I bought a cake yesterday for on office birthday. It turns out there were only 4 of us, including the Birthday Person, here to eat any of the cake. On my way out yesterday I told my Boss to take a piece home to his wife. He took the cake home. All of it that was left. There was cake for the few that missed out on it yesterday. He is not very popular around here today. Everyone that didn't get any is giving him shit. It's all in good fun but still perhaps a wee bit of truth to it. FOCUS: We all know them, the work fridge thieves. Share a story of when someone took something of yours. I guess the fact I didn't get cake for breakfast is a good thing right?
At my last gig I had a couple of young/broke developers that acted like they were still in high school. One of them ate EVERYTHING. The running joke was if you didn't want it, give it to HIM, because he'd eat anything. He'd even eat a few things in the fridge that weren't his, and then pull the "I'm sorry, didn't mean to..." routine, kind of like a dog does after getting into the garbage... they just live in the moment so hard that they don't even consider it wrong until after the fact, and then they feel sooooo bad. Well, he then started to play up on this and use it as an acceptable excuse to eat anything in the fridge. One day we had some guests joining us (the Directors of the company) so we had lunch brought in, and the trays of food were put in the fridge. He ransacked them before lunch and basically ate enough for about 3 people. That really did it for him, and I called an impromptu company meeting and publicly shamed him in front of everyone and told him to "grow the fuck up and be an adult already". (This was after having a few one-on-ones with him before, because I'm not THAT much of a dick). He basically cried and I sent him home for the rest of the day. Everyone looked at me with wide eyes for the rest of the day, and everything was pretty quiet. Things got back to normal, mood wise, pretty quickly... but you better fucking believe that nobody took anything from the fridge that wasn't theirs ever again. Sometimes the Vlad The Impaler approach actually works. He actually thanked me for the "intervention" a couple weeks later, and even bought me a beer.... which was a big deal for him.
I don't have a problem with my own lunch when it comes to theft, which is odd because I never go out to eat. Eating at FatFriedGreasies and then doing physical work is the wrong plan. however: They have a complimentary Keurig coffee at my work, with a decent selection for a start-up shop. In our fridge they put two massive bags to fill each bottom crispser: one with singles of milk, the other with creams. Well, some jackass on the crew just grabs and steals both bags and just walks the fuck on out with them. Like, hundreds upon hundreds of them. Because a single person just needed every single one of them, right? And these douchebags steal toilet paper from the washroom too. You fucking WORK HERE, at a job. You can afford toilet paper. Where the fuck are we, Mexico?
I don't go to an office. I do however live in a house full of men. I literally don't even bother trying to eat at home. If I do it's a drastic failure because of my husband and sons' inability to NOT eat food I purchased for myself. I've even gone so far as to hide things. THEY DIG THEM OUT. Mainly The Husband. So I just don't eat at home anymore because I have major food guarding issues.
My workplace has two different sides to the office, each side offering different services under one company name. Each side will have their own little events, and when we do we generally invite the other half of the office to partake. Last time we all brought food in, there was so much that we again invited them to join us. The stuff I brought wasnt even touched at the end of the day so I figured cool, I'd leave it there for us to munch on the next day. Which we do all the time. Wrong. Apparently someone decided to take it home. All of it, which we found out when we went to get it out the next day. I'm pretty sure it was the fatass who would come sniffing around food before you had a chance to set it down. Overall it doesnt seem like a big deal, but at the time it pissed me off. Like someone offering you a slice of pizza and you take the whole pie.
Fortunately people at my office are pretty good about respecting other people's stuff. It was some shitty college roommates that would take everything, so I put a brick of innocent looking but spicy habanero jack cheese in the fridge to bait them. It worked.
Back in the roommate days I had three of them. Close friends that I worked with. My room had a big beer fridge where I kept my personal reserve, and almost every night they would raid it. I put a lock on the door, they picked it. I put a lock on the fridge, they broke it. I duct taped a case of beer shut to send a message, they missed the point. So one day I brought home a 24, and opened them all. I drank a little past the neck on each of them and refilled them with hot piss. I put the caps back on as best I could, and left the case for them to pillage. Sure enough, I get home from work and there's the case on the kitchen table, the three of them having a blast. "Hey guys, how's my piss taste?" Two of them laughed it off and apologized for always drinking my beer. The third got violent and a fight broke out. Apparently I was the asshole here. No hard feelings though. I've been that guy too, and I won the fight so there's that.
Our lunch room is good. You can leave your stuff in the fridge or on the tables and no one touches it. If you leave stuff on the counter by the coffee pot everyone knows that is fair game.
When I was in the Navy, a guy I worked with kept having his Subway sandwich stolen from the breakroom fridge. So, he went out, bought one and laced it with ipecac, then waited to see who started puking. Good times!
This story is loosely on topic, but it was such a funny moment in time, I'd like to share. Indulge me! I my college days, a roommate of mine did most of the stereotypical annoying roommate things. He stole food and beer, had no inside voice, didn't clean up after himself among a litany of other offenses. My other two roommates were fed up and hatched a plan. One day, late in the semester, they cooked up a batch of brownies, with laxatives instead of water. Later that night, a party ensues and just about everyone knows about the laced goodies. Prop bets were being wagered about the effectiveness of baked ex-lax. I found myself among the nonbelievers. The goods were wrapped in foil and placed conspicuously on the counter. The party patrons did their best to watch the brownies without the offender noticing. The wait was unbearable. Like clockwork, he started to peel back the foil. One brownie went down. Then two, then three. One of the more outgoing individuals at the party started cheering him on. Four, five, six. "Go! Go! Go!" chants echoing throughout the shitty college kitchen, masking the stifled giggles. He finished the whole plate. We thought the wait for him to begin eating the brownies was bad. Waiting for his greased up bowles to move was even worse. An hour passed and he was still pounding light keg beer. Two hours passed and still playing flip cup. Hour three, and sweat appeared on the brow. With a funny look on his face, he bolted up the stairs to the bathroom, with about 25 party goers right on his heels. The sounds that came from that bathroom can only be described as post-colonscopy farts, mixed with pouring out a pitcher of water. It was incredible. We could hear the force with which the feces exited his anus. Some sort of disgusting world speed record was set that night, I'm sure. He remained on the shitter for the next hour and was the butt of most of the jokes until he moved out a few weeks later. He learned no lessons either. He still ate things that weren't his. I learned that baked ex-lax is very effective.