Stop! Lunch Thief!

My friend Peter’s boss always eats lunch in the office—it’s just not always his lunch. If his boss finds a sandwich lying around, he scarfs it down without a second thought. People warned Peter about this when he took the job, at an aerospace tooling company near Seattle. Once his boss snatched an apple right off his desk; Peter has now taken to hiding his snacks in drawers.

Everything is up for grabs in office kitchens: soda, coffee creamer, potato chips, it doesn’t matter. I once stored homemade chocolate bread pudding in my office’s fridge with a note explaining that I was taking it to a potluck dinner party after work. When I went to retrieve it at the end of the day, someone had eaten a third of it. They had even poured on the vanilla glaze that I’d stored in a separate container.