To Catch a Lunch Thief

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124

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  • jennievh
    jennievh Posts: 45 Member
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    I love this. I'd totally make delicious cupcakes and sprinkle the blue powder on the icing. And giggle at the blue-mouthed culprit.
  • jennievh
    jennievh Posts: 45 Member
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    ...and the other side of the coin: one day, I took my leftover half-burrito out of the fridge, heated it in the microwave, and took a bite. I can't remember if it was the first bite, or halfway through, but I realized it wasn't mine! It was steak and I always got chicken. Figured out who it was and bought her a whole new burrito the next day.

    Embarrassing, this poor memory of mine. Now I mark all my food carefully--more for my sake than anyone else's!
  • MogwaisGrandma
    MogwaisGrandma Posts: 196 Member
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    I had this problem at a place I worked. They were drinking milk even though names were written on the bottle. I had mine measured out for my diet and it was pissing me off to extremes.

    So I put a load, and I mean A LOAD, of salt in mine and marked it in great big letters on the bottle DO NOT DRINK.

    I got back to the staff room 2 hours later to be told a tale of the new Sales Manager making coffee for her and her staff and now wanting to know who had put salt in the milk. So I trooped into her (and the GM's) office and told her. She said she was told just to use any milk by the Fitness Manager!!!

    The GM emailed everyone after that but I got a load of pats on the back for my stunt!
  • directorj
    directorj Posts: 537 Member
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    I feel sorry for the person who would do this to me. I love spicy food with a high tolerance :laugh: Good luck. If I ever get my lunch stolen, I'm the type of person who loves to prank so you're dead meat.
  • mogletdeluxe
    mogletdeluxe Posts: 623 Member
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    Might not help catching the thief, but might help preventing it: http://www.thinkofthe.com/product.php?name=anti-theft-lunch-bags

    Ha! Love these.

    I'm constantly victim to a milk-pincher - if someone asks I have no problem at all (it's just milk, after all), but I've gone to get my morning cereal and have to eek out the last drop over my Weetabix because some scrote has half-inched some. MY NAME IS NAT. YOURS IS NOT. MY NAME IS ON THE MILK.

    Grrrrr. Tempted to try Deb's salt trick...
  • bathsheba_c
    bathsheba_c Posts: 1,873 Member
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    Just reminding everyone that it is, in fact, considered poisoning to spike food with something dangerous knowing someone else will unwittingly eat it. So ghost chilis are okay. Exlax and Visine and other things like that are not.
  • Lotte34
    Lotte34 Posts: 429 Member
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    I agree with the xlax trick or if you want to be a little more subtle there are low carb sweets you can get that act as a VERY effective laxative. you will soon figure out who it it! That or lace them with a gentle sedative, somone falling asleep at their desk might be easier to monitor than someone spiked with laxatives
  • sarahrbraun
    sarahrbraun Posts: 2,261 Member
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    We had someone using one of the girls coffee creamer. We wrote "breast milk" on it. It never happened again!


    LOVE IT!!! I breastfed for 6 months while working as a waitress ( I kept a small cooler to put the milk in...)
  • curlygirly80
    curlygirly80 Posts: 176
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    Wrap some ex-lax in saran wrap and leave it. The next person you see in and out of the bathroom is the culprit

    unfortunately you can't do this, or poison it, or do anything to it that will purposefully bring another person bodily harm. You can put extra hot sauce in it, however. I don't think the nanny cam is a bad idea.

    How is it bodily harm, if you put it in your lunch! Maybe your system needed a little movement, no one told them to touch your lunch. It has been done and it is pretty funny!!
  • Jain
    Jain Posts: 861 Member
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    Put extra hot sauce in everything!

    Interesting. I got some of "Dave's Insanity Sauce" for Christmas a couple years ago. Maybe it's time that it made it's way into some baked goods. Boo yah.

    I did this, I mixed it into some houmus, boy did it work!:laugh:
  • jallen1955
    jallen1955 Posts: 121
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    Personally, I like the idea of a "loaded" lunch....special brownies or perhaps some mushroom soup?
  • myfitnessnmhoy
    myfitnessnmhoy Posts: 2,105 Member
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    My office has been hit by more lunch thievery and some of my coworkers are seriously considering a nanny cam.

    Any ideas out there for how to foil this behavior? I have ideas but none of them are legal.

    A friend of mine had that happen every day for a while. He actually bought a tiny little lock set - kinda like one of those luggage locks to attach his lunchbag zippers together and a thin lock cable to wrap into the fridge shelf - similar to a bike lock or a computer locking cable but thinner. It could be cut with a bolt cutter, but his basic attitude was "my lunch doesn't have to be theft proof - it has to be harder to steal than the other lunches!).

    A "CAMERA IN USE" sign on the fridge might deter it.

    Or, my favorite solution - we had a fridge thief at work a few jobs ago. A few of us started talking about it, and we all quietly agreed that we'd go out to lunch on a given day, but everyone would pack a lunch. We found some bluebell pepper extract and made sure every sandwich had a generous dollop of it folded in to the meat or whatever (so the thief would discover it after taking a bite). I think a few people added something of a more bowel-relaxing nature. It took a few tries, but the thievery stopped.

    A co-worker at another job had a friend stealing his lunch, taking one bite out of his sandwich, wrapping it back up, and replacing it. This went on for months until he made a habanero-seed-and-horseradish sandwich. You could hear the scream through the whole building.
  • thrld
    thrld Posts: 610 Member
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    Could it be this ?


    http://www.google.com/imgres?q=raccoons+eating&um=1&hl=en&biw=983&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=Npac0UX3bMGCcM:&imgrefurl=http://www.colourbox.com/image/close-up-of-raccoons-eating-fruits-image-1186153&docid=cASCNyuCEtzKbM&imgurl=http://www.colourbox.com/preview/1186153-621521-close-up-of-raccoons-eating-fruits.jpg&w=480&h=431&ei=OMSzT4_7GMPu2gWO6KDpCA&zoom=1
  • TigressStripes
    TigressStripes Posts: 33 Member
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    My Mom told me a story about my Uncle (who was a big beefy man in his prime - not sure why anyone would want to risk pissing him off!) routinely getting his sandwiches stolen.

    His solution, that apparently worked, was to put a condom filled with mayonnaise into a sandwich. That sandwich was stolen, but he apparently never had that issue again!
  • The_new_Amy
    The_new_Amy Posts: 29
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    This was a problem when I worked as well. Not only were lunches disappearing, so were foods prepared for the nutrition classes I taught to low income moms. I was livid!!!

    I happened to forget my husband's keys in my office one night. He worked midnights so I went back at about 8:00 PM to get them before he left for work. I had the building code because I taught weekend classes but it's a county building so nobody else was there but the cleaning staff. I walked in to our office and was smacked by the smell of microwave popcorn, which our office manager kept int he breakroom for her personal snacks. I made my way to the breakroom to find the county employeed cleaning staff munching on popcorn and anything else they found in our fridge and one of the maintenance guys standing in front of the fridge going through it. Nobody got fired (they're all union employees) one got transfered and we ended up having to put combination locks on all 4 of our refrigerators. Totally ridiculous.

    My advice would be to do the nanny cam. Quick and easy, find out who it is and get them fired! There is NO excuse for stealing food from work, ever!
  • myfitnessnmhoy
    myfitnessnmhoy Posts: 2,105 Member
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    Of course another thing to do (if you have a desk) is simply bring in a lunch that requires no refrigeration and/or use an insulated lunch bag and a cold pack.
  • Genie30
    Genie30 Posts: 316 Member
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    bump to read later!
  • deadstarsunburn
    deadstarsunburn Posts: 1,337 Member
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    I just can't wrap my head around going in a refrigerator and grabbing a sandwich or whatever someone else has obviously prepared for them self.
    Among other reasons I don't know if their hands were clean when they made it or what state their kitchen was in.
    ick.
  • Alicia97
    Alicia97 Posts: 13
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    We have had this problem at work for a while. Someone will drink half of someone else's drink and then put it back. I don't know about you guys but I don't want to drink after other people. We had a guy buy a cheeseburger for his lunch on his way to work. He put it in the fridge when he got here and when he went to lunch it was gone. The person that stole it had ate it, put the wrapper back in the bag and put the bag back in the fridge. People have put signs up and everything and it doesn't seem to work. One person even put a sign on the fridge that said "Attention whoever keeps taking lunches, you need to get checked for Mono." It worked for about 2 weeks then it started again.
  • Juliet_622
    Juliet_622 Posts: 165 Member
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    "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my lunch go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

    I'd put that on the fridge.

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