
A coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me (2016) - ColinWright
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html
======
wcoenen
This 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...](http://www.askamanager.org/2017/05/im-in-a-
dominantsubmissive-relationship-can-i-wear-a-collar-to-work.html)

~~~
cfadvan
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!

~~~
icebraining
How do you know people are taking it at face value? I don't even see why it's
relevant whether it's true or not.

~~~
cfadvan
_How do you know people are taking it at face value?_

...The dozens of comments taking it at face value?

 _I don 't even see why it's relevant whether it's true or not._

If it isn’t true how is it relevant to anything?

~~~
icebraining
_...The dozens of comments taking it at face value?_

Just because you're discussing it seriously doesn't mean you take it at face
value. Just look at discussions about fictional works, particularly SF.

 _If it isn’t true how is it relevant to anything?_

It's just food for thought and discussion. Is it relevant whether Schrödinger
actually put a cat in a box?

~~~
ebbv
This is the lamest argument I've seen in a while.

It's clearly being presented as a true story by the original source. If it's
not true it's not food for any kind of thought it's just a really badly
written and stupid short story. Stop trying to justify lying.

~~~
icebraining
I sincerely don't get that position. We've been presented with a story;
whether that story actually happened in unknowable. So how can it possibly
affect the story's quality as food for thought?

I'm feeling like Brian:
[https://youtu.be/9czBBKof7Yo?t=1m30s](https://youtu.be/9czBBKof7Yo?t=1m30s)

~~~
ebbv
How can it possibly have any value whatsoever if it's not real?

If it's real you can wonder ok what motivated actual people to behave in this
way, what actually happened?

If it is made up (which it almost certainly is because it's so far fetched and
ridiculous) then it has zero value. There's nothing worth thinking about here
or discussing if it didn't actually happen. Like I said it's just a really
poorly written short story.

You don't discuss literature the same way you discuss journalism. I can't
believe you don't already know that?

------
jobowoo
There's an update to the original post. What a lovely ending to the story.

[http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-
stole-m...](http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-my-
spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html)

~~~
pm90
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.

~~~
yannyu
What "records"? Unless he filed for unemployment, the only other people who
would know would be his employers.

~~~
toomuchtodo
And employers rarely confirm anything other than hire and seperation dates
during reference calls due to liability/litigation risks.

~~~
garmaine
In fact, they are legally prevented from sharing such information, if it
existed, in many states.

------
seattle_spring
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.

~~~
cortesoft
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.

~~~
dpeck
| There are all sorts of ways you could accidentally eat someone else's lunch

Want to give us some examples?

~~~
cortesoft
Sure! I have worked in a lot of offices over the years, and most of these have
actually happened at least once:

\- Someone tells another coworker they can have their lunch, but they grab the
wrong one (because the tag fell off or they didn't see the label)

\- Someone says there is leftover food available in the kitchen after some
catered meal, and the person didn't realize that container wasn't part of it.

\- A new employee got confused about which refrigerator is the 'office stocked
one' and which one is the 'personal items one'

\- It was fridge cleaning day, and the person thought the food was getting
tossed out anyway, so they ate it. Turns out the person was going to eat it
that day (this one is borderline, not only because it is kinda gross but also
kinda not cool)

\- Two people had similar lunches and they just grabbed the wrong one without
paying a ton of attention (much more common when a group of people go out to
lunch together and come back with leftovers)

\- A loose, packaged food item got knocked over and fell into someone else's
food container.

Some of these are probably pretty rare, but I have seen many of them happen.

------
lkrubner
One 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 if they realize they sound crazy? I can imagine a few possibilities:

1.) Possibly they feel that they won a concession by getting me to shift from
"two months" to "maybe 6 weeks" and they think they will get more concessions
from me if they just keep pretending that two weeks is the only allowed
answered?

2.) Is it a threat? What are they are going to do when we miss the obviously
impossible deadline?

3.) Are they pretending to be serious about two weeks, or do they really think
it is possible? Perhaps they are paranoid and they think that every worker is
lying to them all the time?

I run into deeply irrational behavior at work all the time. I find the amount
of it to be surprising. I was thinking about this when I wrote "The accusation
that you are irrational -- is it the truth, or a manipulative power play" but
there I focused on personal situations, and I mostly leave is as an exercise
to the reader to imagine how it extends to work situations.

[http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-accusation-
that-y...](http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-accusation-that-youre-
irrational-truth-or-manipulative-power-play)

~~~
icebraining
By answering "Maybe 6 weeks", you just validated their belief that the full
project deadline is negotiable, and so now they're just bargaining from a
position of power.

~~~
rlayton2
This is the correct answer. When making a concession like this, always take
something away. "We can do the website in 6 weeks, but we will have to remove
the ability for users to upvote". If that doesn't sit well, send a list of the
features, along with their timeframes and ask them to choose which features to
cut.

You still get the irrational answers back though unfortunately, but it is a
more balanced position.

------
cyberferret
My 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.

------
mathieuh
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.

~~~
LandR
I work in a shared working space, it's just me using my stuff yet the amount
of milk, tea bags and sugar I get through and have to keep buying... Even
tried labelling it yet people just to go to fridge or cupboard and help
themselves... It's so annoying.

~~~
mmanfrin
To be fair, if I saw milk in the fridge of a coworking space, I would guess it
was communal.

------
1_800_UNICORN
The update is far more delicious than the original:
[http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-
spicy...](http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-spicy-food-
got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html)

I'm not sure that the original advice given was ideal. I'd recommend
consulting with a lawyer first before giving any information to HR given that
OPs job was at risk. But I'm happy for OP that it all worked out in the end.

~~~
toss1
Very cool ending

I was just about to start typing about potential legal action -- the thief
basically admitted the theft (despite HR stating" there's no evidence of
theft"...)

Totally agree with the other poster that lunch theft should be a firing
offense, as, if they're not honest about that, they're not honest.

------
minimaxir
Reddit's /r/legaladvice subreddit has had a lot of interesting corporate
mismanagement stories lately (with the typical take-with-a-grain-of-salt
caveat).

There was a recent "poisoning" case where instead the OP was the victim
([https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/89wgwm/tricked...](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/89wgwm/tricked_into_eating_something_i_dont_eat_at_work/)),
commenters found out the perpetrator _posted in the subreddit before_
([https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8825e8/threw_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8825e8/threw_an_employee_a_baby_shower_now_being/)),
and the outcome is just as satisfying
([https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8d0z1u/tricked...](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8d0z1u/tricked_into_eating_something_at_work_update/)).

~~~
Giroflex
So the perpetrator's thread has a lot of deleted posts which are invisible
now.

This link makes them show up again:
[https://www.removeddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8825e8/thr...](https://www.removeddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8825e8/threw_an_employee_a_baby_shower_now_being/)

------
walrus01
Both the original and the update read like somebody's college English class
creative fiction writing assignment.

~~~
ac29
I'm fairly sure most of the stuff on ask a manager is complete fiction, or at
least heavily, heavily rewritten. Pretty much everything has the same writing
style.

------
wgerard
My guess is this falls under the same purview as booby-trapping your house:
Yeah, they're committing a felony by breaking into your house, but you're not
allowed to setup a "Home Alone" defense system (if nothing else because first
responders might need to get into your home).

It's dumb in this case because the "booby trap" likely isn't one at all, but
at a very cursory glance I could buy that someone would make their lunch
exceptionally spicy to thwart a would-be thief - in the same vein that people
might suggest laxatives, etc.

Anyway, I'm surprised people don't just have locked lunchboxes or something
like that.

~~~
aqme28
Exactly how I read it.

Except it wasn't a booby trap. It's like a thief complaining because they
crashed the car they stole from you.

~~~
wgerard
> It's like a thief complaining because they crashed the car they stole from
> you.

To take this further: It's a bit like they crashed the stolen car because you
cut the brake lines in anticipation of someone stealing it (a bit extreme
obviously, but just bear with me).

Which is interesting: I actually wonder whether you would be found at least
civilly liable in that instance.

~~~
aqme28
Not really. Spiciness isn't at all at the same level as cut brake lines, and
it wasn't done in anticipation of anything

It's more like you have a manual transmission, and your thief crashed because
they only know an automatic.

------
jessaustin
_Your company’s HR is terrible._

One suspects this could be written on every occasion.

~~~
hughes
I think it bears repeating that HR exists to protect the _company_ , not the
_employee_. Often, an interaction with HR will work out terribly for the
employee when HR is acting in the company's best interests.

That's not the case here though. They're just terrible.

~~~
projectileboy
I've been berated by people (especially HR people) for giving this advice, but
I couldn't agree with this more. HR _does not exist to help the employee,
period._ Because they manage benefits, it's easy to get confused and think of
them as your advocate, but they are not. If you have an issue in the
workplace, you first must figure out what to do, and _then_ you talk to HR. It
should be your last step.

------
cwkoss
Be sure to read the update at the bottom of the article:
[http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-
stole-m...](http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-my-
spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html)

Looks like the situation worked out fairly well in the end.

------
rmason
This story is a sign of the times. I was in second grade and some kid was
picking my lock and stealing my lunch every single day. My Mother made a lunch
laced with laxatives. Truth be told she overdid it.

As a result I found out who was stealing my lunch. The kid spent the entire
afternoon in the bathroom. We never exchanged words but he told his friends
that I wasn't someone to be messed with at all.

Today his parents probably would have sued and tried to get me kicked out of
school but this was a much more innocent time.

------
avs733
I'm reaching the point where I don't think people should be allowed to
interact with each other.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Yet here you are, using HN to interact with us...

~~~
strictnein
Pretty sure you're all just markov chain bots.

~~~
twinkletwinkle
No robot, no robot. You're the robot!

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Tell me what you really feel.

------
ebbv
I don’t believe this story, especially with the update. It makes it even less
believable.

It seems a lot more likely this site made this insane story up to drive
traffic.

And it’s from 2016.

------
rdtsc
Even 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.

------
a-dub
heh. i recently left a pretty toxic environment. about six weeks after i left
i got a text message receipt from the restaurant across the street from the
old workplace.

apparently someone actually punched in my phone number and redeemed my loyalty
points for a free meal.

------
wl78393
If you crowd rats together in a small cage (the modern open office) they will
start irrationally attacking and abusing each other. 95% of office dysfunction
can be explained by this.

~~~
dredmorbius
John B Calhoun's "utopia" experiments.

[https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Escaping+the+Laboratory%3a+th...](https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Escaping+the+Laboratory%3a+the+rodent+experiments+of+John+B.+Calhoun+%26...-a0197666893)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun)

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM)

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-
utopi...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-
inspired-the-rats-of-nimh)

------
nathanaldensr
A couple of jobs ago, I had just come back from some time off. I was sitting
in my cube working when a co-worker I had never met came into my cube, reached
past me, and grabbed a tissue from my tissue box without asking. If you think
that's bad, it's nothing compared to what he said: "Thanks, I've been stealing
these!"

I wish I were kidding.

I've had co-workers steal my and my desk-mates' gum before, too, at the same
job.

~~~
Pinckney
Huh, it never would have occurred to me to see that as inappropriate. If my
coworkers are sick, I want them using tissues rather than spreading their
germs around.

Tissues cost what, $0.01 each anyway?

~~~
nathanaldensr
It's inappropriate because they are my personal property. The company did not
provide tissues to employees. They were partially behind my monitor, so that
person went out of their way to find them and use them. Combined with their
arrogant taking of them with me present, yes, I'd say I had every right to be
cross.

------
49bc
> _Right now I’m working in the previous position with almost double my
> paycheck, so it’s a great turnaround._

I don't know if this was a good idea. You've signaled to your company that
you're willing and able to take legal action against them. How long will your
employment last when your neck is sticking out 2x farther than your coworkers
and there's a layoff coming around?

~~~
sverige
If they really doubled the paycheck, then the writer can presumably pay off
debt and begin saving up a rainy day fund so that any layoff will be taken in
stride.

------
philip1209
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?

~~~
tspiteri
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.

~~~
LyndsySimon
That’s exactly why they’re there. Would you say the same if the lunch was
shoplifted from a business?

------
apandhi
The update to the post can be found here:
[http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-
stole-m...](http://www.askamanager.org/2016/10/update-a-coworker-stole-my-
spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html)

TLDR: Guy gets his job back and a generous raise (almost double his paycheck)
after getting fired and threatening legal action.

~~~
SwellJoe
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.

~~~
pjc50
That's what at-will employment means. Really he was fired for crossing the
power structure of the office, which is always a disaster even if it's a
secret power structure.

------
ibejoeb
>You are not required to make sure that your own personal lunch doesn’t
contain anything that might offend a coworker’s palate

If current trends hold, enjoy this while it lasts.

------
Adamantcheese
Needs a [2016] flag.

------
z3t4
The story reminds me of burglar suing the house owner and win, because slipped
on his way out ...

------
jlebrech
Let's say you have a particular illness that required a particular supplement
that could be added to food, if that food is stolen and causes discomfort,
that case could be proven in court if you have a diagnosis telling you to add
it to your food.

------
ndthr
Seems like a made up story to seed conversations.

------
sh4z
Well, 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?

~~~
seattle_spring
> 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?

~~~
sh4z
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.

~~~
dchapp
Maybe it is "always wrong" given a particularly rigid and simplistic code of
ethics, but in American society at least we are very comfortable with the
notion of causing deserved harm (whether physical, financial, or merely
emotional) to wrongdoers as a deterrent to others.

~~~
syshum
I hope you do not actaully think that is way things are or the law works
because it does not.

In the US the law allows for you to make the case of self defense, it is a
defense for violations of the law. I.E. it is always illegal to kill someone,
but it is a defense if you kill someone who was trying to kill you..

Things like bobby traps, or poisoning your food against a thief would not be
legal under American law. For example I can not setup a series of Automated
Gun Turrents in my home to kill anyone that breaks in, but I could (in some
states) shoot someone myself if they break in.

In a food theft case as an individual could in fact assault someone possibly
even commit battery against someone in order to prevent the from stealing my
lunch but I could not say put bobby trap that could cause physical harm to
them on the lunch

~~~
dchapp
I certainly understand that it's not legal to turn your house, nor your lunch,
into a deathtrap. Nor at any point did I claim that any particular kind of
action was legal. I said that Americans generally feel that we're collectively
justified in harming certain kinds of people. That's not a claim about
legality. That's a claim about how a subset of the population _feels_.

My use of "we" was merely meant to indicate that our society, through the
apparatus of our legislators, has decided that our society is justified in
doing harm to certain classes of people and has set up mechanisms for doing
this. I was not using "we" in the "me and my immediate peers" sense.

