 He stole my food, again. So I turned his ass, into a Johnny Cash song. If you like true revenge stories, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. I create them with fleaky visuals, dipped in artificial love. In this spicy episode, we'll learn that stealing food from a coworker, could land you a free ticket, to the hottest pepper known to mankind. We start with a bold lunch thief who keeps stealing from the same employee, but falls for the old switcheroo. Then we get to meet a food-stealing coworker, who stole food from the office refrigerator, resulting his booty getting turned into a Johnny Cash song. Followed by an office lunch thief, that likes to shovel someone else's Valentine sweets into his mouth, with full palm to lips intensity. But he forgets to say hi, to the hidden nanny cam. Leaving him with a bad taste in his mouth. The last story is about another food-stealing coworker, who gets tricked, into eating the hottest pepper in the world, the Reaper Pepper. Before we rejoice and delight in these stories, when you grab something from the office fridge that isn't yours, be sure to emphasize you made extra for sharing, and offer the like button the first bite. After the like button eats the shared piece, wait for one minute to be sure it's safe to eat. Let's dive in. A sincere disclaimer for this episode, these revenge stories include use of very potent chilies. Extreme scoville units can be painful to an inhumane level, or cause some long lasting adverse effects on health, or even death. Therefore, viewer discretion is advised. These revenge acts, will definitely be upsetting to snowflakes. Nobody likes a lunch thief, and I had one of the most aggressive at my office. There were rumors for a few months leading up to the inciting incident of someone going around and taking people's lunches. Just about every day someone different would complain that their lunch was missing. It even happened to me once or twice, but I've figured hey, it's a big office. A few people are probably just careless and grab the wrong lunch and are too embarrassed to bring it back, or someone else packs their lunch and they don't know what's in there so it's not obvious they have the wrong one, or whatever. Most people just brought brown bags with their names on it anyways. Or identical Rubbermaid Tupperware with a little piece of labeled tape on the side. It was easy enough to mix it up. I had accidentally grabbed a wrong lunch once or twice, but I'd noticed before I got it open. I thought I was just more careful. Or even just not as busy. As some other people in the building. However, other people weren't as forgiving. And a quorum made complaints to HR. They were blown off. Personally, at the time, I thought it was all much fuss about nothing. But then it began. My wife enrolled in a French cooking class online and just about every day I was bringing fancy Grimond leftovers in for lunch. You'd think I was picking up A to go bag from a Michelin starred bistro on the way in each morning, she really threw herself into the coursework. There were no problems for about two weeks, maybe three, until one day my lunch went missing. Considering what delicacies I had to look forward to, I was pretty bummed out, but I did it once over around the break room and didn't see anyone eating my lunch. So figured someone grabbed my bag by accident earlier, saw how good things looked and didn't bring it back to the fridge. Looking back, I realized it really was their lucky day. I wrote the mysterious stranger off as an asshole, but accepted the loss and looked forward to dinner that night instead. The next day I write my name on my lunch in extra bold lettering, jam the bag into the back of the fridge, and feel peace of mind. Now it couldn't go wrong. Break time. I walked to the fridge and I'm anticipating my delicious meal. But behold, nope, it's gone. I was pretty upset, but I figured it was a stroke of bad luck, and left it at that. What else could I do? However, third day, out of an abundance of caution, I kept my lunch at my desk. A pain, because I had to eat it fairly early in the day to avoid spoilage, but at least I'd know where it was. I got up to take care of some business down the hall and when I came back. My lunch was gone. Unfortunately, that didn't help me narrow it down much at all, because my desk is centrally located so everyone's constantly passing by. At that point there was no possibility of the theft being arbitrary, so I approached HR and filed a complaint. Their response, practically verbatim, was, employees' lunches are their personal property and the company is not responsible for lost or stolen personal items. The following day my wife packed a cream-based soup that really had to be refrigerated. I was passing by the break room to check on my lunch practically every five minutes. Somehow it still managed to disappear. I was irate at this point and returned to HR and really blew my top. The best they could do was send a memo around about remembering to check the name on your lunch when you remove it from the fridge. But they made very clear that it was a routine memo and had no way related to my complaints. Which were not their jurisdiction. So not an admission of responsibility. Because my lunch was my own personal problem. The only suitable alternative to packing a lunch available in the building are these wretched shrink-wrapped ham and cheese sandwiches from a vending machine. They've been marinating in the heat for God knows how long and the bread is as stale as cork bored. The meat is rancid and there's glue in mayo smushed into the center. It's a relic of the old office tenants I'm pretty sure. I vented daily to my wife but her only idea was to start bringing a regular sandwich and apple again to dissuade the thief and get him to move on to other lunches. So, determined prevent this low life scum from downgrading the quality of my lunch. I hatched an elaborate plan. But hold up, life happens, and the pandemic hit. During this time I forgot all about this whole saga. I worked remotely for months and months. Then we returned, and after all that had happened globally, this was the last thing on my mind. But I got to the break room the first day back, frustrated from having to wear a suit after months of working in pajamas, sore from my desk chair. And exhausted from small talk. Only to find. My lunch was gone. This was a particularly sore point because my wife and I divorced between my last lunch and work and the present one. So I did not appreciate being reminded of any past threads involving her. I pretty much flew into a blind rage at that point. Especially seeing that stupid worthless memo about checking the lunch bag names posted in the break room, feeling so helpless, so hungry and alone as it was me and my lunch against the world. I stormed out and was determined to return the next day with a plan. Now, nothing was going to stop me. So, I came in the following day. With an empty lunch bag. And I checked closely to be sure no one was watching and I switched the contents of the HR person's lunch bag into my bag. So now their lunch appeared to be my lunch. They'd packed a regular brown bag, so I just discarded that. After this, I left and I waited. I knew this was a pretty big gamble because it was contingent on the theory that the thief was avoiding me while having lunch, but not wary of anyone else. So would he out in the open if there were no risk of bumping into me. So I made a big show of going around the office announcing that I was headed out for a meeting and I wouldn't be back until at least 3 p.m. I even went to the trouble of moving my car out of the lot to a space two streets over. Where I then sat in my car and worked remotely for several hours before sneaking into the building up the back stairway. I then sat in the stairwell just outside the break room, where you can hear chatter but can't be seen, and after about 20 to 30 minutes of waiting, I heard it. The sweetest sound I'll ever hear in the office. HR employee yelled. What the heck, Kyle, that's my lunch. Kyle responded. Nah, it's not your name on the bag. I heard the HR employee command Kyle to give up the lunch, assuming he grabbed the bag and seized my name. Kyle gets told he needs to head into the HR office for a chat. The HR rep later called me in as well and said they were aware of my break room hijinks, but it was obvious that the point still came across loud and clear. They warned me that it was a violation of policy to move another employee's lunch. It took every ounce of self-control for me to keep from retorting. I thought our lunches were our personal property and the company was not responsible for them being lost or stolen. They informed me they'd located the thief and things would be handled accordingly. But better than whatever write-up they might be able to issue Kyle, his reveal as the lunch thief occurred in front of the whole break room. So word quickly spread as to who had been stealing everyone's lunches earlier last year and he is now the office pariah. He was in line for a promotion. The promotion is indefinitely off the table. And I also earned brownie points for exposing him, though more than I'm satisfied with are being attributed to HR. At the end of the day though, I didn't do this for this credit or even the sweet revenge. I did it just to get my lunches back. This story is told from the female perspective. Before I start, I'm a longtime lurker and it's my first time sharing. This story is what happened to my darling husband and I know the people involved very well as I used to work in the same warehouse. This happened in 2018. Until April this year, my husband, let's call him Mike, worked in a warehouse for a big, international furniture company in southern Germany. He liked the work, even if it was hard labor carrying 150 kilograms, 330 pounds for the Americans, pieces of furniture around. Because of this, the staff turnover was pretty high. One of his colleagues, we will name him Steve, started at the same time as my husband. They weren't friends as Mike didn't like him, but he respected him as a hard worker. Due to customers coming at all the time. The warehouse staff didn't have required breaks, they just took their lunch break when it was possible. Some use the break room with the basic kitchen, someone out to eat, go to the supermarket on the other side of the row or did errands in the 60 minutes they had. But either way, you had to clock out and back in. This will be relevant later. Soon they realized that brought in lunches went missing from the fridge in the break room, as did sweets and drinks they had bought to share. Since it was rare that two of the workers took their break at the same time, they weren't sure who stole them. They also were not allowed to bring up a camera. So Mike and the warehouse manager decided to take matters in their own hands. Once in a while when it wasn't too busy, they decided to order food, mostly pizza, sometimes burgers. Let me add that most Germans are not accustomed to anything spicy. But my husband and I love hot, spicy food. We have a nice assortment of powders and sauces, ranging from a little tickling to, we'll turn your booty in a Johnny Cash song if you don't get that surgically removed right now. My man kept some of the sauces at work. You all know where this is heading, right? When the thefts got more and more regular, they decided to order pizza, just Mike and the manager, the others didn't want it or had something else. The pizzas got delivered and smelled delicious. Miraculously, both my husband and his manager were able to take their lunch at the same time and enjoyed their pizza, but didn't finish it. Mike had a vengeful brainwave and took out one of his sauces with a scorching 2 million Scoville. For those not familiar, regular Tabasco has about 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville. He distributed a generous amount on the leftovers, which happened to blend in perfectly with the red tomato sauce. Then they left to have a smoke and continue working. They hadn't had a chance to clock in again when Steve emerged from the break room. Running for the bathroom, had in a very nice shade of red, while gagging. When he came back out a few minutes later, he was white as a sheet, reeking of vomit and left without a word to get something to drink from the supermarket. Just then the local store's manager, boss of the warehouse manager, happened to drop by. He noticed Steve is absent and did not clock out, that's a big no-no. What nobody knew, Steve had already two write-ups for being absent without clocking out. If you get three write-ups for the very same reason, you can be terminated without notice. So when Steve returned, clutching three packs of milk closely to his chest, he achieved his third write-up and the termination was already printed and ready to be signed. Steve left immediately after this. He now works in another warehouse, where a good friend of mine is employed. Miraculously. None of their food has gone missing yet. This story is also told from the female perspective. In my position, it sucks extra hard to be confronted with a food thief, as I have food allergies, so I can't just get lunch at the cafeteria or at a nearby restaurant. On top of that, I have a new baby, who I'm breastfeeding and who I pump for when I'm at work. You know how hungry pregnant people are? Yeah, the caloric requirement for breastfeeding is 100 to 200 calories higher. I want to emphasize that I'm always hungry because I have a new baby, half the time I don't manage to show up at work with a lunch. I either run out of time to pack one. Or if I did remember, I leave it on the counter. My solution to all of this was to leave lots of non-perishable snacks in my office. Also a lot of candy, because I also have a three-year-old and therefore work is the only place I can shovel Skittles into my mouth, without a little hand extending into my field of vision and a little voice saying, Snacks that were specifically free of my allergens, some of which were specialty foods because of this. The type of specialty food that just doesn't taste as good as food that contains the allergen and also costs twice as much because I'm not getting a lot of sleep right now. I think I still deserve nice things. When I first came back from maternity leave, I assembled my snack hoard, but started having things go missing. I genuinely thought I was just losing my mind. Boxes of candy were running out faster than I thought I was eating them. I'd come in during the morning and things wouldn't be where I'd left them. At one point I brought a bag of chips to work, folded the rim of the bag down so I wasn't plunging my arm elbow deep into a grease pit and then put a bag clip on it when I went home. And when I came in the next morning, the bag was unrolled and re-clipped. I went, wow, I must be more tired than I thought, rolled the bag back down and the next morning it was unrolled again. Just little things like that. Almost every day that made me go, wow, the post baby brain is worse than I thought. And then it happened. I got the flu and I was out for a whole week. Left behind at the office was an almost full box of enjoy life cookies, which are not enjoyable but are free of all major allergens and are also $5 a box for like 12 sad little sand pies with some cinnamon on top. I ate one row of these cookies and then I was out of the office for a week, for one week. I was not eating any of my snack hoard, but someone else was because I came back to work, opened my box of cookies and found one. There was one single solitary cookie left. And on further examination, the one box of candy that had been opened was nowhere to be found. On top of that, the thief had done me the courtesy of opening a new box for me, except that they actually followed the push here to open instructions instead of just ripping one end of the box open like I do, which they should damn well know at this point because by this time, they'd been stealing from me for two goddamn months. I went to my boss and got some vague promises about checking if the security cameras in my wing of the building are functional or not. The sheer freaking audacity it takes to open a new box so you can continue stealing from someone. On top of the consumption of almost a whole box of specialty cookies that aren't even good. This enraged me enough that I went straight to Amazon and ordered myself a nanny cam, not for my baby, for my snack hoard. Conveniently, it arrived the day before Valentine's Day. I set it up on top of a file cabinet looking down at my desk. On the desk, I laid out a fantastic spread of bait snacks. I got all my thief's favorites and then I took it one step further. I bought myself a Valentine heart, broke the seal to make it more inviting and left it out on my desk. The next morning, I came into some very obvious snack carnage. My thief had slowly been getting more brazen, but this was just on another level. Individually wrapped things had been dumped out of their boxes. Bits of packaging had been thrown away. And, yep, they eaten some of the Valentine candy. For shame, office thief. Don't you know that's from someone who loves me? I really need to get this off my chest again, who opens a new box of something and also opens it differently than the person they are stealing from? What kind of person are you? So now it was my time to have a little party. And I played back the video. All was quiet throughout most of the evening. And I was just watching the shadows lengthen as the sun slowly set through the hallway window. And then, shortly before midnight, it happened. The night janitor arrived. He went right ahead and took a 12 minute break in my office, sitting in my chair, eating my food. I started taking screenshots. I got him shoveling candy into his mouth with full palm to lips intensity, pouring things out onto the desk to pick his favorite flavors. Not even bothering to put them back where he found them. And yes, eating my goddamn Valentine's candy. Screenshots went directly to my boss in an email. I went directly to my boss's door to hover and grin and asked if he'd read my email. And I got assurances of a strongly worded email to the cleaning company and the barring of this particular employee from our place of business. I was also tactfully asked to please take my unauthorized spy camera home, which I did. I thought this was over until the girl who works the concession stand dropped by to thank me. Apparently, the food thief would start his shift just as she was closing down for the night and would try to get free coffee in that creepy guy way. And then one of the reception staff came by with the same sentiments. I'd never met the guy face to face, but apparently as a woman, it was not a fun experience to have. I'd shown my screenshots to a few coworkers and word had spread fast. I worked an earlier shift, so I didn't recognize him, but people whose shifts overlapped with his did. I hadn't told my husband about what I'd done because when I came home raging about the blatant theft that had gone on while I'd had the flu, his only response had been, you really shouldn't be leaving food at work then. But when I came home with the nanny cam and explained where and why I'd gotten it, his reaction surprised me. He actually said, you know, I think this is the first time I've seen you stand up for yourself. I'm proud of you. You know what, dear vengeful listeners, I'm proud of me too. About three years ago, I was working in a pretty big factory. They hired through five different temp services, so the place was pretty much like a revolving door. People came and left without any warning. Sometimes it was hard just to find a familiar face. So when someone started stealing my lunches, everyone became a suspect. After falling victim to the lunchbox bandit for a week straight, I'm talking about six 12-hour days with no lunch. Needless to say, the frustration spawned several evil plans, but I felt the Carolina Reaper would give me the fastest and most effective results. All I knew was people were gonna think twice before stealing lunches. I spent all night making the best steak fajitas for lunch the next day. I finally minced the Reaper peppers into a nice pico de gallo and topped my double fajitas off. I carefully placed my fajitas into a Tupperware bowl, garnished them with cilantro and limes, then covered them with a clear lid to display their beauty. The next morning, I put the bowl in the fridge at work and joined the inviting scene I created for a moment before closing it. After, I went about my day, about an hour after I placed them in the fridge. A woman started screaming for help. I ran to the lunchroom to find the lunchbox bandit laying on the floor gasping for air. The Reaper peppers triggered an asthma attack and he had to be rushed to the hospital. He never said anything. And neither did I until now. Thank you for enjoying this episode, which was made with artificial love. Subscribe to receive future episodes and tickle the like button for good karma. Do you have any experiences surrounding this topic? Share yours below, I'll join the conversation. And I'll be seeing you in the next one.