20+ Fridge thieves who helped themselves to lunch: 'He was expressly forbidden from being in the break room ever again'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Feb 25, 2025 5:00 PM EST

Imagine having a coworker who takes a little bit of everyone else's lunch, but then is also the loudest to complain about it! One person did just that: he would steal a little bit from each coworker's lunch, then loudly whine about how terrible it was that they were "all" getting stolen from. At least when that person got caught, they were swiftly shunned by the entire workplace! 

No matter how hungry you are, stealing from your coworkers is just bad form. I think some people like the thrill of the theft, though. There must be a certain thrill in pilfering the clementines of the dude who sits next to you plus the pasta salad that the accountant brought in and making yourself a de facto lunch. It's also just very cringe and sad. Even if they can't afford food, there are food pantries where they could get free meals! You can't just have sticky fingers whenever you decide you're ready for a treat. 

Check out the stories of workplace food thefts below, especially the "monkey thieves" story! 

Next, check out these oddly designed items made for people with questionable taste, leading one person to muse, "Can't decide if I love them or hate them." 

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10472537344
    via Monika Borys For Unsplash+
  • 02
    People of Reddit who have had to deal with a fridge thief, what kind of petty revenge finally made them stop?
    via u/Barkhorn501JFW
  • 03
    8MAC Used to live in Barbados with my parents. Dad was on a construction project down there. Lots of monkeys about. On island everyone left their doors open most of the day. It was a trusting area, but sometimes wildlife would wander in. Sometimes when we would come home there would be monkeys raiding our fridge.
    via u/8MAC
  • 04
    It was common after they learned to open the fridge door. They would bolt if we came home while they were pillaging, grabbing and dragging whatever they could grab during their escape. One day we returned to see them dragging the fridge out the balcony door. The fridge was on it's side and in the doorway when we came in.
    via u/8MAC
  • 05
    The monkeys all ran when they saw us. I assume they thought it was some sort of magic food producing box. How disappointed would they have been if they had succeeded in stealing it only to find it was no longer getting restocked with food? To stop them we got a dog. Pretty simple.
    via u/8MAC
  • 06
    PostltFrustrations My old roommate would constantly steal my food. Started keeping all my dry or canned food in my room, and switched all of my fridge foods with plant based options.
    via u/PostltFrustrations
  • 07
    Except my chicken nuggets. Those have to be chicken. So, since he was a "manly man" I started buying only dinosaur chicken nuggets. Or Hello Kitty when our store had those. Mr. Manly didn't steal my food, anymore. And I actually like tofu, so it worked out.
    via u/PostltFrustrations
  • 08
    scockd At my last job there was a serial lunch thief. Among countless other meals belonging to countless other people, b stole my half peanut butter only (no jelly) sandwich once. She only stopped when she finally got caught in the act. She was humiliated. Then, suddenly, the lunch theft stopped.
    via u/scockd
  • 09
    fu... There's was a guy who used to steal from peoples lunches at the store I used to work in, I never had food so I didn't get to upset about it, but everyone else would get so angry, because this person would manage, every day, to take something from every single persons lunch! People began thinking it was me because I never had food to begin
    via u/fuzzyoctopus97
  • 10
    with, which immediately p ed me off. There's was so much arguing every night, before finally, idiot was caught in the act, it was the guy who was always the loudest every night about how whoever it was stole his sandwich! The one who tried the hardest to get everyone to blame me! Everyone yelled at him and he ended up getting punched in the face and shoved out the back door. He didn't actually
    via u/fuzzyoctopus97
  • 11
    end up getting fired, but he was expressly forbidden from being in the break room ever again, and no one wanted anything to do with him, no one would switch shifts with him, or cover, and our manager refused him nearly every time he asked for a day off, and gave him a J sporadic schedule, he eventually quit.
    via u/fuzzyoctopus97
  • 12
    RemorsefulSurvivor Piece of foil in the sandwich. If anybody asks, you put it there to prevent soggy bread
    via u/RemorsefulSurvivor
  • 13
    TooMad I like spicy food so I would probably just kick the heat up on something to the edge of my limits.
    via u/TooMad
  • 14
    [deleted] Well, this is pretty f I think but: ed up I had a roommate who was constantly eating my food. Like, in front of me. Just felt totally entitled to like, a sip of milk or a bowl of cereal any time. She'd just use my stuff and then say "oh sorry I'll replace it" never do it, and then later offer me a beer or some wine or
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    something which I think to her made us "even." One of the more extreme examples would be the time I came home from work with my girlfriend expecting to be able to make dinner and found she'd eaten / totally mangled an entire rotisserie chicken. Now, we had a significant number of other issues that I could get into but, let's just
    via u/[deleted]
  • 16
    say they were significant enough for me to be willing to risk her health. Just a little. Like a tiny bit. One day I go to the fridge. after being away for a few days and discover the milk is just, rank. Coincidentally, our garbage disposal was f ed up and our sink wasn't draining and since she'd discovered that on Saturday and it was now Sunday and it wasn't an
    via u/[deleted]
  • 17
    "emergency" no one was coming until the next day. I'm like f ...I'll just leave this in the fridge until tomorrow when I can dump it. If I just leave it in the trash outside it will smell horrible (you had to bring the cans through the house out to the front curb on trash nights) and leaving it in the trash inside is just a complete non-option. So I leave it in the fridge.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 18
    Here is the petty revenge part. I thought about leaving a note on it. I thought about writing on the actual carton. I thought about texting her. But then I thought...that means I'm saying "I know you use my stuff and it's fine." So I didn't leave a note or text her. | go up to my room and get really high and fall asleep. Woke up to the sound of her gagging in the kitchen.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 19
    Came down and was like "what's wrong" and she's like "the milk is bad and I just put it in my cereal and drank it!" And then she dumped it into the sink. The sink that didn't work. I was like "Oh ya I knew about that but, because that sink doesn't work I couldn't dump it. Sorry it's mine I just didn't think you'd use it you
    via u/[deleted]
  • 20
    know? You should figure out how to clean that once you're feeling better...the plumber is definitely not gonna want to work with that all over the place."
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    -Please fix! 心 I ate apple. your
    via Curated Lifestyle For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 22
    PM_ME_UR_PITTIE Every Friday at work, we had free pizza for the entire office. A very high up employee would quickly run into the room, take all the leftovers, place them in the fridge with a label on it declaring it his. We first started slowly taking slices out. The next week, he taped the box shut with a bigger label. So, we untaped
    via u/PM_ME_UR_PITTIE
  • 23
    the box, removed all the pizza and filled it with printer paper to be close to the original weight, retaped and left it. He went home with his "pizza", opened it and was greeted by a box of white 8x11.5" paper. We had a company wide email the next day demanding who filled the box with paper.
    via u/PM_ME_UR_PITTIE
  • 24
    k1rage Haribo SUGAR FREE Classic Gummi Bears
    via u/k1rage
  • 25
    Macabalony I was a temp at memory care facility. All of the CNA's would steal food. Switched over to spinach and carrots for lunch. No one wanted to steal that.
    via u/Macabalony
  • 26
    velour_m My roommate used to drink my gatorades and eat my chips and stuff, without asking. So I went into the shower and squeezed all his shampoo into the drain. LL F you, Matt.
    via u/velour_m*****
  • 27
    nicoal123 For the roommate thief, I got myself a mini fridge I could put in my room, then put a lock on my bedroom door. Worth every penny. That fridge lasted 20 years, long after I needed roommates to make rent. I used it later on for sodas and beer.
    via u/nicoal123
  • 28
    ShawshankROO Not me but my brother. Had a guy continuously steal just his sandwich/main dish of his lunch but nothing else. So he went and got thai food for lunch and asked the nice grandmotherly lady who ran the shop to give him the hottest noodles they could make. After lunch is
    via u/ShawshankROO
  • 29
    coworker couldnt leave the toilet and had to be sent home on sick leave for the rest of the day. My brothers lunch never got stolen again after that lol
    via u/ShawshankROO
  • 30
    OnceUponW My husband would ask me to brew tea or make a certain flavor koolaid and would end up drinking all of whatever i made for myself. Say he wanted cherry, id make cherry for him and grape for myself and he drank the grape. So i bought a bag of splenda+fiber (1g fiber for every teaspoon). He
    via u/OnceUponW**
  • 31
    requested blue raspberry. Made it like normal. I made orange, his least favorite, with the splenda. He drank almost a gallon in one day. Then he accused me of poisoning him. I told him to stop drinking all my
    via u/OnceUponW**
  • 32
    tea or koolaid or juice and drink what HE ASKED FOR or i was about to "poison" everything he ate. He leaves my stuff alone now.
    via u/OnceUponW**
  • 33
    [deleted] For a while I had to put blue food colouring in my milk at work to keep someone from stealing it. It seemed to work.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 34
    rgelmis I am currently dealing with this. Considering putting half a can of my dog's wet food in a Tupperware container and waiting.
    via u/rgelmis
  • 35
    twopacktuesday swapped in gympie gympie. leaves instead of the kale in the salad.
    via u/twopacktuesday
  • 36
    UBsamsongz My grandpa would always steal my food. And he's one to make dumb food like cutting an apple up into his chicken enchiladas. So he basically has no taste buds. Anyway, I had half a subway sandwich I didn't want. I put a solid tablespoon of "Mad Dog Silver Bullet Edition" hot
    via u/UBsamsongz
  • 37
    sauce in there. It's like 700,000 scoville units or something crazy. Pretty sure he ate the whole thing. But I'm also pretty sure he suffered the consequences too.
    via u/UBsamsongz
  • 38
    CamoCoveSNIPER Had a person every year on my birthday take a squared piece of cake from the center of a round cake and finally just ordered alarm of Amazon that sirens whenever moved and put it on the box inside the freezer because I knew it wouldn't be long before it was touched. About 10 minutes later while I'm playing my games I hear it go off and
    via u/CamoCoveSNIPER
  • 39
    look out to see my brother eating the thing. (My rooms under the stairs and right next to the kitchen.) And flip my sh at him for doing this year after year. He basically tells me whatever and goes into another room. This is were I decide to f with him. He's recently started eating salads and I thought that would be a good thing to f with. I opened the fridge and searched for some super
    via u/CamoCoveSNIPER
  • 40
    spicy hot sauce. Stuff I knew would basically f his throat. And waited. About 2 hours later he's preping the salad and I grab the bottle and wait for him to move away from it. Finally 2 minutes into him making it he goes over to the fridge and looks for the ranch dressing (don't know why he likes it on his salad but then again I don't eat the sh) and proceed to directly dump about a mouth full in
    via u/CamoCoveSNIPER
  • 41
    there and grab the bowl and rock the bowl around mixing everything inside then asking if it was his. He said yes so I put it down and said "oh ok thought someone just left it there and was gonna throw it out" and went into my room. He finishes his prep and proceeds upstairs to his room. About 5 minutes later I hear a scream and cries from upstairs. I run up to see
    via u/CamoCoveSNIPER
  • 42
    him head underneath the bathroom sink trying to drink as much water as humanly possible. At this point I realized I went a little too far and called in mom for help. She asked what happened and I explained what I did and proceeded to get grounded for a week. So all in all it was worth it. And only slightly feel bad to this day.
    via u/CamoCoveSNIPER
  • 43
    Cheezburger Image 10472536832
    via Zach Miles on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 44
    MicroPixel I left a passive aggressive note in my lunch box telling them to stop and that I knew who they were.
    via u/MicroPixel
  • 45
    frosttyyyy Roommate stole food and other stuff from the fridge. Lied when confronted about (with the empty packets in view, like we'd buy a Gatorade or something and we'd find the bottle in his room and ask him bout it and he'd deny it). My other roommate and I asked him to leave the flat next sem
    via u/frosttyyyy

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