Cake theft at work

[Villagegreenpreservation]

I work in an office where people bring in cake or treats pretty often- think every birthday/ anniversary/ rainy day/ Monday.
Usually the last to leave wraps them up and then we tuck in to any leftovers the next day.
Could explain my weight gain but I digress. We now have strange happenings however. For three weeks, any leftovers have disappeared. Not just the odd doughnut/ slice of cake but whole, unopened cakes and whole boxes of doughnuts and tubs of chocolate.
We have been told the cleaners likely think it's a perk and to take them and we need to communicate they should be left in the office. I think this is odd. Shouldn't you just leave the stuff especially if unopened and not immediately going out of date? Cleaners are external agency if that makes a difference.

In offices everyone always blames the cleaners but I suspect it hardly ever is the cleaners.

To clarify why we had a lot- it’s because there was an event on. Business had way over ordered do there were leftovers plus cake a birthday person brought in (including doughnuts) for our open plan office plus another team next door. Some People are very generous with cake and get huge selections - think 3 types of boxed cakes - if any left it used to get eaten over the next days or weeks and wasn’t taken. But now it is disappearing

astralweaks

Makings?

The teabags, coffee sachets and hot chocolate powder. A few dishonest people spoiled it for the majority.

This happened where I used to work. It was the cleaners.

Ours cleaners are there during the day. (Not a xenophobic comment I'm about to make. A wry observation)

My colleague said to the cleaner 'you're welcome to have one' meaning a biscuit from the open packet. Cleaner misunderstood due to English not being her first language and took one...packet! Popped it in her pocket, said thank you and carried on! 😆 We all had a chuckle about the misunderstanding and realised sometimes gestures are misunderstood.

If food goes missing in the office Wendy puts passive aggressive notes on cupboards and fridges in slightly misspelled capitals (Word seemingly doesn't check ALL CAPS) Ah. Office communal food.

Lock the food in the cupboard and leave a note saying please stop removing our food. Or do a stake out one night!

We had a rodent problem in our office and despite every employee being told to store food in plastic containers etc people still left food out which didn’t help eradicate the rats. The office manager and cleaners were under instruction to bin any food left out like this. I work in HR so had to listen to everyone complaining about not being able to leave cakes and all sorts, until I showed them a picture of a desk covered in rat poo. I don’t get why people think it’s ok to leave this stuff lying around.

Dh is a cleaner. He works in a large office building used by the local council. No food is meant to be left in the offices, apart from tea and coffee making supplies. So if you're in his building his having to bin it all every night which drives him mad. A group of rough sleepers are probably the ones actually eatting your cake... he bags food separately as he knows they fgo through the bins. If he doesn't get pulled up on inspections or the night security guard goes around and bins it after his left. It's to avoid rodent problems, before being refurbished the building had a terrible problem and he owners don't want it in again.

In his building there's a massive problem with communication between the managemt firm and those that use it. No one seems to be told not to leave food and as soon as everyone learns not the departments are shuffled buildings.

He has saved a couple of cakes left to use for celebrations the next day. With the people who left them needing to play hunt the cake in the security guard's office.

Please please video whoever it is!

Put cakes in cupboard (or fridge if you have one for milk) overnight.

Is there CCTV in the building? You might be able to see someone leaving the building with a big cake.

he bags food separately as he knows they fgo through the bins Good man! 👏🏻

I work at a top end corporate and stuff gets nicked all the time. Wine from the fridge (unopened) Someone was even stealing the fresh dish cloths as soon as they were put out each week, before they were used.

When there was a health drive and a crate of free fruit was put out - someone picked the entire thing up and took it away.

It's never the cleaners - they are the ones most shocked by it.

This cake in office really is out of hand these days

What a bonkers statement! Cake is out of hand?! Hilarious!

I'll need to find out if yesterday's cake is still there. Will report back

The office manager and cleaners were under instruction to bin any food left out like this. I work in HR so had to listen to everyone complaining about not being able to leave cakes and all sorts, until I showed them a picture of a desk covered in rat poo. I don’t get why people think it’s ok to leave this stuff lying around.

Agreed. But no, cleaners must be thieves 🙄

People are very generous with cake and get huge selections - think 3 types of boxed cakes - if any left it used to get eaten over the next days or weeks and wasn’t taken. But now it is disappearing

Weeks old cake? Book

What a bonkers statement! Cake is out of hand?! Hilarious!

Au contraire!
Cake here gets out of hand - and into mouth!

Very quickly

I used to have lots of make-up left over from gift boxes etc. that I wouldn’t use as not the right colour etc. All good brands, Estée Lauder, Clinique etc. I once took a huge box of it into work so that anyone could help themselves. Only to get the heads up from a staff member that ‘Faye’ was planning to take the whole box home and give it to her wastrel, unemployed brother so he could sell it and make himself some money. I soon put a stop to that one! 😱

This cake in office really is out of hand these days

God, there are some fucking miseries on here. Can’t have cake. On another thread, if you make small talk with your colleagues you aren’t working hard enough. These people must bring such joy to their workplace. 🙄

I once took a huge box of it into work so that anyone could help themselves.

If it's unopened, you could donate it to a charity like SmartWorks or Dress for Success (depending where you are.)

Highly doubt it’s the cleaners. It’ll be an entitled staff member. I hate it how everyone always jumps to blame the cleaners!

I'm far too invested 🤪😲

Cakes put away Thursday night and not taken from cupboard. So we have a solution but not a culprit reveal sadly. We do have opportunists on site who take butter/ mayo etc without asking but that's impossible to police - people like a freebie it seems