Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most companies would quickly have 0 employees if this was a universal policy
Well... at least one... You can't steal your own lunch.
Aha good answer to a potentially trick question!
A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
131–140 of 220 posts
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#132This feels like a made-up story designed to attract clicks. Even more with the happy ending update. There are more unlikely stories on the same site, like this one: http://www.askamanager.org/2017/05/im-in-a-dominantsubmissiv...
It’s the equivalent of a Penthouse “you’ll never believe what happened next” letter for office drones. I can’t believe so many people are taking it at face value!
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#133Even considering how bizarre this is and how it was more to the story as jobowoo pointed out with the update, there is also a lesson here: If the situation warrants complaining to authorities, complain first or you'll be fighting an uphill battler even if you are in the right.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#134Well, to me it seems plausible that the writer is not telling the whole truth. They noticed food being stolen from the fridge and he purposely put extremely hot spice in the food to harm the perpetrator. But how do you prove that. And even if you prove it, would it hold in court since the food was stolen?
What would be the goal of the writer for even sending this to Ask A Manager with false events?
And more importantly: does it matter? If you come down to it, we don't even know if the writer exists at all. It's just an hypothetical event that serves as fodder for discussion.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mistakes happen. There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch, and having a 'zero tolerance' policy is a good way to end up firing an innocent person.
| There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch Want to give us some examples?
A whole lunch may be a bit much unless it’s some sort of pre-packaged food, but a few I have seen over the years:
- Grab-and-go sandwich from local vendor was eaten by wrong person. They had a similarly wrapped sandwich in the same refrigerator.
- Identical brands of yogurt, milk, cream, etc. were used by a non-owner with a similar bottle.
- Similar fruit was taken.
- Identical brand peanut butter was used by the non-owner.
None of these other than maybe the sandwich are like the original post, but these mistakes do happen.
In these cases, it was always resolved with an “oops, sorry” and a replacement item (sometimes waved off)... and usually more deliberate bespoke labeling or containering of common items.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is very illegal. Like, violating the Geneva Conventions level illegal: https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/
It's true that booby traps are not allowed by the Geneva convention but that convention only applies to conduct in a war. I'm curious what law applies in the US.
I imagine the castle doctrine would apply. Kevin McCallister could have justifiably killed the burglars in Home Alone. It was actually rather nice of him to just use non-lethal booby traps.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#137My only experience with 'stolen lunch' actually turned into a valuable cultural lesson for me.
It was decades ago, at the start of my IT career, and I was contracted to fly out to a remote Aboriginal community (I am in Australia) to do some IT work. It was a full day thing, as there was only one commuter flight out to the community in the early morning, and one return flight in the evening. So I packed a big lunch with snacks to see me through the day.
When I arrived at the community, I went to the main council office, found a fridge in the kitchen, put my lunch in it and went about my work.
At lunch time, I went back to fridge, starving, and opened it to find that all my lunch had gone. Every last speck and extra snack! I was fuming, and sought out the council manager to complain about this. He just gave me a strange look during my hypoglycaemic meltdown, which kind of stopped me in my tracks, then said "Look, this is an Aboriginal community, and all their cultural rules apply. Traditionally, the men would go hunting and bring the spoils of their hunt back to the community. Whatever was brought back belongs to all, as per tribal rules. Any food that is left in the shared fridge is traditionally there for everyone to share in".
That completely shook me to my core to look at the situation in a completely different light. And true to the spirit of their tribal culture, the manager offered me some of his lunch to keep me going that day.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#138Who steals other people's food? This is completely bizarre to me. Do these people do it every day and just never bring their own lunch? Do they just see something that takes their fancy and decide to nick it? The mind boggles.
This sounds like a call center or similar place where they're desperate to fill the cubes with as many warm bodies as possible, sociopath or not. The behavior of HR suggests a less than professional workplace with high turnover.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#139Kind of orthogonal to the story, but anyone who steals lunch or food from a co-worker should be fired immediately. There's a 0% chance that someone who steals others' stuff is a good, honest person in other parts of their life.
Firing someone for a mistake is a fairly extreme response, and should be reserved for extreme mistakes. This sounds like a correctable habit, with some mentoring and coaching.
There is a big difference between mistakenly eating someone else's lunch and being a thief.
It's conceivable that someone could have a visually identical container (brown paper bag) and a visually identical lunch (sandwich and apple), in which case yes - that would be a mistake.
I'd bet that that is the case for much less than 5% of the lunches misappropriated.
Calling deliberate theft a "mistake" is fundamentally dishonest - it pollutes the meaning of the word mistake.
Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)
#140One mystery that continues to fascinate me is when people at work say things to me that are obviously irrational -- are they sincere or is it some kind of manipulative power play? I've had managers ask me things such as "When will the rebuild of the website be done" and I answer "In two months" and they say "You have two weeks" and I say "Maybe 6 weeks, but not 2" and then they repeat "You've got two weeks." I wonder…
do it in 14 business days.
That's still less than 3 weeks, not like he's really won, and now he looks like he's conceded and still got the project done "late".