Tired of their office lunch being stolen every day, they packed it differently — and it finally stopped the ‘lazy’ microwave thief
You meet all kinds of people at your workplace, including the ones who just get on your nerves with their strange habits. A Reddit user who goes by u/mysticloud21 shared an incident on Thursday, January 15, 2026, involving a similar personality at their office. The colleague kept stealing portions of everybody's lunch, mostly theirs. However, they managed to put an end to it in their own way. They did not confront anyone, nor did they escalate the issue to management. Instead, they decided to pack their lunch “in the most inconvenient way possible.”
Office microwave thief stopped when I made it inconvenient, not spicy
byu/mysticloud21 inpettyrevenge
It was a small office, which had a shared fridge and a single microwave, according to the post. The food had been going missing for a while, and almost everyone was done with it. “Everyone complained, nobody ever caught the person, and management did the usual email about labels and respecting others,” the user mentioned. The thefts weren’t obvious enough to catch someone, as they would not steal the meals entirely but would return half-eaten or take the “good part,” and then pack them back as if nothing had happened. 
Several coworkers complained about the continuous theft, but the problem still continued. What frustrated the user more was that their lunch box was targeted most of the time. “I got tired of it because it was always my food that went missing, probably because I cooked things that smelled good,” they explained. Instead of using the usual office tricks like adding hot sauce or laxatives, they decided to pack their lunch in multiple boxes, which are mostly used for sauces. And it worked. They split it into six or seven tiny containers. “Rice in one, chicken in another, sauce in two, veggies in another, and I taped all of them together with painter's tape so it looked like a weird brick.” On top, they left a handwritten note: “If you open this, you have to re-tape it the same way.”
When they returned to the office the next day, they found the tape cut and the small containers scattered inside the fridge, but nothing had been taken out. The following day, the taped “brick” was left completely untouched. The user revealed, “After about a week, my food stopped being targeted completely.” Their solution turned out to be simple yet effective. However, they admitted that this added extra effort on their part, but for them, “it worked without poisoning anyone or starting a big office drama.” They believed the thief was “just lazy, and my lunch stopped being an easy win.”
The post quickly gained traction on Reddit, with users sharing their opinions and personal experiences. “When food theft happened in our office, HR refused to put cameras in the kitchen, but someone put a spy camera hidden in a clock anyway. One day, a [sic] woman’s picture was plastered all over the office showing her stealing someone else’s lunch,” commented u/Granadafan. u/CoderJoe1 said, “Glad you solved it, but that's gotta be the least satisfying conclusion to a food thief story.” u/vandon said, “I'm not sure this is petty revenge. This is just making your situation harder and does nothing to the thief.”
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