A microwave thief kept stealing a coworker’s lunch — until he hatched 'inconvenient' plan that made theft impossible

Employees of a small company were fed up with an office thief who kept stealing their food. More often than not, the thief targeted a specific person (u/mysticloud21) who brought home-cooked meals. Frustrated, they decided to go the petty way. They taped all of their lunch boxes with a little note on them, and surprisingly, it worked. The person posted the story on Reddit on January 15, 2025. 

The office had a fridge and a microwave that the employees shared, and someone kept taking other people's leftovers. "Not whole meals every time, more annoying than that. Like half a portion missing, or the good part gone, or the container put back as if nothing happened," the person said. Despite multiple complaints, the thief continued stealing food, and nobody caught them doing it. "I got tired of it because it was always my food that went missing, probably because I cooked things that smelled good," they assumed. Annoyed, the person started packing their lunch in the most "inconvenient" way possible. They bought a set of tiny containers and split their entire meal into multiple little ones. "...and I taped all of them together with painter's tape so it looked like a weird brick. On top, I wrote very neatly: If you open this, you have to re-tape it the same way," the person recalled.

The next day, although the thief tried to steal food, nothing was actually stolen. "The day after that, the whole taped brick was still untouched and exactly as I left it. After about a week, my food stopped being targeted completely," the person confessed. The thief wasn't scared by the note; in fact, they said that they were just too lazy to untape multiple boxes and steal food from them. "It was petty because it was extra work for me, but it worked without poisoning anyone or starting a big office drama," they concluded. The thought of someone stealing your office lunch sounds very weird, but it happens more often than we think. A survey of 1,000 American workers by Zippia found that 33% workers openly confess to stealing food from their coworkers, and nearly half (47%) of them said they have been victims of food theft at the office. In fact, 16% of respondents said they don't need permission to grab a pizza slice. The same survey found that more than food, drinks like sodas go missing more frequently.

Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit post, u/alcohall183 commented, "Why do companies allow a thief to walk among them? Do they not realize that someone willing to steal something of no value (lunch) will absolutely steal something of value (money, intellectual property, computers, phones, or other company property)? It's never about the value of the item; it's about the theft and getting away with it." Similarly, u/ratchetstuff78 wrote, "What's annoying about office lunch thieves is that if you were honest and just told me you were too broke for food, I'd honestly help you out. I'd bring in lunch for you for a few weeks for free and help you budget or figure out ways (food banks, EBT, etc.) to address your food insecurity." u/chrisriley_42 said, "If it were me, I'd have gone the decoy route... a small switch in my lunch box which triggered a compressed gas canister to blow food-grade glitter everywhere… Then just look for the person with the purple sparkly hands and face."

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