To think someone has stolen my coffee & spoon?

[Coffeethief]

I keep my coffee and spoon on my desk. I always sort my coffee at my desk and take my spoon to the kettle and bring it back. Today I went to make my coffee and it's gone. So is the spoon. From my desk. I know that I brought it back yesterday as I had tea at lunch and brought my travel cup home with the teabag still in it, gross I know lol.
I had to have tea at break so when I went to the canteen to the kettle, I double checked the cupboards incase i "somehow" left it there and someone put it away.

I don't want to make a big deal of this but am obviously a bit pissed off. I don't have any reason to think why any one would intentionally take it, but on the other hand but the only option left would be a cleaner binned it... Which I highly doubt as it was basically a new jar.

How are we supposed to know where its gone?

Maybe ask the people you work with

No need to make a big deal of it at all, just ask them if they have seen it.

I once had a new block of cheese nicked from the work fridge. Bought on the way in to work.

There are some light fingered tossers around.

And someone else nicked my soup spoon, so now I have a set of 5. I eat soup every day, so total pita at the time to eat it with a teaspoon.

Ask your colleagues if they have seen it. Probably tidied up by a cleaner?

My DH used to work in a university and it was astounding how much stuff went missing from the fridge.

Could you ask your colleagues if anyone's seem them?

I am going to wait until I go home and see if I have somehow mysteriously put it in my bag yesterday!
No one has seen it and the cleaners never touch our desks, so this is why I think its a bit weird or I'm losing the plot

Do you get a lot of people walking through your office? Security on their rounds? People on their way somewhere else?

You have to code in, so only people with access can get in or contractor people who've been let in. Just weird. Really weird lol I know it's not the end of the world and is a 1st works problem!

Perhaps someone has noticed your coffee-making ritual and decided to have a bit of a laugh at your expense. Unless you do find the coffee and spoon somewhere, I'd read this as a prank, and start looking a bit more carefully at my co-workers.

When I got home yesterday I was greeted by a very concerned and puzzled DP. He had made a cheese and ham sandwich for lunch and couldn't find the remaining ham and container it was in, only the lid. He said he'd looked everywhere, even blaming the cat wondering if he had picked it up and stashed it somewhere as he's on a diet and he has been known to steal a packet of Dreamies. He'd even looked outside and in the greenhouse. I opened the cutlery drawer and there was the ham, in its container and not mauled by the cat who got rather excited by the discovery.

So obviously he hadn't looked everywhere.

Could your items have been put where you'd least expect them?

I once worked on a big team and we had one team member who hoarded his teaspoon, but when he wasn't about we used to help ourselves to it. Until the day someone noticed he made his coffee, ate his yoghurt, licked the spoon clean then put it back in his drawer. Yes Barrie, I'm looking at you!

We left it well alone after that though.

This has made me weirdly nostalgic for the office (we are mostly home based now).

There's always one cheeky git (often several) in every office who takes stuff which is very clearly not theirs. No amount of passive aggressive signage or email deters them. I gave up putting stuff in our office fridge and kept anything else consumable in my locker.

I learned that in offices things go missing. We had an actual serial thief in an NHS team I worked for who got caught in the end. She would take anything, she took air freshener from the toilets and she took my pastry I was saving for the morning from my desk drawer. Another office I left my mug in the kitchen and it vanished, fair play it was a big building and someone probably just used it. But basically you need to keep your things locked away because there are multiple reasons things definitely go missing in office environments. Don’t even get me started on pens but at least there's a hack for that; put your pen ink inside a red pen cover which no one will take.

@PostingForTheFirstTime

Perhaps someone has noticed your coffee-making ritual and decided to have a bit of a laugh at your expense. Unless you do find the coffee and spoon somewhere, I'd read this as a prank, and start looking a bit more carefully at my co-workers.

Yes a work colleague of mine noticed I ate an avocado every day so one day he put my avocado in my drawer then watched and waited for my reaction. I noticed it was gone but did not want to get up and be like 'who stole my avocado?' So I just got on with my day until he sidled over and went 'where's your avocado?' to which I said actually I don't know and he opened my drawer and looked at me expectantly for his applause and giggles and I just looked at him blankly until he went away.

@KarenTheGammonRemoaner exactly! Don't want to be the drama person over a jar of coffee!!!

@deleteasappropriate

I once worked on a big team and we had one team member who hoarded his teaspoon, but when he wasn't about we used to help ourselves to it. Until the day someone noticed he made his coffee, ate his yoghurt, licked the spoon clean then put it back in his drawer. Yes Barrie, I'm looking at you!

We left it well alone after that though.

Barrie?! Barrie did nothing wrong. You weirdos taking his stuff like that. He had the last laugh. (no this is not Barrie. But I am an avid Barrie supporter)

[quote Coffeethief]@KarenTheGammonRemoaner exactly! Don't want to be the drama person over a jar of coffee!!![/quote]
Then don't be. It will have to be lesson learned. You need to lock your things away. Pray you never find yourself in a shared house or you're in for a real experience.

in any office there is at least once a week an email saying "has anyone seen my Cat mug/ favourite bowl / etc"

So just send that email around. least it establishes if there is a thief quite quickly (after checking at home tonight)

I have gf food and the amount of times I’ve had my expensive and not all that nice biscuits nicked is beyond a joke. The killer though was when I had a carton of rice milk in the fridge and walked in to a member of slt pouring it down the sink as it was “off”

Had that experience. They soon regretted it when I hid the loo roll and took the scart lead from the TV!!!

@OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow

I have gf food and the amount of times I’ve had my expensive and not all that nice biscuits nicked is beyond a joke. The killer though was when I had a carton of rice milk in the fridge and walked in to a member of slt pouring it down the sink as it was “off”

It's rage inducing when that happens - I mean, they can literally eat anything the hell they like, but they choose to take the one thing somebody else can have without a) guts turning inside out, headaches, joint pain, fatigue, tinnitus, nausea, pain, pain, pain b) anything up to a month of unpleasant symptoms afterwards and c) potentially sustaining permanent injury. And it's always fucking SLT.

I went all Corporate Food Hygiene at the last do - got the piss taken out of the way the GF/DF items had their own section, clearly labelled and barricaded off from the main stuff by a line of drinks. But I don't care. There's a secret stash of things locked away in a cupboard that nobody else has a key to for that reason as well.

I had taken a frozen ready meal out of my home freezer and left it in the work kitchen to defrost before lunchtime and someone threw it away as it was “a month out of date” - I explained that it had been frozen all that time! But still, they threw my lunch away. 😞

Someone in my office had an ongoing drama about who was eating their butter. The butter drama went on for at least a year - I wasn’t too involved in the butter drama but thinking back about it, the conversations that I overheard are amusing. I really wish I had been more involved in the butter drama.

One of my old heads put my mug and my special fruit tea bags on the refreshments tray made up for the OFSTED inspectors ! I knocked on their door and got them back. She had form for this, was always using my cup , she had her own little bathroom off her office and used to leave it in there, but I was friends with the cleaner , who hated the head, so she used to liberate my cup for me!