I stopped milk thieves in college with a drop of blue food coloring. It freaked people out.

Yes, there is such a thing as a lunch thief! I use to work for a company many years ago where stealing food out of lunch bags was very common. The best was when someone would eat food that was already half eaten. YES, steal half eaten food! Gross! Finally the company installed a camera in the lunch room and did catch a few people. Most denied they did it even though they were on camera.

at a former workplace, my lunch ALWAYS got stolen if i put it in the community fridge. i could have the most horrid-appearing lunch in there, and it would disappear. i finally started bringing an ice pack and an insulated bag for my lunches so i could keep it at my desk.

a close friend of mine does the insulated bag thing, and at his former job even that wasn't safe - someone would swipe it while he was out fixing a computer, and return it the next day under the same scenario.

wouldn't a green sharpie do the trick just fine?

I was a manager in a large industrial complex and there were frigs in many areas where the workers stored their lunch.

It was very commonplace to have a lunch stolen or worse, have a bite taken out of a sandwich and then put back in the bag or pail. And there was the game of 'lacing' a sandwich with unmentionables to nail the theives. There were always plenty of suspects but I don't remember anyone ever being caught redhanded.

lunch thieves get wide publicity on:
http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

such as:
http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/2009/12/28/kanye-interrupts-this-note/

My lunch has never been stolen on purpose, but one time a salad I had in a Tupperware bowl was taken and put out on a buffet table (we share a fridge with another department) at a party. And, no, it wasn't a big salad.

My lunch usually doesn't get stolen, even in places where that happens a lot (possibly because I tend to spoon mango pickle on almost anything). However, I used to work for a library director who believed all food was communal.

Now, since he was also a hunter and a gourmet cook who would do things like cook duck breast a l'orange and elk curry for us all, we usually were happy to put up with things like him grabbing a fork, taking a bite of your takeout Chinese then dishing half of it out to give to a third staffer. We did loose a few employees, though, who just couldn't take it. To be frank, when he'd gut and clean ducks he'd shot on his lunch break at the staff break table, it could be a little off-putting.

We had glorious potlucks there. And all the birthday cakes were homemade, from scratch.

He shot ducks on his lunch break? Wow!

If I recall correctly, didn't he once gut a deer on the break table also??

What you and your co-workers kept an eye out for during lunchtime, "shot overhead".

I'm more amazed that you had ducks on your staff break table for him to shoot!

He didn't gut a deer on the break table, but he did marinate venison tenderloin then grill it for us once. It was delicious.

To this day, when I see the ducks in Patterson Park, my first thought is, "lunch!"

Hal, he also built a muzzleloader during the run up to a major funding vote.

I used to love it when obnoxious patrons would demand to talk with the director. they were expecting spinster Miss Sensible Shoes, and they got a former college football player, Vietnam Vet hunter.

Dude! He HUNTS VIETNAM VETS?!? This guy just sounds crazier and crazier... although humans are the most dangerous prey...

sean, you just made my day! Thanks for the laugh.

When I was in college at a previous workplace many moons ago, there was a lunch thief amongst us. Sometimes parts of my lunch was stolen but everyday at lease one person had at least one part of his/her lunch stolen. After a few months of my hard earned dollars worth of lunch being stolen, I decided that we needed to get to the bottom of this...

The thief, as it seemed, had a penchant for desserts. So, I decided to bake up some cookies with a few drops of phenolphthalein from Chem Lab and planted it in the communal refrigerator and waited.

The cookies were stolen, and one of our department managers spent the better part of the afternoon visiting the toilet. When I asked if she enjoyed her cookies the look on her face was pure delight (for me).

No more lunches were stolen after that day, in that office...

Maggi - great solution..lol.
Luckily, I have never had a problem with my lunch being stolen, possibly because I have always worked for smaller companies. Although, I did work at a Baltimore Seminary that served it's employees a gourmet, free lunch everyday. I regret leaving there everyday....

sean, he was one tough cook. He also taught me how to skeet shoot.

How could you not love any managerial type who was willing to arm their employees?

The moldy sandwich may be tossed out rather than stolen for lunch. I lost a new bottle of salad dressing because a busy-body decided to clean out the office fridge. I used post-its with "opened on" dates from then on...

Heck yeah I've had lunch stolen at work! Mostly they'd take frozen entrees, but sometimes a particularly appetizing-looking sandwich. Eventually I learned to put my lunch in an old opaque, preferably stained, plastic container. It was usually an effective deterrent.

The other side of the coin is folks who put "doggie bags" in the fridge and forget them. I was usually the fridge cleaner-outer, and some of the stuff in there would knock a vulture off a s**t wagon! GACK!!

Charles fests -- Cleatus' theater owner name.

We had one chick at work that was a lunch thief. She pinched someone's frozen lean cuisine, sat in the lunch room and had the nerve to say "well that wasn't very good" her little co-brat said " well at least you didn't pay for it"
We all chipped in and got the victim a really decent lunch from the local deli ( it was two days before pay day, so "super broke" was the common state of affairs.) Later, everyone took to marking their meals with "so-and so's lunch NOT ( the offender's name)'s" I usually eat very strange things, so i've never had my lunch nicked.