Something I always thought was really funny is how wild and ruthless office lunchrooms can be. Alan usually brings his lunch, but he recently told me about this one day when he went out and got a big meatball sub. He ate half of it, wrote his name on the other half, and stashed it in the fridge. When he went to eat the other half the next day… it was gone! He didn’t even use a knife to neatly slice it in half either, so someone totally ate his sandwich with bite marks all over it.
The funny/scary thing is that I hear stories like this all the time. When I worked in L.A., my friend Tiffany left her Jamba Juice in the cafeteria freezer with a clean straw poking out of the top. When she came back to get it, someone had already taken a sip! Another time, someone told me he had been heating up a frozen burrito when he left for a few minutes to go check his email. When he came back, he found his burrito with a huge bite taken out of the corner. It makes me laugh just thinking about what that must be like to come back and find your burrito all amiss. (Wouldn’t it make you want to look around for hidden cameras?)
It also begs the question: who are these people?? Every time I tell this story, everyone agrees, Yes, who are these people? So no one’s owning up to it, but there has to be someone out there stealthily eating all these burritos and subs and washing it all down with fruit smoothies. When I meet that person, I’ll have to ask, What would you do if you got caught?
(top image via The Sartorialist; bottom image via Whole Living)
This is a huge pet peeve of mine! This happens all the time at my work too. Usually it's little things like yogurt but sometimes it's not. If you put your name on it then it's usually safe so I take a black sharpie to anything I bring in. It's so annoying when you are looking forward to eating something only to find out that it's gone! I have no idea who these people are but they must be stopped. 🙂
This is just crazy! Luckily I have never had anything like this happen to me and I can honestly say I would never eat someone else's lunch. Wow!
I'm in an office where I think I must be the only person who packs her lunch. Sometimes I feel like an outcast because everyone else grabs fast food, etc. but when I'm trying to eat healthy and watch my budget, eating out with coworkers just doesn't work for me.
Do most people pack where you work?
There was a brilliant story on the news about this a couple weeks back… I forget what city it was in, but there was a COP who ended up getting arrested (or maybe just given a stern talking-to & the embarrassment of national media coverage) for consistently eating his fellow officers' food! They set up a camera to catch him!
BK, I agree! looking forward to eating something only to find it's already eaten is the worst! (especially when you're really hungry)
alittleoldfashioned, we're super spoiled at work because we have catered lunches every day!
lcb, that's INSANE! and hilarious. thanks for sharing!
This made me laugh! I've never heard of this happening at my workplace before but i can just imagine the horror find me sandwich half eaten by someone else.
I wouldn't eat someone else's lunch. But if I were to and I got caught, I would say "oh, so-and-so said that I could have his Jamba Juice. I totally thought this was it. I'm so sorry!"