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Serving Justice to Office Lunch Thieves
So one evening while traveling on business in Canada, I bought far more Subway sandwiches for dinner than I intended to eat. Why so many? Sometimes I'll give one to a homeless person as I walk back to the hotel. But usually so that I can put a few away for subsequent lunches through the week. Anyhow, at the evening's end, I put my remaining Subway sandwich into the office refrigerator for the next day.
Feeling hungry, I went to the 'fridge and found my sandwich was missing. Not too big of a deal, I figured the cleaning crew simply emptied out the refrigerator at night. Although a lingering thought in my mind said that wasn't the case as another baggy of food remained on a shelf along with several bottles of beer (don't ask). Nevertheless, I figured with so few people on the floor it couldn't be a food thief and must have been a cleaning.
For reference, the client site I currently work at has placed our consulting team virtually on a floor by ourselves, occupied only by a small contingent of their own employees behind a separate set of keycarded doors; all parties have mutually exclusive security access to their respective areas. The only shared locations are the pantry and the restrooms. But with so few people occupying the floor, by no means is the pantry ever crowded or wanting of space.
Later that day, I put leftover pizza from Quiznos into the refrigerator to eat for breakfast the following morning. When I arrived in the office, the Quiznos leftovers were still in the 'fridge but our team had to attend a meeting so breakfast was put on hold. Upon our return only an hour later, the pizza was gone. The Quiznos packaging material was in the trash (I checked) but the food was not with it which implied it had been eaten. Furthermore, it confirmed the phantom eater was not the cleaning crew because 1) the trash would have gone with the cart and 2) they are not scheduled to clean for another twelve hours. And all members of my project team were at the meeting so I know its one of our client's employees.
I'll be honest, my first thought of office revenge was to duplicate Van Wilder (ratcheted up a notch or two on the disgusting scale) and baiting the thief for several days before leaving a note letting them know what they've been eating. But I'm sure there must be far more creative and intellectually devious measures of protecting future sandwiches that don't involve violating health codes. So I pose the question to OmniNerds of devious minds, of moral minds, of vindictive minds and especially creative minds. How does one enact their retribution to the office lunch thief?
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2 Nerd-Its
Laxatives
Well - the fellows I went to dinner with suggested a sandwich laced heavily with laxatives and another heavily spiced up. I foresee the foot-long semen and feces tainted subs I had originally planned resulting in an unpleasant legal issue between us and the client.
This comment has 8 replies.
3 Nerd-Its
Scoville Heat Scale
I received this link for the Scoville Heat Scale over e-mail with the suggestion of lacing the sandwiches up even hotter than the previous tip. Whew - 16 million heat units!
3 Nerd-Its
Prank revenge
I've been involved in some pretty hefty pranking. One involved purchases from the animal sciences department at A&M and the other ... well, let's just say it earned the nickname "poopgate."
In any case, if you can spare the expense, I think it would be better to trick the thief into eating things unknowingly, rather than the "shock and awe" route. For example, line the sandwich with thinly sliced cow eye, powder it with grated pig hoof, switch out half of the bacon bits with dried earthworms - you know, stuff that probably wouldn't taste like much of anything but no one wants to eat. After you get bored you could present him/her with what has been on the menu.
Alternatively, you could do something to find out who the thief is without them knowing you know. Then, you could carry out seemingly unrelated pranks in the hopes that one day you would hear him/her utter, "Man, ever since I started stealing lunches, my life has totally sucked!"
Oh, and one last thing: If you want this to go on, you have to keep the thief believing they are stealing food from lots of different people (i.e., not the same person over and over).
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0 Nerd-Its
Something for coffee
Things we use to do in the Navy, the mid watch crew would make coffee for the morning crew.. Make sure you have a bottle of food coloring and put it in the pre-brewed coffee grounds and make the coffee.. Blue, red and green resulted in some interesting "results".. ha-ha
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2 Nerd-Its
phenolphthalein....
phenolphthalein is my suggestion. It was used for a long time as the active ingredient in laxatives like ex-lax. Currently is out of favor for such because of concerns it is carcinogenic. (People confusing it can cause cancer in massive doses with it will likely cause cancer if used as directed. bah!) In any case it is colorless in neutral or (food grade) acidic environments. Not sure if it has a taste. My thought is a good dose of it in pizza or spaghetti sauce will cause the thief to spend an inordinate amount of time in the restroom.
2 Nerd-Its
lunch Thieves
A mouse trap comes to mind refigured to catch human fingers - perhaps something with a stain... similar to what dye packs are for stolen money
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A Spicy Revenge by gnifyus :: NR7 :: Show
This happened to me in fifth grade. Some kid kept stealing my snacks. The sandwich was left, but there would be an empty wrapper or package amongst a few crumbs left in my lunchbox. The lunchboxes were kept in the coat closet at the back of the classroom and accessed by everyone every day, so it was hard to just watch and see who was doing it. Instead of just calling the teacher or something completely lame like that, my mother (with a gleam in her eye) helped me hatch a plan to catch the lowly snack stealer. She took graham crackers and soaked them in Tabasco sauce, dried them in the oven and wrapped them up. All I had to do is wait for the culprit to come running out of the coat closet for the drinking fountain. Sure enough, though I didn't see the person come out of the closet, I did notice a certain stricken looking person drinking an inordinate amount of water that day. I never accosted the person, and the snack stealing stopped, but my lack of respect for that person would last to this day if they were still around. (At least it wasn't the teacher.)
So, a healthy dose of one of those crazy designer habanera hot sauces hidden inside some rolled up meat so as not to be detected until chomped is the first obvious choice.
Another one might be to find some kind of soft, but unchewable rubber bologna-like material and insert that in the sandwich for their teeth to bounce off of. Write "Food Stealer!" or some other message of your choice with a Sharpie on both sides of it for added effect.
The thing is, this is a weird problem involving some deep-rooted psychological state of mind. I can't imagine anyone in a workplace of this level needs to steal because their hungry. I suspect it's some sort of kleptomaniac-like problem where the individual gets a thrill out of sneaking and being an anonymous annoyance. As soon as they know the gig is up, it will probably stop. Sometimes its better not to know who it actually was if it's someone you have to work with on any regular basis.