HR refused to act on someone stealing his ‘gourmet’ lunch every day. So he cooked up a plan to trap the ‘lunch thief’ publicly

At the office, a Reddit user (u/RogueMisanthrope) encountered a scenario in which a mysterious “lunch thief” kept on snagging the office lunches for weeks and weeks straight. When HR refused to cooperate in catching the culprit, the situation left the employee at their wits' end. Aggravated, he took the responsibility onto his own shoulders and crafted a plan to kill two birds with one stone: catch the thief and give HR a taste of their own medicine.

The lunch boxes made it easy

According to the employee’s description, it was the most aggressive kind of lunch thief that he and his colleagues had ever encountered. What made it easy for the culprit to keep getting away with it was how similar everyone’s lunches looked. Most employees used identical Rubbermaid Tupperware containers, packed in plain brown bags with small name labels taped on. With everything looking nearly the same, it became difficult to tell one lunch from another, something that clearly worked in the thief’s favor.

For a few months, the culprit kept stealing the lunches. About twice, the employee’s own lunch went missing, but he dismissed and shrugged it off, thinking that it was a big office and mishaps like these were not unusual. When other employees complained to HR, he thought it was a “much ado about nothing.”

Wife's 'gourmet meals' lost

At one point, the employee's wife joined a French cooking class, and every other day, there were fancy gourmet delicacies from leftovers in the lunch box. On an unsuspecting day, when he walked to the fridge to collect his lunch, he found it missing. He cursed the mysterious thief, and the following day, came prepared with their name scrawled in extra bold letters. That day again, the lunch went missing. On the third day, he put the lunch front and center, on his desk, marking an “abundance of caution.” However, it went missing again, and every strategy had failed.

HR's double standards

Furious, the employee marched into the HR's office, but was met with a remark of blatant dismissal. "Employees’ lunches are their personal property, and the company is not responsible for lost or stolen personal items," the HR said. The next day, when the theft was repeated, the employee decided to do something about it. He arrived at the office with an empty bag and replaced his lunch with that of HR.

The employee described it as the most satisfying moment they could imagine at the office — HR confronting the suspected lunch thief, 'Kyle,' insisting the bag was theirs, only to have it taken back and the name checked, revealing it didn’t belong to them after all. "They informed me they’d located the thief and things would be handled accordingly. He was in line for a promotion. The promotion is indefinitely off the table," he said.

'Milk' becomes no. 1 most stolen item

The situation may seem to be coming out straight from a movie, but around 39% of UK workers admit to being involved in office lunch theft, according to a study by Husky Lifestyle. The common offenders were found to be 25 to 34-year-olds, while the top items stolen were milk, followed by chips and chocolates. About 44% of people who’ve had their food stolen try to stop it by labeling their items in the office fridge or cupboards. Another 33% go a step further and store their food separately in a different cupboard or fridge to avoid repeat incidents.

Readers found this revenge pretty satisfying and shared their thoughts in the comments. "This is when you make a Hot sauce stew with Jalapeño bread as your lunch," commented

 u/DavidDAmaya. “Such blatant disregard for other people until it affects you is just as bad as stealing the lunch yourself,” stated u/kingcal. 

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