Expert Office Advice

You’ve made your packed lunch, check.

You’ve brought it to work and put it in the office fridge, check.

Lunchtime rolls around and you go to enjoy your sandwich, check, er hang on, it’s gone! Not a crumb in sight, not one morsel of your lovingly prepared lunch. Just remember you are not alone in this predicament! Offices around the world are plagued by the office lunch bandit, the sneaky fridge thief himself.

So what can be done to combat this midday pilferer? Fingerprint activated lunch boxes? Lasers, alarm systems, mousetraps? Well a canny soul has come up with this Anti-Theft Lunch Bag.

It gives the illusion that your tasty sandwich is covered in mould, hopefully keeping even the hungriest of thieves at bay. It’s not rocket science, but it should be an effective deterrent. Now sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that your sandwich will be waiting for you come lunch break, well at least for today.

These are plenty of other ways of thwarting an office food thief:

Stick ‘Post-it’ notes to food containers with warning messages. If the usual ‘Keep off!’ message doesn’t work, say something like ‘I licked the knife every time I spread mayonnaise and butter while making this sandwich’.
Buy an insulated storage bag that lets you keep your food by your desk.
Use food containers with little locks on them, or use a tight locking band on conventional Tupperware.
Buy a locking cash box and use it for storing sandwiches in the fridge.
Keep track of the food thief’s habits, trying to narrow the time frame in which the thief gets into your food. It will be easier to confront him/her once you know the approximate time.
Monitor the thief’s choices of food. If they ignore fruits and sweets, but always go after sandwiches, try hiding some extra hot chilli in between the layers of the sandwich.
Speak to other colleagues to find out if you are the only victim. Those also complaining can be dropped off your suspects list.
If you know who it is, but are a bit shy to confront the thief, leave a message in your lunch bag saying ‘No eating, not even you, John’ (Or any other name to fit your circumstances).
If it’s really bad, ask the management to install a surveillance camera facing the fridge to find out who exactly is snatching your eats.