There’s nothing worse than looking forward to your lunch, only to discover that you’re not going to be able to enjoy it, for one reason or another.

It’s even worse when you know someone else is enjoying it.

OP worked in an office where lunches routinely went missing, but HR’s position was that it wasn’t their responsibility.

Nobody likes a lunch thief, and I had one of the most aggressive at my office.

There were rumors for a few months leading up to the inciting incident of someone going around and taking peoples’ lunches. Just about every day someone different would complain that their lunch was missing.

It even happened to me once or twice, but I figured hey, it’s a big office, a few people are probably just careless and grab the wrong lunch and are too embarrassed to bring it back or someone else packs their lunch and they don’t know what’s in there so it’s not obvious they have the wrong one, or whatever.

Most people just brought brown bags with their names on it anyways, or identical Rubbermaid Tupperware with a little piece of labeled tape on the side. It was easy enough to mix it up.

I had accidentally grabbed a wrong lunch once or twice, but I’d noticed before I got it open. I thought I was just more careful, or even just not as busy, as some other people in the building.

However, other people weren’t as forgiving, and a quorum made complaints to HR. They were blown off. Personally, at the time, I thought it was all much ado about nothing.

He was pretty forgiving until his wife began packing gourmet leftovers and his lunch began going missing every single day – even from his desk.

But then it began. My wife enrolled in a French cooking class online and just about every day I was bringing fancy gourmand leftovers in for lunch. You’d think I was picking up a to go bag from a Michelin starred bistro on the way in each morning, she really threw herself into the coursework.

There were no problems for about two weeks, maybe three, until one day my lunch went missing. Considering what delicacies I had to look forward to I was pretty miffed, but I did a once over around the break room and didn’t see anyone eating my lunch so figured someone grabbed my bag by accident earlier, saw how good things looked and—realizing it was their lucky day—didn’t bring it back to the fridge.

I wrote the mysterious stranger off as an jerk but accepted the loss and looked forward to dinner that night instead.

Next day I write my name on my lunch in extra bold lettering, jam the bag into the back of the fridge, and feel peace of mind. I get there come break time, nope, it’s gone.

I was pretty upset, but I figured it was a stroke of bad luck, and left it at that. What else could I do?

However, third day, out of an abundance of caution, I kept my lunch at my desk. A pain, because I had to eat it fairly early in the day to avoid spoilage, but at least I’d know where it was.

I got up to take care of some business down the hall and when I came back… yep, my lunch was gone.

Unfortunately that didn’t help me narrow it down much at all because my desk is centrally located so everyone’s constantly passing by.

At that point there was no possibility of the theft being arbitrary, so I approached HR and filed a complaint. Their response, practically verbatim, was, “Employees’ lunches are their personal property and the company is not responsible for lost or stolen personal items.”

The following day my wife packed a cream based soup that really had to be refrigerated. I was passing by the break room to check on my lunch practically every five minutes. Somehow it still managed to disappear.

HR gave him the same line, though, and then everyone was sent home due to Covid so he kind of forgot about it.

I was irate at this point and returned to HR and really blew my top. The best they could do was send a memo around about remembering to check the name on your lunch when you remove it from the fridge, but they made very clear that it was a routine memo and in no way related to my complaints, which were not their jurisdiction, so not an admission of responsibility, because my lunch was my own personal problem.

The only suitable alternative to packing a lunch available in the building are these wretched shrink wrapped ham and cheese sandwiches from a vending machine.

They’ve been marinating in the heat for God knows how long and the bread is as stale as cork board and the meat is rancid and there’s gluey mayo smushed into the center. It’s a relic of the old office tenants’ I’m pretty sure.

I vented daily to my wife but her only idea was to start bringing a regular sandwich and apple again to dissuade the thief and get him to move on to other lunches.

So, determined prevent this low life scum from downgrading the quality of my lunch, I hatched an elaborate plan… Then the pandemic hit and I forgot all about this whole saga.

When he returned to the office, cranky about the suit and tie and recent divorce, the missing lunch made him want revenge.

I worked remotely for months and months. Then we returned, and after all that had happened globally, this was the last thing on my mind.

But I got to the break room the first day back, frustrated from having to wear a button up and tie after months of working in pajamas, sore from my desk chair, and exhausted from small talk, only to find… my lunch was gone.

This was a particularly sore point because my wife and I divorced between my last lunch and work and the present one. So I did not appreciate being reminded of any past threads involving her.

I pretty much flew into a blind rage at that point. Especially seeing that stupid worthless memo about checking the lunch bag names posted in the break room, feeling so helpless and so hungry and so alone as it was me and my lunch against the world.

I stormed out and was determined to return the next day with a plan.

So, he hatched a plan to steal the HR person’s lunch, put it in his bag, and wait for someone to steal it.

So, I came in the following day… with an empty lunch bag.

And I checked closely to be sure no one was watching and… I switched the contents of the HR person’s lunch bag into my bag. So now their lunch appeared to be my lunch.

They’d packed a regular brown bag, so I just discarded that, and I left, and I waited. I knew this was a pretty big gamble because it was contingent on the theory that the thief was avoiding me while having lunch, but not wary of anyone else. So would eat out in the open if there were no risk of bumping into me.

So I made a big show of going around the office announcing that I was headed out for a meeting and I wouldn’t be back until at least 3:00pm.

I even went to the trouble of moving my car out of the lot to a space two streets over. Where I then sat in my car and worked remotely for several hours before sneaking into the building up the back stairway.

I then sat in the stairwell just outside the break room, where you can hear chatter can’t be seen, and after about 20-30 minutes of waiting, I heard it.

The sweetest sound I’ll ever hear in the office.

The guy took the bait, and even though OP got called into HR, he says it was all worth it.

(HR) “What the heck Kyle, that’s my lunch.”

(Lunch thief!!) “Nah, it’s not your name on the bag.”

(HR) Give me that!

I’m assuming grabs bag and sees my name.

(HR) Yah, let’s head to my office for a chat.

The HR rep later called me in as well and said they were “aware of my break room hijinks,” but it was obvious that the point still came across loud and clear.

They warned me that it was a violation of policy to move another employee’s lunch—it took every ounce of self control for me to keep from retorting “I thought our lunches were our personal property and the company was not responsible for them being lost or stolen?”

They informed me they’d located the thief and things would be handled accordingly.

But better than whatever write up they might be able to issue Kyle, his reveal as the lunch thief occurred in front of the whole break room. So word quickly spread as to who had been stealing everyone’s lunches earlier last year and he is now the office pariah.

He was in line for a promotion. The promotion is indefinitely off the table.

And I also earned brownie points for exposing him, though more than I’m satisfied with are being attributed to HR.

At the end of the day though, I didn’t do this for this credit, or even the sweet sweet sweet revenge. I did it to get my lunches back.

Does Reddit think justice was served? Let’s hear what they have to say!

It’s never their problem until it is.

This is your daily reminder.

This person has a spicier idea.

They say OP is nicer than they would have been, either way.

It’s all semantics.

This is an all-too common tale.

So, now you have another idea about how to fight it.