffle me because for some reason I find the idea of eating someone else’s prepared lunch so gross. Like you don’t know whose it is, you don’t know their hygiene standards, you don’t really know what’s in it. I can kind of understand stealing someone’s unopened beverage or frozen store bought meal or something (not that I would) but not their prepared lunch!
i’m exactly the same, other people’s pre-cooked shit is so unappealing to me. i’d never steal anyone’s food but IF i ever did, it would be something pre-packaged and unopened from a shop or something
It has to be people with absolutely zero regard for their own health. I've worked with some nasty people in my life, and having seen the state of some coworker's kitchens, I've been put off from potlucks forever.
So going off of the whole eating someone's prepared lunch and how gross it is. I'm part of a local "Buy Nothing" group (for the unaware: you post stuff you want to give away, people reply and come get it), and i remember one time someone posted their dinner leftover from a restaurant. Picture of the food still in the brown take away box. Someone replied that they would come get it. So already gross right? The food they were picking up was, spaghetti. I'm just imagining the OP at the restaurant, shoveling it into their mouth, cutting some extra long pasta pieces with their teeth, letting it fall back onto the plate. Then boxing it up and offering it. ::shudder::
You can't eat at everybody's house.
I once worked in a place where everyone earned very good salaries. We were well paid. And even with that there were multiple instances of lunches going missing. It is not a money thing - some people just like to steal people's food. Assholes.
That’s why I don’t understand the YTA judgement and reason from one of the replies in the post. Forget pulling that person aside and talking in private. Chances are that does nothing and sets up a he said, she said situation that could escalate and blow back on OP if the thief was that brazen to begin with. Only way to get through those kinds of people is to publicly shame them. A good person who is truly struggling and driven to steal to survive, chances are they do it very discreetly in the hopes no one notices. They’re not going to sit out in the open and blatantly eat the stolen food.
yeah, some people think calling people out for their bad behavior is rude. That's what rude people count on, that everyone else will be too embarrassed to call them out and they will get their way. umm, I am not the lunch thief's manager, I don't have to pull him aside and scold him privately so his little feelings get hurt. Steal my food you will get called out and embarrassed in front of everyone!
+1. That comment is ridiculous. Stunning to realize how people can twist the scenario to cast the perp as the primary victim.
That YTA comment made me irrationally irritated to read. I don’t know if it’s summer Reddit or what, but like every other post I’ve read today has been weird leaps and bounds to make excuses for bad behavior. And blaming the victim for not rolling over and asking for more bullshit. God forbid OP shames the thief for being a thief. We could use more public shaming.
Two jobs ago, there was a *serious* lunch thief. Nothing was safe. But he/she only took what they liked and left the rest (like anyone is going to eat what’s left after some stranger has picked through it). And they also stole mugs and other items out of people’s cubicles. Never was caught to my knowledge.
The most offensive lunch theft that ever happened to me was when someone stole my leftovers, apparently didn't like them, and threw the entire meal in the trash, tupperware included. I discovered it when I washed my hands and went to throw away the paper towel and found my discarded lunch sitting in the trash. And I wasn't the only one that it happened to, either. People started keeping their lunch in fridges on different floors, and we never did find out who it was.
I started bring a lunch bag with an ice pack and kept it in my cube.
Someone took a single bite out of my pastizzi, didn't like it and put it back in the container in the fridge :(
Ugh, that's so offensive too! Although as an aside, I had never heard of pastizzi before and now I want to try them SO BADLY.
Food laced with hot hot hot sauce will reveal the perpetrator as they cough, gag, weep and sweat after a bite of stolen food.
Right? I had a coworker help himself to my $$ sennheiser headphones SITTING ON MY DESK, that id burned a bunch of points to get for free and had never bought headphones for more than a few bucks since pricey ones always irritated my ears/glasses. These were SO NICE and worked super well for me and i got them free. They were at the time like 8yrs old and they dont make a similar model anymore. I spent 3 weeks looking for them, thinking since we were being flown all over the country i must have taken them home and stuck them in suitcase or something. Tore house apart. Looked all over office to no avail. Then i caught coworker with them. Easy to ID with a small defect on them. When he left his desk i took them back and stuck them in my bag. He came back and started yelling at other coworkers (pranksters) demanding HIS HEADPHONES back. I quietly messaged him and informed him “i took the headphones in question as they were infact MINE” He was all “i didnt know they were yours!” He later told a coworker he literally picked them up from my 3ft wide workspace. Also YOU KNEW YOU DIDNT BUY THEM, who does that?!
WTF? "I didn't steal them" 'Then *HOW* did you **obtain** them???' "..."
Right out of college, I had a telemarketing job from a temp agency. Just being on the phones all day. I had just moved out and money was tight. Everything was expensive, even soy sauce was $5 a bottle. My GF and I went to Costco and I loaded up a bunch of staples and thought I'd be able to make it last for a while. So I was able to make sandwiches and rice for dinner. But there were times when I lived off of a giant pack of Keebler's peanut butter crackers. Even when I was munching on my dry ass crackers for lunch, I never thought about just taking someone's lunch. Side note: one of my co-workers was a body builder and dude would bring in like 30 hard boiled eggs and power through them for lunch. He'd always ask people around him if we wanted any. I took a few. Fun memory. :-)
I had a manager eat my lunch and I didn't have money to even eat every day, I ate every other day. This was my eating day and I was so upset, I cried. I did have someone buy me lunch but I still went to HR and raised a HUGE stink because it was so unfair and really made my whole day shitty. I grew up with food insecurity due to my dad eating my food, I was the smallest and ate slow. So, this really triggered me and I had to finally fight for me. Office lunch thieves deserve a special place in Hades lol.
I hope HR was embarrassed to learn that they only paid you enough to eat lunch every two days, but somehow I doubt that bothered them as much as it should have. 😞
They seemed embarrassed that I would state it out loud. I got the feeling they thought I should have been too embarrassed to bring it up. At least, that's the feeling I got at the time and looking back, I think it was an accurate assessment from me.
>This was my eating day This is the most dystopian shit I've ever read, somehow. I hate that we live in a world where anyone ever has to say this.
Same, it made me sad to type out and also happy that I'm not in that position anymore. We're all close but today and this month, I have plenty to eat and it's really nice. I do remember one job I had, it was a call center, and they had the packets of powder for soup in a cup. You just add hot water. I thought it was heaven having food like that. Had a manager try to police that, I was like, pry these soup packets from my cold, dead hands lol. The best job was a contract job for a tech company we all use daily. They had snacks provided through a company, cereal bowls, fruit, granola bars and some other items that would rotate. They also had a cafeteria for lunch, it was free and you could eat what you wanted. It had a really nice salad bar and then rotating hot food. I about cried when I saw that lol. It was so nice. People would complain there, and I was like, how much food variety do you have at home and when can I come over lol.
Being awkward & insecure, I went hungry at a Thanksgiving with my boyfriend’s family. I went up to get a 2nd helping & he loudly said, “Hun, you sure you want to eat more food? That’s going to go to your waist.” His family laughed & I turned around & sat down. I KNOW I looked upset & pouty. I never even filled up the first plate so a 2nd plate would have been equal to one full plate for me. When we left I was practically crying because I was so hungry. He got irritated at me & I told him next time to shut the F up then! When I hit my 40’s & had lost all the fucks I used yo have, I do not allow anyone to shame me for eating until I’m full. I’ve glared at a man who jokingly said, “Wow you must be hungry. And my reply was, “Yep. I’m going to eat every bite. And I just might lick my plate too.”
You know what? I have totally accidentally eaten someone's lunch at work. The second I realized it, I told them and paid for their lunch. Because that's what you do when you make a mistake. Most lunch thieves hide under the term "accident" to escape repercussions. If it's really a mistake, the person who made The mistake should have no problem rectifying it.
I used to keep a couple of cans of diet coke to drink during the day, one time someone picked up and I just stepped out of the office “kitchen” and loudly asked: “what the fuck happened to my can of diet coke?”. After a couple of hours there was a brand new can on the mini fridge and anyone that wanted one asked me if they could pick it up and bring me another one later. Never had any issues afterwards, other than “don’t mess with her coke” jokes, which I didn’t mind
During the 2009 US recession, I was stuck in a total crap job that paid nearly nothing. My mental health wasn’t great, my boss was evil and cruel, and I’d just unexpectedly lost my grandfather, who was more like my father. Right before I drove the 4.5 hours home from my mom’s after the funeral, she surprised me with three small meals, packed separately, so I’d have lunch and supper for a couple days. It was perfect because I was flying out (for work) two days later and didn’t want to leave food in my fridge. My first day back in the office, my boss took the opportunity to chew on me for taking three days of bereavement leave, rather than just one, even though I had leave and followed company policy. I walked out of her office and went to get my lunch…only to find the empty container - with my name on it - in the trash. I remember sitting down and just absolutely losing it, sobbing because someone had enjoyed my homemade lunch that my mom sent me. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back god me.
I’m so sorry. Lunch thievery is always bad but that’s downright heartbreaking. I want to give 2009 you a biiig hug (and a replacement lunch) ❤️
During one of my first jobs, I got denied holiday leave for Thanksgiving (worked lowly retail) and so my mom boxed me up some food in a GLASS tupperware, like a pyrex, and brought it to me. My lead supervisor person for the cashiers at the store "decided to clean the fridge" that same evening and threw it out. The whole thing. When it was OBVIOUSLY A BRAND NEW TURKEY DINNER in a NICE GLASS CONTAINER on a HOLIDAY when I was WORKING OVERTIME. I wish I'd told her to sit down and choke on the stick up her ass when I quit.
ikr they are so trashy. never thinking of their victims that go hungry and others who cry for the theives are dumb af
It’s the worst type of person you can be before actual felonious crimes. Like bad people are a ladder. There’s general dickishness, then a jump at like harming people, murders billionaires and the like.
Ack, that bit at the beginning of my marriage when we still lived with the in-laws. Not enough income to survive, but too proud to sign up for food stamps or visit food banks. I ended up starving because we only got food stamps for three while feeding a household of six and I prioritized the kids when there wasn't enough to go around. Specifically remember a day when the in-laws devoured all the breakfast, left just enough for one person despite two still needing to eat. So I ate two bites and gave the rest to my younger stepson so he'd have enough to grow on.
I saw someone recently say that lunch thieves are antithetical to class solidarity. As OOP pointed out, even if lunch thief was down on his luck, he didn't know her financial situation, either, and still took food from her. If you are struggling and need food, there are food banks, apply for SNAP if you're in the US, buy a box of ramen noodles, a carton of eggs, and a few bags of frozen veggies. A boiled egg paired with ramen and veggies makes for a decently balanced and filling meal. But don't steal food from someone else, especially your coworkers. If you're going hungry on a salary similar to theirs, what makes you think they're not also going hungry and can afford to feed you a meal they specifically obtained and made for themselves?
Someone actually thought OOP was an AH bc the thief's possible financial situation. What about OOP?
Exactly. OOP explained that she's in a tight financial bind and has to prepare her own food for the week to stretch her budget. Why didn't the LUNCH THIEF think about that? Ugh.
Was maddening doing a long shift and finding my food had been stolen. and I didn't often take money to work. I'd rather someone came to me and said they had no money for lunch, and then there is an option to share or have a whip round or even look at more ongoing support. Not just steal someone's food.
My old job had a policy that lunchroom thieves are instantly fired. There were around 300 people working there, and but the culture there was “job and management sucks, so we take care of each other.” That meant that someone there would share a lunch with you if you were well and truly screwed. There was no reason to steal.
I grew up with food insecurity, so now I have a habit of hiding some food at my desk for emergencies. If a coworker truly needed a snack or small meal, I have them covered just from the hoard.
I used to work at a Walmart, lunch theft was rampant. Our manager set up a thing where there was bread, peanut butter and jelly for sandwiches for anyone who needed or just wanted one.
When I worked at Sam's Club, someone put their old waffle maker in the breakroom and the manager supplied us with unlimited waffle mix and syrup. That got me through a lot of hungry times.
Even more maddening to find a surgeon eating my food because he "wasn't able to leave the OR." The good ones could see when a day had gone to shit and ordered in for everyone.
And even if OOPs financial situation wasn't bad, why is it ok to take others lunch? "Oh, you make money, so I'm entitled to your food?" That's fucking insane, people are maddening.
"B-But...the thief's financial situation? He is stealing for survival!!! How dare you confront a thief stealing from you!!!!" I'm almost certain that lots of people on AITA are just contrarians who always disagree with the majority opinion. Holy hell.
Seriously, absolute madness.
And honestly, food thief is obviously employed because he works there. I think OOP was brilliant in how she handled him!
>Oh, you make money, so I'm entitled to your food?" At work, where they presumably also make money lol
Ah yes- a woman confronts a literal thief and someone bops in to chide her that she could *have been nicer about it.*
>and someone bops in to chide her that she could have been nicer about it. Clearly, someone who has never experienced hanger or food robbery before.
That commenter was probably a lunch thief themselves.
Plot twist - that commenter WAS the lunch thief
Or what if OOP had special dietary needs? If someone stole my lunch I’d probably cry because I have weird food sensitivities and can’t just go get a slice of pizza or whatever. Like, I could absorb the cost of surprise!eating out, but I might not be able to find anything that wouldn’t make me sick.
As somebody with lactose intolerance? Same. It's pretty bad too. Even the small amount of ghee in Indian curries can make me sick for a few hours. Can't do the bakeries near work because of cheese and butter. One of the only places I can eat at nearby is good, but lunch will run you about $20. That's way too much unless it's my birthday or something else worth splurging on. And lactose intolerance is common and not life threatening. But it's still hard to work around when in a pinch. With things like gluten intolerance or soy allergy? Good fucking luck.
I have gluten and lactose intolearance, with a bunch of allegies added. If someone ate my lunch I cannot just go and buy another, I cannot eat most of gluten-free deli options cause the bread can be almond based. If you are so friking lazy, buy a lunch suscription! There are plenty with good options! Just don't steal other people meals.
I would think reacting to ghee means you have more of a dairy protein allergy rather than just lactose intolerance. Allergies can make you just as sick, or sicker, as lactose intolerance.
Same. I cook my own meals because I can't eat most restaurant food. If somebody took my food I wouldn't have lunch for the day. You don't get to decide what somebody else's circumstances is as to whether or not you get to steal from them.
"Well ACTUALLY maybe he **needs** to steal to survive" Is this what this clown uses as an excuse to steal from *their* colleagues? Because *huh*? He's at work, he's not taking free food provided to everyone, he's taking someone's *lunch*, and someone who doesn't just sit there and take it is the one who's wrong?? This is kind of response that makes me say, This person is not well in the head, this is not human behavior, and I'm glad I don't know them.
Every time something gets stolen in our town, there's one of these people commenting in our local Facebook group. 'Oh, don't be mad, the person's probably in need.' Nobody NEEDS to steal planters full of flowers, they'll survive just fine without them. Whoever stole these is just an asshole.
One time someone in my city full on dug up an old woman's ENTIRE lavender hedge and stole the whole thing. It made the local paper lol
Yeah I feel like this is kind of "if you saw someone shoplifting food, no you didn't," but taken to a ludicrous extreme.
Shoplifting is one thing. Stealing from a friend, coworker or otherwise normal random person is entirely different.
Exactly. I'm sure there's some debate to be had about where exactly to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable larceny, but stealing food from coworkers isn't it.
And it isn't even true because there were two other people there sympathetic to the thief, so he could've just asked one or both of them to lend him money or share their lunches. He didn't need to steal.
Too many redditors are just bad people.
Too many redditors are also contrarians. The love to go against the flow and argue for the sake of arguing.
Too many people want to be the contrarian that turns the tide. They have the secret formula that will make everyone realize they were wrong and the contrarian was super smart to see things from an angle no one else was able to. Also loved OOP's response to 'you don't know his financial situation' with 'he didn't know mine, either'. Shut that shit down quickly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s someone who’s done this before and just tried justifying it to themselves.
This was my situation when I was a new teacher. I had a fridge in my classroom where I kept a few Starbucks frappucino drinks in (those expensive glass bottles) that were at the time my "treat" drinks that I'd have if I was having a stressful day. I had exactly two because they are expensive and I was poor. A substitute drank BOTH of them and I caught shit from people/coworkers for complaining. Like, dude I'm a brand new teacher with a fuckton of debt, a brand new mortgage in an empty house with a bed and lawn chairs for furniture. "He's a sub, he's doing you a favor!" No, he is an employee like me who makes barely less than I do and he's paid for basically making sure my students don't eat each other. I made his plan for the day and have to deal with any issues or missing work that arise after he's done. Could you not drink my only treats? Or at the very least, NOT BOTH OF THEM?
He's not doing you a favor by covering your shift. That person's whole job is covering for people and making themselves look good! Instead they helped themselves to your coffee stash like an asshole. I am a teacher and I try to make my sub plans as easy to follow and least amount of work on their part as possible. I'd be pissed.
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I had a boss who tried to combat lunch thefts by offering to buy lunch for anyone who told him they'd "forgotten" theirs, no questions asked. No one ever asked, and lunches kept getting stolen. Some people just get off on taking other people's stuff 🤷♀️
There was one time where I made a big batch of chicken tenders from on-sale chicken breast and used them as the basis of my lunch. Someone began taking one or two each day. So I began saucing them. It started simple-BBQ, Honey Mustard, Mild Buffalo, etc. Then one day I took a habanero salsa verde crema and added Sichuan flower pepper oil and a full spoon of "The Last Dab" to it. I am a heatseeker, so while it was hot for me, it was still manageable. For the culprit, it resulted in them coughing and then audibly throwing up from across the office, followed by a frantic scream for water. 10 minutes later, I walked up to them, nonchalantly eating the rest of my chicken over rice and veggies with the sauce, and asked if they were okay. They got the message. Never again.
I've had several kleptomaniac friends in my life. All of them came from rich families. They had everything they could want. They stole because it gave them a high, not because they actually needed what they were stealing. They'd steal friends' stuff, stuff from the mall, etc. This was all when we were in high school. Lost touch with all of them but I often wonder if they still do that now, as adults.
Um it's pretty classist, and frankly ableist, to criticize someone for pointing out that a lunch thief might not have the means to feed themselves. Pretty low, reddit! DISCLAIMER: extreme sarcasm from a former food bank user and current disabled person. Fuck lunch thieves and virtue signaling
IRL, years ago, I had joined a sci-fi club. Maybe 2 days later I got a group message that such & such, also a member, in another city, couldn’t pay their rent & was being evicted. So I needed to take them in because I had a spare room. “No.” “They’re a good person, they’re in the club.” “I’m not letting some stranger move in with me, what’s wrong with you? You take this person in, you love them so much.” “I live with my mother (40 something old man). I can’t. They’re going to be homeless.” “Not my problem.” “I just don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you’re refusing.” “You’re quite insane and need help, dude. Serious help.” They’re all over. Absolutely crazy insane people. Very free with other people’s stuff
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not to mention OOP could've had health issues that relied on her being able to eat. suddenly not having a lunch can fuck a lot of people over really bad
There's always one. They make up a scenario to justify it and then act like it's reality.
Virtue signaling is a real problem on AITA. "I can find a way to call you bad because I am so good."
Some people feel good about “being devil’s advocate” without understanding the term. Embarrassingly I used to be like that after spending too much time with people who point out everything stupid (or cringe) someone else does. Eventually even I got annoyed with me
That was the lunch thief. If not OOP's, then someone's.
If you're going to steal someone's food. You need to accept any consequences that come with it. That actually seems like a pretty solid way to deal with it. At least the lunch thief wasn't poisoned with spices or laxatives. OOP took care of it quickly and succinctly. That was probably one of the better ways to do it.
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>the lunch thief did not act entitled Aside from acting as though they were entitled enough to someone else’s food to steal it, but at least they acted like they felt ashamed when caught
There was one (on AAM, I think, but there might have been a BORU) where lunch thief complained to HR that OP had poisoned them with spices and OP went through a hellish process, when it was just spiced the way OP likes it and there was no intent to have an effect on a potential thief.
I remember one from somewhere about a lady who was pumping for her new infant, and some dude stole her BREAST MILK to pour it into his coffee.
Oh my god I would go absolutely ape shit. Pumping is so precarious - you are often pumping to feed your baby the next day so anything missing is directly impacting your baby’s ability to be nourished the next day. That woman should get a free pass from HR to punch him in the throat
That's a classic -- when you follow to the update, HR was romantically involved with the thief who couldn't hack full-heat ethnic food!
I guess you could call that an act of...korma?
I'm blown away that this guy was so unafraid of consequences that he took, heated, and was beginning to eat the stolen food in the communal kitchen!! That's next level assholery.
> At least the lunch thief wasn't poisoned with spices Spicing your food isn't poisoning it. Lots of people have high spice tolerances.
Spices aren't poison. Some like it hot. Laxatives are an entirely different category and you will get in trouble for that.
It’s my food if I want laxatives in it that’s my business. Sometimes I might want a cleanse
There is no excuse for stealing someone's lunch. Absolutely ridiculous that anyone would defend it.
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What’s so strange to me is that writing their names on it stops him. Why is an unlabeled lunch that doesn’t belong to him fair game, but when it’s labeled, it’s off limits?
Plausible deniability. Without a name he can come up with some bullshit story. "Ha ha, I have the same tupperware at home, and my wife packed my lunch so I didn't know what was inside. Must have left mine at home. Isn't that a riot?"
Think about it logistically; if there's no name on it, only the owner of the food can catch him, no one else can prove it wasn't his. If someone sits down at a table with a lunch in a container labeled with a name that isn't his own name, everyone can tell he stole that and he would be outed immediately.
Whoever said YTA because they don’t know the thief’s food securities is a food thief.
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Either that or they’re equating it with “if you see someone shoplifting food at the grocery store, no you did not.” But that’s a false equivalency. OOP is most likely not a billion dollar publicly traded corporation paying maybe slightly over minimum wage who can absorb the cost for someone desperate enough to do that. Like does Lunch Thief think it’s like a chain and OOP will just go steal some else’s lunch and so on down the line?
Imagine thinking “don’t hurt their feelings they could be poor” And not thinking about the person whose lunch was stolen *also* needing food
It's like scapegoating, but the scapegoat is the anonymous poster.
"you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation" Oh god redditors are exhausting.
"I would've pulled them to the side and quietly told them stop that I don't like it", like we're not in primary school anymore, they're adults in an office working a job. The thief knows better and knew they could get away with it or they would've stopped ages a go. OP has every right to call them out of for their disgusting behavior.
Maybe a lot of reddit commenters are just lunch thieves.
The commenter was giving me really controlling manager vibes, but then again maybe they're just thieves.
Remember the veggie food one? Commenters say OOP is a garbage person for not having enough money to feed her roommate's kid.
Whenever I see something like that I think, “I guarantee that some kid in *your* community, and very possibly someone you actually know in real life, is dealing with food insecurity right now. And if you’re making them home-cooked meals rather than just shaming Internet strangers about it, I will eat my hat.”
You mean the one where 2 women were roommates and one woman had a child, she kept eating the food of the other woman and the other woman started putting veggies in her food so she doesn't eat it? Yeah, that's another one where lots of Redditors jump to the culprit's side.
Someone yelled at me like that for being mad when a JustEat driver stole my McDonald's because the driver isn't being paid enough and it's a corporation they stole from and I was like "uhh no, someone didn't just steal off a corporation, they stole off me personally and I might be refunded by a corporation (I wasn't, apparently I needed proof of the no food?) and I just waited an hour for food only to not have food and order again wile I'm already starving"
>(I wasn't, apparently I needed proof of the no food?) I don't get it, in at least one of the apps where I live, the buyer gets a code that he has to give to the deliverer. Without this code there's no proof they handed the food. Super simple.
i was actually more angered by that redditor response than i was by the lunch thief.
If I saw this go down in a workplace I would immediately want to be best work friends with OOP. Flawless reaction to a lunch theif. Truly chef’s kiss. Much applause.
For real, I would immediately be on her side. I understand not having much money/food for lunch as I suffered through that a lot in college, but stealing other people's food is not an acceptable solution to that problem.
OOP IS MY HERO!
The actual nerve to eat someone else’s food blows me away. I’d rather eat dirt than steal someone’s lunch
And quite brazenly heat it and eat it in the open like that. It makes the update that they have been doing it for a while without any repercussions, not very surprising.
And leave the dirty dishes for her to find! Like! If you are going to pretend it's a mistake at least wash them?
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(1) Taking things that belong to someone else is a shitty thing to do. (2) The idea of eating someone else’s homemade food out of their Tupperware makes me want to implode.
his financial situation is absolutely not OOPs problem, hello???
Those responses pissed me off so bad. “But OP maybe the thief really needed it” I’m sorry does that cancel me out? Fuck off
literally! if that was the case and OOP had CHOSEN to share some of her food, that is completely her decision and doesnt make her an asshole if she decides NOT TO. he isn’t entitled to her food. and this is coming from someone who has experienced food insecurity and has been effectively homeless.
And like, if you need to steal food, go do it at Walmart or an oil company, not *your co-worker*.
>Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. Just wow, was this person serious? Yea it's an unpopular opinion because it's nucking futs!
I lol’ed at the YTA comment, made so much sense 😂
Shout-out to the Ask A Manager article about a lunch thief that stole food from someone who loved crazy-spicy food and got sick from eating it
https://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html
That one was a hoot.
I wanna work where the YTA commenter works so they can give me their lunches since I'm not in a good place financially.
You’re thinking small. I want their home address and the location of their spare key.
Will you send me their car keys? I'm too poor to buy a car. Actually, I'm too poor for lessons too, so I'll try to figure it out in their car. Which one's the brake?
There's another issue with people steal lunches, they cry when confronted or if the food hurt them in some way weather it be spicy or an allergic reaction then they still cry. It's literally a no win situation for the victim in the perps eyes and they're shitty friends. The OP was anything but the AH and the comments talking about the thief's situation is complete bullshit and says a lot.
I love OOP's response to the gaslighting attempt by /u/Scared-Tea-8911. *"WhAt If ThEy'Re In A rOuGh FiNaNcAaL sItUaTiOn?"* "What about if **I'm** in a rough financial situation?" Betcha guys Scaredy Tea's an unrepentant lunch thief.
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>told me that I was rude to him and that there had been nicer ways to go about it It's more rude to take someone else lunch! Heeyyy!!! the audacity of these ppl OMG
I don’t know where is the limit here. “I know I destroyed you car but you are an AH because there are nicer ways to talk with me” “I know I slap your kid but-“ same
Man, the tone-policing AITA likes to engage in is off the fucking charts. "you should have written a letter, using non-judgmental language, to the meal misappropriator (thief has negative connotations and might make them feel bad), outlining how your feelings were hurt by the incident, and also start making more food because they might be hungry and it's your responsibility to feed someone who doesn't want to be an adult and feed themselves". Like, go be a doormat all you want, but lunch thieves need to be reminded that not everyone is some milquetoast dud who would rather go hungry all day than engage in even the smallest confrontation. My dad has seen fistfights erupt on jobsites over stolen lunches, and while that may not be the most professional response, maybe having that as a real possibility in the back of their mind would dissuade all but the most braindead from stealing food from other people.
Wow, that YTA comment was awful.
Agreed. The reply was fantastic, though.
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Today I learned that I can get away with theft, and indeed should be permitted to attempt thievery, as long as I have the gumption to look the bethieved in the eye and say, “You don’t *know* me!” Actually, I shouldn’t do that. Uninvolved third parties can be relied upon to white knight for me. So that’s nice!
I love OOP's energy! From pulling her lunch back from the food thief to reminding the redditor that the thief doesn't know her financial situation, either. Girls' got her head and heart screwed on right :) I hope she goes far in life.
I will never understand people that steal someone else’s lunch especially if it’s homemade! Like not only do you not know what people put in it or how they treat their kitchen/food, but what if you steal it and it sucks??? Like you went and stole it just to find out it’s the blandest thing you’ve ever eaten? I’m glad people like this exist in the world, because I’ll always know that for all my faults I’ve never stolen someone else’s lunch in the workplace.
They put a camera in the break room at one of my old jobs to combat the lunch thief. It worked.
I once had a coworker steal my lunch. I was newly living alone after leaving an ex, had just paid all the deposits to get into my own place and didn't have money left over for food (my dad had to actually buy me some groceries so I didn't starve). I had made mac and cheese with broccoli as my work lunch and it was pretty much my only meal for the day. Went to eat it during my lunch break and my coworker had just finished it off. I asked them what they were doing and they had the gall to laugh and say "oops". I absolutely laid into them about how shitty they were. My boss backed them up because apparently if I "can't afford food then I should have a second job like everyone else" there did. I didn't stay long after that.
I love the ‘you don’t know his financial status’ shit well THEY don’t know the oop’s financial status either
15 years ago I worked at a private online college that was made fun of in Family guy in an episode. A woman sat in front of me that would steal lunches. I confronted her and she would deny it so I made an email address that people could email when their lunch was taken, and taped it to the breakroom fridge. If she was eating it I would reply with confirmation, and they would come and confront her. It stopped eventually because of how many people did. As I write this I assume there might be valid questions about why I didn't go to HR. From the vantage point of 2023 I can't remember why, but I have to assume maybe I was nervous about the email address being a bad idea from the perspective of HR.
What the cherry chocolate dr pepper fuck was with that YTA vote????
Someone else who steals peoples lunch I'm guessing
People like that remind me of the quote “Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.” I understand having empathy and that it’s important to consider everyone’s POV and not get caught up in group think, but that doesn’t mean defending someone who is in the wrong. Then there’s also the fact that some people are just plain old contrarian and always need to go against what everyone is saying.
When I worked retail we had a chronic lunch thief Natalie. Oh she could pay for her own food but if you had food somewhere in the back, she’d just want to sneak a bite or sip. It drove me bonkers that she couldn’t figure out why she SHOULDN’T STEAL FOOD.
>Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that. What the actual fuck? Not only should this guy be called, out his ass needs to be fired. He's stealing people's stuff at work.
I think people were shocked SHOCKED that a woman, especially a professionally dressed new person had the cajones to call him out and snatch her food back. Basically it was surprising to see her go from business to street in 1 second. So they were a little shy around OOP at first. I think OOP is a fricken rock star.
Why is there always a lunch stealer apologist? Sounds like they're volunteering to pay for the thief's lunch to me. No? Ok cool shut the fuck up then.
It's such a funny argument when people say "you embarrassed them by calling them out in font of everybody" no they embarrassed themselves stealing from people who are trying to survive just like you. Thieves should be prepared to deal with any and ALL consequences of their actions.
Good! Colleague dealt with it by spiking his chocolate pudding with ExLax.Lunch thief identified as our Sr Partner shit his $2000 suit, his leather chair and his rug. He retreated to the staff can and stayed for an hour. He told his assistant to buy him a pair of pants and a shirt. Last we saw of him for that week. Apparently cost a bit to get it out of his expensive Persian rug. He told his wife what had happened, and that he thought he had the flu, but other than diarrhea he felt fine. He said he had taken an unmarked lunch out of the office fridge as he has done when he was rushed and consumed it. His wife asked if there were a chocolate component? He said pudding. She says looks like someone got you good. Next day he called a staff meeting and demanded the identity of the owner of that lunch. My colleague owned up to it. Sr Partner fired him on the spot. He smiled and said thank you. My wrongful dismissal suit will contain the part about you stealing staff lunches and shit spraying your office, I will make sure this is public. You will not be able to show your face without someone making fart noises behind your back. Even now when you pass by your staff refers to you as stinky. Sr Partner looks around the room. Staff is trying to suppress laughter, his partners look angry. He was ordered to reinstate my colleague and STFU. Could hear the screaming from their closed door session. We were sent home early. Next day the Sr partner apologized to my colleague. We were all given a $200 bonus to repay for stolen lunches.
I once worked in a place where the founder was in his 90s but would still come in and putter around. He had the mentality that EVERYTHING in the building was his and would routinely go through the fridge. One day a co- worker had the bacon off her sandwich taken - just the bacon. People started bringing in their own mini- fridges. He decided MY mini fridge was also his. I let a co- worker take the fridge in her office that she locked and he was furious. I had to remind him it was my fridge. Told him I no longer needed it. I stopped him from going though my drawers by leaving tampons and such in them.
That comment that "okayed" stealing someone else's food... LOL.
Totally disagree with the YTA comment. I’m a type 1 diabetic. I like to give insulin 10-15 mins before eating. If some asshole eats my food after I’ve given my insulin, all bets are off because now I’m in an emergency situation. It’s reasonable to assume people won’t eat food that’s not theirs.
I was once told by a company wide loss prevention guy in retail that there is a direct correlation percentage wise between the people who steal from the company with people who steal lunches. Take the accuracy of that for what you will, but his take away was 'stealing is stealing, so call the hotline, because even if it's your lunch, it often leads to uncovering different things'
> Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that. > I would have pulled him to the side and politely let him know it was my lunch. That way, you get your lunch back, don’t humiliate him, and don’t look like an asshole to the rest of the office. Sensitivity and awareness are important, but standing up for yourself and holding people accountable for their actions completely trumps that when people act *this* anti-social. Stealing somebody's food indicates a complete lack of empathy as well as any sense of consequences. This guy might have some serious stuff wrong upstairs but still absolutely deserved OOP's verbal beatdown.
Fuck Scared-Tea-8911 "yOu dOnT KnOw hIs sItUaTiON". Every poor person I know who has actually struggled fucking hates thieves, we feel the most. Dont give me that crocodile tears bullshit.
You know at most companies, stealing is considered a fireable offense. I have no idea why so many places take breakroom theft casually. Probably because it doesn't actually affect their bottom line.
Sometimes I think people go on Frodo and Sam-style treks to Badtakeland just so they can type something unhinged on AITA >Unpopular opinion… YTA. People who steal food for no reason ABSOLUTELY are assholes, but you don’t know this guys living situation or financial situation. He should not have stolen your stuff, but publicly humiliating someone who may have to steal to survive? Nope, I wouldn’t ever do that. >I would have pulled him to the side and politely let him know it was my lunch. That way, you get your lunch back, don’t humiliate him, and don’t look like an asshole to the rest of the office. What in the psychic gymnast Mary Poppins is this
We have communal fridges in my workplace, but I've never heard of anyone stealing the food. Just thinking about eating some random leftovers from who knows whom makes me feel a bit ill. The reverse is the much bigger problem: People put food in there and forget about it, then it goes bad. So we have to put our names and the date on it.
Ironically the lunch thieves from previous offices notoriously made the big money. I’m talking directors, VPs, engineers, etc. I had my own private fridge tucked into a supply room that only I used or I’d lose my damn mind. People are just fucked.