I will be following this thread. I’ve wondered this myself. I used to work at a place where there was at least one notorious lunch thief. There might have been two, but we all knew who one of them was, but no one caught her in the act. We were 99% sure she was one of the thieves because she would often comment on the inappropriateness of certain people’s choice of food (she thought it was practically a crime for anyone to bring fish for lunch, even though we had a group of people who’s staple food was fish) or the fact that they didn’t eat their food on the exact day that it was brought in. It made her livid and she would argue with anyone who tried to explain that a PB&J would be just fine the next day, or that the un-opened jar of salsa was for a special treat on Tuesday.
The second person didn’t take the lunch to eat it, she would throw out people’s food because she didn’t like the contents, or didn’t like the idea that someone would dare to leave their food in the fridge over a weekend, even if the person didn’t work on that particular Friday because they were out sick, or had to attend a lunch meeting and had intended to eat that food on Monday. She seemed to feel superior to everyone else and tried to act like the lunch mommy. No one ever caught her in the act either.
It was so bad that there was even a sign placed on the refrigerator door that told people not to steal other people’s lunches. It did no good. It was too easy for these thieves to steal lunches when no one else was in the room. I suggested putting up a cheap security camera, but everyone got mad at me and thought that was mean. Mean? Why is that mean? It would have solved the problem and the speculation.
It was especially bad where we worked, because there was a whole group of people at the lower end of the pay spectrum who could barely afford to eat in the first place, and there lunches were the ones that often got stolen or thrown out.
It was so bad, that I kept a stash of food in our work area, specifically for the people that worked in our department, so they could eat if their lunch got thrown out. I had peanut butter and bread, cans of soup, ramen noodles, chips, nuts, canned tuna, and even cans of stuffed grape leaves (everybody loved those).