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A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

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Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#51

Post by noir_lord »

jxramos wrote: post #29
mathieuh wrote: post #22

Who 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.

I heard about this at my wife's former workplace that there was a food thief haunting the break room fridge. It's nuts but really happens.

"Sorry boss, I have stomach issues I need to take a laxitive but the taste makes me sick so I mix it with my lunch, heres my prescription, by the way and on an entirely unrelated note...has anyone seen Peter this afternoon?"

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#52

Post by chrischen »

SwellJoe wrote: post #19
apandhi wrote: post #6

The update to the post can be found here: http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-m... TLDR: Guy gets his job back and a generous raise (almost double his paycheck) after getting fired and threatening legal action.

It's literally incredible that they fired someone for having their lunch stolen. It's great that sanity prevailed, but gods what a ridiculous situation. I hope whoever that HR person was is never employed in a position of authority again. The lunch thief is bad, but the HR person is much, much, worse. I'm still mad over here just thinking about it.

Sounds like they work at a big old company with lots of layers of middle management. I can't imagine a startup with a lunch thief being able to be realistically hidden.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#53

Post by cortesoft »

SwellJoe wrote: post #19
apandhi wrote: post #6

The update to the post can be found here: http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-m... TLDR: Guy gets his job back and a generous raise (almost double his paycheck) after getting fired and threatening legal action.

It's literally incredible that they fired someone for having their lunch stolen. It's great that sanity prevailed, but gods what a ridiculous situation. I hope whoever that HR person was is never employed in a position of authority again. The lunch thief is bad, but the HR person is much, much, worse. I'm still mad over here just thinking about it.

I mean, they fired the HR person who did it because of this. Turns out they were sleeping with the food thief.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#54

Post by stevewillows »

mathieuh wrote: post #22

Who 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.

I worked at a place where one of the senior leaders stole a temp's lunch and completely denied it, despite the sandwich being on his desk.

Its so shameful.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#55

Post by lpa22 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #14

Kind 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.

Most companies would quickly have 0 employees if this was a universal policy

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#56

Post by larkeith »

komali2 wrote: post #44
pm90 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a lovely ending! What I fear for is that the termination will be in his records and he will have to explain this extremely bizzare story to whoever asks or is interested. I'm glad it all worked out so well for him. Hopefully that silly detail will not affect his future.

Not sure why there's three replies asking about "records." It's right there in your resume - date you worked at a company, huh weird, only 2 months, what happened? The alternative is having whatever you had on your resume before + 2 month gap, which if anybody asks about you I guess lie. It's not a nothingburger though.

As the update covers, they were rehired shortly after being terminated.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#57

Post by lbeltrame »

mathieuh wrote: post #22

Who 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.

Back during my Ph.D. days people stole coffee capsules from others. I remember having a few in my drawer, only to find none the following morning.

It can be mind-boggling, but it definitely happens.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#58

Post by mitchty »

sh4z wrote: post #20
seattle_spring wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They noticed food being stolen from the fridge and he purposely put extremely hot spice in the food for the purpose of getting back at the perpetrator. Even if that were the case (which I doubt), why is that wrong? On what planet is it OK to defend the actions of the thief?

Is it not always wrong to cause someone harm? edit: If he would have poisoned the food and the thief died, would that be ok? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if he did purposely contaminate the food in order to get back at the thief, instead of just talking to him about it, the talk with HR seems justified.

> Is it not always wrong to cause someone harm?

No, self defense is one reason.

And as someone that also loves super spicy foods to the point that I eat whole peppers raw, anyone that is brave enough to eat my food is welcome to try.

If your body can't take the heat, you shouldn't be eating my food.

This is no different than if a celiac food thief started eating someone elses food that contained gluten. Its not up to the person that brought food to make sure their food never contained things allergic to everyone in the office. The thief should keep their mitts off something they don't know might hurt them.

This person sounds like they had an allegic reaction to capsacin. They also hopefully learnt that stealing food might mean they'll trip up their reaction. And in the end, they learnt that filing complaints with the HR person you're sleeping with might end up with both of you being fired.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#59

Post by y04nn »

seattle_spring wrote: post #14

Kind 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.

For me it looks like HR is just trying to protect an essential/key employee of the company agains a new employee even if what has been done is unethical. Some employee may think that they can do anything because the company can't replace them.

Re: A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016)

#60

Post by tspiteri »

philip1209 wrote: post #5

IANAL, but could the person file a police report for theft, then forward it to HR to ask for their assistance in a criminal case?

I don't think the police are there to intervene in petty squabbles like lunch theft, annoying as lunch theft may be. Getting the lunch owner fired, on the other hand, is a serious matter, and firing the thief and HR because of them doing this to the lunch owner is a proportionate response.
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