Customer eats employee lunch

[Owen Lucas]

B

Then he goes up to the counter and asks for a to-go box. He sits back down and starts chowing down. The other two dudes are embarrassed as heck.

Before we leave, Mom gestures to the scavenger and asks, "You want my left over fries?"

Mom and I had some great laughs over the years.

Good on your mom to offer her fries. All bets and etiquette are off the table when it comes to pizza. Shame on the food scavengers friends for judging him when he found stray pizza slices!

If it is not mine, I don't touch it. Simple common sense.

I've seen too many YT videos of people sabotaging food to try someone elses cooking, even when offered. Unless I order it at the restaurant, and get it right to my table, there's still a chance the chef farted on my salad (SP reference) or did a Mexican hat dance on my cheeseburger.

 

[KrisZ]

It happens everywhere, doesn't matter if it's a walmart cafeteria with people making minimum wage, or a silicon valley office full of programmers making $250k+, there will always be people that like to take other's stuff. That's why I never left my lunch box in the communal fridge.

 

[tcp71]

Unless it was labeled "NOT FOR CUSTOMERS" it was completely appropriate for the customer to eat what was in the CUSTOMER SNACK FRIDGE. It's literally there FOR THE CUSTOMERS.

 

[Owen Lucas]

It happens everywhere, doesn't matter if it's a walmart cafeteria with people making minimum wage, or a silicon valley office full of programmers making $250k+, there will always be people that like to take other's stuff. That's why I never left my lunch box in the communal fridge.

One of the benefits of being in the field working out of a car. Downside is I went to Lowes and HD more than I would admit to use their bathrooms. Too many impulse buys on the way walking to the back of the store lol.

 

[KrisZ]

Unless it was labeled "NOT FOR CUSTOMERS" it was completely appropriate for the customer to eat what was in the CUSTOMER SNACK FRIDGE. It's literally there FOR THE CUSTOMERS.

OP didn't say the fridge in the front office was labeled "For Customers". It was likely there for the office staff.

 

[4wd]

 

[tcp71]

OP didn't say the fridge in the front office was labeled "For Customers". It was likely there for the office staff.

You're right. He didn't say the fridge was labeled in any way, just that it existed, along with a coffee pot and snacks, which I assumed was for customers. My mis-interpretation. Why not move the fridge out of the waiting room if it isn't there for customers.

 

[andrew_j]

Lesson learned , don’t clutter customer fridge with employee lunches. That is a bit weird.

 

[fat biker]

I had my lunch stolen at a very succesful tech firm.
Wrote, printed and posted a nastygram on the fridge door.
Nothing came of it.
Conclusion?
Some People are Just Jerks!

 

[BornSlippy]

And these guys, the upper-middle-management twits, looove getting their status symbols serviced. That's why they always have it done during business hours. They even try to get a low level secretary or someone to give them a ride to the Jaaaaaag dealer just to reinforce their ownership of a Jaaaaag. And if the car needs more than normal maintenance it's a flex that they get the time off without consequence to take care of their Jaaaaag.

You're just jealous of the men of culture who drive a Jaaaaaaag.

 

[y_p_w]

Everywhere that I worked, knowingly eating someone else's lunch was an offense that could get you fired. It is nothing less than theft, they could get someone fired on the first offense.

That doesn't help a bit when it is a customer. I guess you could fire him as a customer, and ask him to not come back.

I’ve seen people who were really bold. Once I got roped into working a trade show and was setting up the booth in the morning before it was open to the public. Brought in a sandwich I bought in the morning and also had a pricey water bottle with my name and phone number from a label printer. I didn’t see how it started, but the manager saw a couple reaching for my stuff and I came to investigate. They claimed that they thought it was part of our company's giveaway schwag, which was absolutely ludicrous. They just slinked away. They had badges that they were contractors working for the convention center. Which meant they weren’t even supposed to be looking for free stuff even when the convention hours started. But yeah I figured they probably got away with petty theft before, and possibly more expensive stuff like electronics.

During the show we had a coffee bar, where the requirement was to scan a convention badge. Very few of our visitors were potential customers, but we couldn’t gatekeep. Heck, some of the people served were working at other companies as greeters, as they had badges.

 

[02SE]

And these guys, the upper-middle-management twits, looove getting their status symbols serviced. That's why they always have it done during business hours. They even try to get a low level secretary or someone to give them a ride to the Jaaaaaag dealer just to reinforce their ownership of a Jaaaaag. And if the car needs more than normal maintenance it's a flex that they get the time off without consequence to take care of their Jaaaaag.

Why do you care what others choose to buy or do?

My advice would be to worry about you and yours, not what others have or do.

 

[Owen Lucas]

 

[Pew]

You're just jealous of the men of culture who drive a Jaaaaaaag.

 

[ecotourist]

At our office someone repeatedly ate "someone else's" lunch. They were never caught. We could have put up a surveillance camera to catch them but employees deserve to have a non-intrusive lunch area. So having considered, it we didn't put up a surveillance camera.

I would have fired someone caught eating another employee's lunch. No warning, just gone. An employee who steals is an employee you don't want.

On a tangential point, our employees were authorized to make a reasonable number of photocopies or print a reasonable number of documents "for personal use". You don't want your employees having to sneak a few copies from the department. Make it official. What would it cost the department - maybe 2 or 3 cents a page for a few hundred pages a year. Not even a rounding error on a $30,000,000 budget.

 

[football]

One time we ordered a pizza on the weekend (Before we had kids and there were leftovers lol) so my wife packed a leftover slice and an apple into a plastic grocery bag and placed it into the breakroom fridge at her office each day for the following work week. On Friday at lunchtime, she went to retrieve her lunch and it was missing... She asked everyone what happened to it, and one nurse piped up: "It was in there since Monday, so I threw it out!" My wife replied "No, it was a new one every day!"

Im the self appointed office fridge cleaner.

When I started, there were meals in there from literally from years prior. Mayonnaise that expired in the Clinton administration. No one cleaned it out or threw anyting away.

First off, anything expired got immediately thrown away. Bye bye Clinton era mayo!

Bye to the moldy science experiments. The Tupperware with left over whatever from 18 months ago, in the trash.

I threw away probably 60% of whatever was in there. Then wiped everything down and gave it a good cleaning.

The owner of the mayo filed a complaint. I had to buy him new mayo.

I still clean the fridge out every Friday. Anything suspect gets tossed. Its honestly the best way to manage an office shared fridge.

 

[The_Jeff]

Why do you care what others choose to buy or do?

My advice would be to worry about you and yours, not what others have or do.

Not jealous of anyone, just explaining human behaviour.

If a car is a status symbol, the person who has it tends to smother others with the "status" whether they want it or not. Then when they return to the "home base" from whence the status icon was born, they behave like OP noticed.

 

[AutoMechanic]

At my work we share fridge with the salesman and every now and then one of them will snatch someone’s drink or meal.

My dad said they used to have this kid in school that would steal people’s lunches on a daily basis so one day on a field trip his teacher made and rigged my dads lunch with laxatives and had my dad bring a second lunch to eat and when he stole the rigged one almost immediately he said he needed to stop for a bathroom break and they are like nope we aren’t stopping no matter what and then you can imagine what happened next. Needless to say that he did not have a good field trip and also learned not to steal someone else’s lunch. My dad said that the kid had to sit the whole entire trip on the bus with well a mess lol. The teacher told him sit there and he wasn’t getting out to walk around. I’m sure you couldn’t get away with this now lol.

 

[02SE]

Not jealous of anyone, just explaining human behaviour.

If a car is a status symbol, the person who has it tends to smother others with the "status" whether they want it or not. Then when they return to the "home base" from whence the status icon was born, they behave like OP noticed.

Okay.

But you should know, you sound very jealous.

 

[4wd]

At my work we share fridge with the salesman and every now and then one of them will snatch someone’s drink or meal.

My dad said they used to have this kid in school that would steal people’s lunches on a daily basis so one day on a field trip his teacher made and rigged my dads lunch with laxatives and had my dad bring a second lunch to eat and when he stole the rigged one almost immediately he said he needed to stop for a bathroom break and they are like nope we aren’t stopping no matter what and then you can imagine what happened next. Needless to say that he did not have a good field trip and also learned not to steal someone else’s lunch. My dad said that the kid had to sit the whole entire trip on the bus with well a mess lol. The teacher told him sit there and he wasn’t getting out to walk around. I’m sure you couldn’t get away with this now lol.

Drinks are far more common - especially everyday drinks like Coke. Sometimes Coke/Pepsi is leftover from an event - free for all - and folks keep grabbing until they grab your drink when there is none left. I have even put one in a lunch container with a snack - but ate lunch in the cafeteria …