agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: Coworkers are stealing candy from my desk

Dear Prudence,

I have a medical condition where I have major symptoms if I have low blood sugar. I can’t leave my desk every time this happens, so I keep a small bag of candy in my drawer so I can eat between calls (I have permission from HR to do this). My co-workers are lazy thieves. They don’t want to go downstairs to the vending machine—they just rip through my desk when my back is turned. A bag used to last me two weeks, but now I am lucky if it lasts two days. No matter if I get up for 30 seconds, someone will be trying to get candy. I told all of my co-workers to stay out of my desk, but we are not allowed to lock them. In fact, I think they see it as a fun game.

I caught two and made enough of a stink to bring our supervisor to the floor. All he said was for us to stop wasting time and told me if I was bringing candy to work, I should bring enough for everyone. This isn’t kindergarten! I don’t know what to do. I do not want to escalate to HR because even if I win (and I will), my supervisor carries grudges and will make my life miserable. I need this job. I need the health insurance, and it took me 13 months to find this one. I can’t lose it.

—Candy Thieves

It’s ridiculous and awful that things have come to this point, especially since you need this job for health insurance and your co-workers are going out of their way to make it harder for you to keep your blood sugar levels stable. Since your co-workers are all in on this, your supervisor is potentially out to get you, and HR sounds hands-off, I think you should just start keeping the candy on your person, rather than in a drawer where others can get to it. Keep a few pieces in each pocket, and then keep the bulk of your stash outside in your car if you drive to work. I’d go a step further and unwrap the candy in the bathroom or when no one is nearby so none of your co-workers have any idea where you’re keeping your stash now or if you’re even eating any throughout the day. If worse comes to worse, start wearing a candy necklace under your collar and biting off a few beads every couple of hours. If your co-workers ask where the candy drawer went, tell them airily, “Oh, I stopped doing that,” and make another phone call.

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LW's coworkers, manager, and HR suck.

Bringing in enough candy for one day at a time and keeping it in a purse or personal bag is a better solution than stuffing it in pockets (lint, ew). Leaving it in the car is probably going to create a mess, depending on local temperatures.*

Not sure why Ortberg thought the candy necklace joke was funny.

*(Unless it's Necco Wafers!)

I'm not actually sure that was a joke -- if LW needs sugar and has some situation where they can't carry it in their pockets, it's not an unreasonable proposal.

Yeah, I don't think it was a joke at all. It's a completely reasonable suggestion for the bind the LW is in.

First off: if the candy is disappearing that fast, that consistently, that doesn't sound like "people occasionally get hungry and don't want to go downstairs". That sounds like "people are deliberately targeting OP's candy stash in order to upset them and/or show off to each other." That is: bullying.

If I knew a solution for a victim of bullying to make it stop, without any help from the people in power over them, I would be taking it on the road, not posting in a DW comm. :/

Going to hide in a bathroom to eat it is definitely *not* the solution here, though. The only way I do know of to make bullying better is to make it clear the bullies have no power over you (even if you're only making it clear to yourself) and hiding in the bathroom is the opposite of that. Bringing one day's supply at a time is just asking for them to start stealing the entire supply, unfortunately.

My best suggestion is to get a locking bank/money bag (it looks like they go for about $20) and locking the candy in that. Keep the key on your person. And keep some cash in it too. At least that will stop the petty pilfering, and when someone inevitably steals the entire bag, that's when you go directly to higher-ups about money being stolen from your desk by co-workers. And if anyone asks you about it, try for a scathing tone of "yeah, I couldn't believe my coworkers were that childish and unprofessional either."

If you want to try for the high road then also take your boss's advice, get some very cheap candy (they have bags of starlight mints at the dollar store), and keep it in a bowl on your desk with sign that it's for sharing. Mention to anyone who comes over that other people are welcome to contribute to the shared candy bowl. Sometimes that kind of passive-aggressive offering of an out shames people into being better people. Sometimes.

Heh, I also suggested the petty cash bag, but it didn't occur to me about sticking money in it. That's a really good idea; people understand the theft of money in a way they don't understand the theft of nonprescription medication.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine even a bad boss being able to wave off "they stole a locked cash bag with money in it out of my closed desk drawer" as childish whining, if it's documented. Say you keep it in there as your candy-buying budget so it feels less like entrapment.

Not that it will definitely get to that point! But I wouldn't be at all surprised.

"But you should have brought enough money for everyone!"

I thought of the lockbox, but putting money in so when they steal it, it's theft, is excellent.

I once had a job where some people thought anything in the office fridge was fair game, even if you called them on it, and at one point I had to bring in a typhoid vaccine which I had to take in the middle of the day and which had to be refrigerated. So I wrote "LIVE TYPHUS CULTURES. DO NOT EAT" on the bag containing the vaccine, and my coworkers freaked out.

After that I just started writing "SOMETHING IN THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS TYPHUS. I HAVEN'T LABELED WHAT" on my food, and it sort of worked.

That being said, it obviously wouldn't work in LW's vindictive workplace.

Obviously the correct answer is to go to HR, but I trust the LW when they say that that will hurt them in this particular instance. What they need to do, however, is document the hell out of all of these interactions. Have printouts of all of their conversations with HR involving the permission, and any conversations with the coworkers and the supervisor. Probably make sure HR and the supervisor know the printouts exist, although in this case I would trust the LW's judgment over whether that would hurt or help.

And then, yes, start carrying the candy.

Three alternatives:

Get a locking petty cash bag, and keep that in the desk, with candy in it. Those are designed to be incredibly difficult to break into. It's an experiment, at first, because if the coworkers are actually malicious they might start stealing it. But it might work.

Alternately, explain to HR that you have a medical need to have a locked space for medication at your desk. Even if the medical condition doesn't actually come with medication, you can buy glucose tablets, and then you won't even be lying. (I lock my file drawer at work because I keep Adderall in it.)

Alternatively, switch from candy to glucose tablets.

I was wondering if there was a "this is a pill, not candy" option for that! Yeah, especially if the core of the problem is resentment over OP having some kind of medical exception for eating, switching to tablets might help somewhat. And "they're stealing my medication" might get a bit more action then "they're stealing my candy" even if it ought to mean the same thing.

(I'm honestly unclear what the situation is here where OP needed permission from HR to eat between calls, but coworkers are free to steal candy at 30 seconds' notice. Is there some kind of policy that most employees can only eat on break, and everybody (justifiably!) resents the hell out of it, and that's slopping onto OP? Or is it a situation where anybody could have candy at their desk? Or is there a policy but it's widely ignored and the OP's flaunting of their medical exception is making it harder for other people to flout the (bad) policy? Not that any of that justifies the bullying and theft, but it might suggest a different strategy.)

I’m guessing it’s a telemarketing call center, where breaks are rare and the calls are automated. (In which case, eating in the bathroom is unlikely, since breaks won’t come as often as blood glucose tanks.)

Honestly, one of my thoughts was to get something that could be mistaken for a pill, and keeping it in an extra-large medicine bottle. I have a really huge one that could store a whopping lot of Certs. But a cash box or bag would be good as well.

I saw this, and my immediate thought (after the obligatory GRRRR at the coworkers and unhelpful management - this is also an ADA issue, if LW wants it to be) is that glucose tablets and gels exist for a reason, and that reason is that they are so gross that no one who didn't have to eat them would. If LW can switch their emergency sugar to things that look/taste more like medicine, that might solve the whole problem.

Yeah, I kind of wish LW had written The Specialist, Ask a Manager, who might have pushed the ADA angle a little. OTOH, with a supervisor and HR like this, that might backfire.

I really like glucose tablets!

Everyone here is horrible. I can only suggest switching to glucose tablets, glucose pouches and glucose drinks that come in small batches. If you guy a set off amazon it can keep the price down. They sort low blood sugars in a jiffy. They also taste utterly horrendous because they are so concentrated. Ain't no one going to be stealing that.

Dear Prudence: Coworkers are stealing candy from my desk

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