Colleagues keep using my milk!

[Immo8]

I don't want to sound petty as in the grand scheme of things, milk isn't an expensive item and maybe I should leave this be, but it's really starting to grate on me...

Work in an office with around 30-ish staff, the majority are on shift work including weekends so people are in & out a lot. I work standard hours 4 days a week. The company provides tea & coffee but staff bring in their own milk etc. I buy a large filtered milk every month as it lasts and I only have a few cups of tea a day so makes sense.

However, over the last 6 months or so, people will ask me if they can 'borrow' some milk. I would never say no to someone asking but they NEVER bring in their own milk or buy one to replace mine that they've used over the weeks...

Today, I brought in a brand new milk, name on it, placed it at the back of the fridge so hard to find, and I've just gone to make a cuppa and it's been opened without asking, and a 1/4 of it has gone!

How do I word an email to my colleagues (if people think I should) that is polite and doesn't sound too petty?

Ugh life is too short for fight this. I would not buy a big milk each week or whatever you do - buy a small one and bring it in each day, or even bring your own allocation in a thermos and keep it on your person.

This could easily turn into the opposite of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch!

As for me, my employer gives us 51.5 weeks annual leave every year and trebles our (already high six-figure) salary at Christmas as a little bonus. Not that we get much work done in that 2.5 days a year that we're in the office, mind, as the free swimming pool and bowling alley are just too much fun

Ugh, @TreacleTarcleSparkle - that is well manky.

She might like to think of herself as the Queen Bee, but sitting on the bog and powering through a big box of stolen croissants like a garden shredder is hardly living your best life, is it?

Sounds like she has issues.

That would very, very seriously backfire, I'm guessing...

I would pour it into an opaque bottle. Or you could leave a bowl for people to put donations of spare change towards communal milk and I expect people would willingly throw change in there when they have it and you would always have money to buy the milk. You might still feel annoyed that you are then the organiser, but you could consider it a community service!

I genuinely thing most people aren't too tight, just too disorganised.

I have a little twin walled stainless steel bottle that stays cool - though I don't work any longer.

So you believe that people who deliberately steal milk on a regular basis instead of paying for it will quite cheerfully take the trouble to regularly empty out their purses and give generously?

Community-based tasks only work if people are fair and community-minded. If they're unashamedly selfish and only out for what they can get from others, it's never going to work.

Being disorganised doesn’t make it ok to steal other people’s milk.

If you send messages or emails, it becomes a game to those stealing it as they have an "eff you" attitude.
Keep your own stash, locked up and the thieves will move on and he thieves will hopefully cross someone who takes exception to them.

She sounds like she has a binge eating disorder.

Still rude and unacceptable, whatever MH issues she might have. Should have replaced them and said, sorry.

It’s theft.

I'd agree if they forgot to bring milk/contribute from time to time; but I think it's a baked-in selfish mindset when they always take and never give.

If they have a need that somebody else will supply without them having to think, do, ask or pay anything, they aren't going to make it their top (or indeed any) priority to act fairly and considerately.

I'll bet they're not too disorganised to buy/do other important things in their lives, when, if they don't do it for themselves, it just won't happen.

Indeed. I bet they wouldn't shoplift in the supermarket if they realised they'd accidentally left their purse/other payment methods at home.

When being disorganised means that you end up taking advantage of and/or stealing from other people, the answer is to take steps to become more organised; not to shrug and think "It's just the loveable, endearing little way I am".

Could you make a polite and reasonable appeal to the boss that they buy some milk to go with the tea and coffee to avoid the ill feeling and wasted energy of communal fridge wars?

Most of my workplaces have done this, the only one that didn't caused me to take up drinking black coffee instead of tea with milk.

@TreacleTarcleSparkle

We need to know what happened next! Did she sob and beg for your forgiveness, or did she try to style it out and insist that the (identical) box of croissants and associated mess was already in the cubicle when she got there?!

Yep - binge eating disorders are horrendous things to have to live with; but it's perfectly possible to buy the food that you binge on yourself.

I take a small empty water bottle with milk in every day. I too got fed up with people always pinching mine and NEVER bringing their own. I also used to have a tub of those tiny jams in, in my desk drawer. Once I had filled it up to the top but a few weeks later I went to get some out and about 8 had gone! Some people are just thieves, plain and simple.

Also, it's a very common CF belief that, if somebody has purposefully stocked up on something in advance, deliberately so that they don't need to worry about going to the shops/remembering/paying for it for a good while, this means that they have 'more than they need', 'plenty to spare' and 'won't miss it if I take a few'.

It's a perfectly normal and wise thing to plan your time and budget ahead, with a big one-off task to tick off the to-do list rather than having to do it over and over again - just like most people don't just put a litre of petrol in their car, use most of it, then go back for another litre (unless they're seriously on their uppers) - but advantage-takers love to 'justify' their behaviour by suggesting that it was somehow your fault in stocking up and not theirs in deliberately stealing somebody else's belongings.

Funny how they never seem to use the same principle by shoplifting from Tesco, on the basis that they have loads and loads of tins of beans or toilet rolls.

OR get one if these ! Then they will really get the picture 😂
amzn.eu/d/757D7Gf

Put lock on and write on milk buy your own

I repeat - WTF?

I once lived in a house share and the same thing would happen to me the same person taking my milk. I mentioned it and they said I was being tight, I replied isn't it you that's being tight for never ever buying any? I honestly can't get my head around how other people's minds work, they need to know it's yours and you want a contribution or the udder lock looks like a great idea, pop that on and watch their faces when they open the fridge door

Put it in a thermos?

Cancel the cheque