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A Twitter thread detailing the fallout after an office lunch thief was caught on tape is going viral

Shana Lebowitz   

A Twitter thread detailing the fallout after an office lunch thief was caught on tape is going viral
Strategy3 min read

woman eating takeout

frantic00/Shutterstock

We can all relate. (The offender is not pictured.)

  • A colleague of comedian Zak Toscani's stole someone's lunch from the office refrigerator and threw it in the trash. The victim caught the culprit on camera.
  • Toscani's Twitter thread about the debacle is going viral.
  • Most employees say they've had food stolen at work - but that doesn't make it OK.


If you've ever worked in an office, and if you've ever brought your lunch to said office, then there's a good chance you've had that lunch stolen by a hungry colleague.

Zak Toscani, a comedian who works at a post-production company specializing in subtitling in Los Angeles, recently saw something similar go down in his office. And his Twitter updates on the all-too-relatable situation are going viral. (As of this writing, he's gotten roughly 50,000 retweets.)

The original tweet reads: "Co-worker got his lunch stolen and they've agreed to let him watch the security camera tape. This is the most excited I've ever been at any job ever. Ever."

Some people are even saying the story is good enough to be a movie.

In an email to Business Insider, Toscani confirmed that the story about the stolen lunch is true.

Toscani bbreaks down the series of events on Twitter: His coworker bought the lunch at 11:30 a.m. and put it in the office refrigerator to keep it cold until he broke for lunch at noon. When he went to retrieve it, it was gone.

When the coworker watched the tape, he not only discovered the culprit, but also learned that she didn't even eat the lunch. Instead, she threw it straight into the trash.

Human resources sent out a company-wide email about not stealing someone's lunch - though by this point, everyone knew who'd committed the crime.

When the coworker confronted the woman the following day, she said only, "Oh, it was your lunch?"

Stealing a coworker's lunch is surprisingly common office behavior

Toscani's coworker is hardly the first person to find himself in this situation: A survey by online grocer Peapod, highlighted in the New York Post, found that 71% of employees have had a snack, drink, or meal stolen from an office kitchen.

In response, NPR reported, victims have taken to leaving "nastygrams" on the refrigerator or planting sandwiches made of cat food as decoys.

Etiquette experts say that swiping someone's lunch - whether you eat it or trash it - isn't cool.

"While stealing a hoagie is not as egregious as robbing a bank, it's still stealing," Nan DeMars, author of "You've Got to Be Kidding: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity," told The Post. "And the fact that you can get away with it doesn't make it lesser a crime."

The ideal solution here is for people to stop taking food that's not theirs. In the meantime, Jacqueline Whitmore, founder and director of the Protocol School of Palm Beach, told the Post that people should start leaving their lunch in "cute travel bags."

That way, it'll make the crime more obvious to other coworkers, and might even prompt one of them to intervene on your behalf.

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