'Not a word was said, but my food stopped disappearing': Hospital employee stops coworker from stealing his food by using a classic dog training trick

Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor

Sep 1, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

Us humans like to think we are the smartest living organisms on the planet. We have self-awareness (although some Karens I meet, I'm not so sure they do), and we keep evolving to make our society more and more advanced. However, the thing is, deep down, we are still just a bunch of wild animals. Sure, we decided one day to walk upright and start communicating clearer to each other, but we still have most of that basic animalistic wiring.

So that's why it is so funny when a training trick used usually on animals worked so well on a human. A Redditor recently shared how he was able to get his annoying coworker to stop stealing his snacks. He worked at a VA hospital and it was always very busy. Some days he wouldn't even be able to stop working for lunch. So he made sure to be well stocked on snacks to tie him over. Nuts are a great choice for a snack—they're healthy, full of protein to keep you full, and to give your body a little energy kick. However, when he'd go to snack on his nuts, he'd notice that most of them were missing. He tried finding the culprit, but couldn't. He tried moving his snacks, but somehow the nut-thief was still able to find his snacks and eat them up. After the coworker opened up a new can of nuts and ate more than half of them, he decided enough was enough.

So how do you get an animal to stop chewing on things you don't want them to chew on? Sour apple spray! Any dog trainer or anybody who has raised a puppy, knows about sour apple spray. You spray it on the object you don't want your pet to chew on and it deters them from chewing on them. So OP decided to take a handful of nuts, soak them in this sour apple spray, and put them back in the can.

When he checked the can later, he saw half the nuts were chewed up and spit out. That means whoever the nut-thief was got a mouth full of dog training sour apple spray. He never finds out who the annoying coworker was, but the classic dog training trick seemed to work and he never had his snacks stolen again. Win!