I once had a problem with somebody stealing my sandwich (occasionally) at work. After the third time, I started bringing in liver sausage, strong yellow onion, and hot mustard on pumpernickel (which is actually one of my all time favorites). Well, the second night, at break, my sandwich was gone. My lunch was never touched again.

I hate passive aggressiveness. I’ve had my lunch stolen, but I handled it completely differently. In response I took a baseball bat to Iris, the sweet septagenarian lonely heart in document processing. I knew she had nothing to do with it, but hey: everybody got the message.

I have a friend who loves hot foods.... VERY hot foods. When lunches were going missing from his company’s fridge, he started making himself sandwiches with his own specially-prepared mustard.

The thief ended up in the nurse’s office and my friend was called into some sort of arbitration for “deliberately” planting food meant to do harm.

He brought in his mustard and showed that his sandwiches were really his intended lunch by eating a spoonful. The thief then claimed it wasn’t the same mustard and also ate a spoonful… and ended up back in the nurse’s care.

At my company, no one seems to steal other folks’ food but we DO occasionally cook for each other.