So, I work in your typical corporate office. It's a pretty large building with enough people to host a pretty bustling company cafeteria. For years, I've frequented the caf (shame on me for not saving money by brown-bagging it...I know) and since I generally take it with me and work at my desk while I eat, the food is served in a little container with a lid. Generally, you just walk up to the cashier and tell them what you ordered. Of late, they started writing anything special on the lid, like if you ordered an extra side or whatever. But in general, it's always been based on the honor system.

More recently, on a few occasions, the cashier has asked me to open my container AFTER I told her what I ordered. I figured maybe there's been some "leakage" of food that wasn't accounted for or something. After this exercise was repeated a few times, I asked, "so are people stealing food or something?" starting to wonder if I "looked guilty or something" or if this was just a new phenom. She replied that there has been theft of food requiring sporadic checks of the contents of the containers. Presumably, there are some employees adding some cookies, french fries or something in their containers and not reporting it during checkout.

I realize we're in a recession, but isn't stealing food from the company cafeteria over the top?

If you were caught red-handed doing this in front of your colleagues, wouldn't you be completely mortified?

Cheating on taxes or not reporting to a store clerk when they forget to ring something up and you found it in your bag in the car seems to feel more "anonymous" and many people reading this probably have at least one such experience of that nature (not that I condone, but pragmatically speaking...) but risking getting nailed in front of your coworkers is really brazen.

I've heard of people getting fired from great jobs for really stupid stuff like stealing office supplies and such. I don't know how this would be (or has been) handled since it might be tough to prove what the employee's intention was (like perhaps it was an "oversight") and the cafeteria is run by a third party...but it seems pretty lousy nonetheless. We're just paying for it in our costs and service cuts so the food company maintains the same profit margins.

Do you know anyone that steals from their company or have stories outlining what the consequences were?

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