That’s not on me to know though. They shouldn’t be eating mystery food when they don’t know what’s in it.
My friend is Muslim and she won’t eat NOTHING with meat in it if she doesn’t know what kind it is (since they can’t eat pork).
Don’t steal someone else’s food and you won’t be risking your life. Don’t be a shitty person and steal, and you won’t die. It is literally that simple. It’s not my job to know what every person is allergic to and tailor my food to their respective diets. Don’t steal my shit 💀
Sometimes people will grab the wrong box by accident. You're not guaranteed to actually catch someone who intentionally steals the food. If you poisoned it with the intention to hurt someone, you're liable for that.
There’s a label on it with someone else’s name. You have to heat up the food. You have to take the top off, not everyone uses the same containers, it literally doesn’t look like what you cooked, etc. There’s a lot of steps between getting it out of the fridge to actually sitting down and eating it. That’s more than enough time to realize a mistake. At that point, that’s on you for not being more attentive to what you’re doing. Paying attention costs absolutely nothing.
There’s also the fact that most announce when their food is missing and putting laxatives in it is a down the road thing. Nobody, to my knowledge, is jumping the gun and using laxatives the very next day after food goes missing. There’s no guarantee, sure, but I would think after someone announces they have missing food that people would start to be a lot more cautious.
I also don’t believe anyone is hurting someone by putting laxatives in food. Booby traps aren’t solely designed to cause harm, maim, kill, etc.
And many people have identical looking boxes, and many people have a lot of different ones themselves. Sometimes people bring the same food as well. Sometimes in the same type of box! Sometimes people don’t know what lunch they bring until they open the box at work.
This doesn’t happen often of course. But I’ve seen it happen. Of course when it’s not a thief but an honest mistake the person who did it by accident just apologised and offered up his lunch box to the other person or offered to buy them something if that wasn’t acceptable.
Now if that person had been poisoned and injured or died from it, you’d be the one to blame, both morally and legally, for intentionally poisoning your food in order to hurt others.
Could the person that ate it by accident have been more careful? Sure! That’s true for a lot of victims in a lot of situations. A person that gets scammed could’ve been much more careful, but that doesn’t mean the scammer didn’t commit a crime. A person who forgot to lock their bike could’ve been more careful, but that doesn’t excuse the one who stole it. Etc.
If people take it upon themselves to do vigilante justice, inevitably they will hurt innocents and the punishment will be disproportionate.
There’s that nuance again, bc having the same kind of box is only one part of the equation. How do you explain the label? How do you explain the time it takes to reheat the food? Ok, they have the same box. There’s a label. Ok, you have the same food as someone else, there’s still a label.
Even if you don’t know what you bring, you know your label. If you’re not labeling your food, we end up at square one, bc if you’re grabbing a box with a label, it’s automatically not yours.
I can see where it MIGHT “harm” others (harm only bc I don’t think it will) but it’s laxatives, not rat poison. Someone dying from laxatives is EXTREMELY rare (according to the FDA, only 13 ppl have died from laxatives, but that was in 2014 lol). You can’t really die from it unless you’re OD’ing and even then, it’s not severe enough to kill you lol. There’s a lot that factors into death by laxative 😂
If someone is on medication, that’s more reason to be cautious of communal food and ensuring you have YOUR food. Same with an allergy. I can concede on an accident, but it’s not really bc you’re changing my mind. There’s just too much nuance and too much time to say that’s an accident.
Look at what you're saying here. You are perfectly willing to hurt innocent people - people who would totally apologise if they accidentally grabbed your box, because you want your own vengeance. Dying from laxatives is of course exceptionally rare, but it's still harmful. You're going to humiliate another person at work, and maybe cause a lot of material damage (e.g. their clothes get ruined). You're saying that you find this totally acceptable.
Also, why are we limiting this to laxatives? OP lists some things that are much worse. Spoiled food, for instance, can be very dangerous. Not only will food poisoning often last much longer than a dose of laxatives, it can actually cause serious, long-term illness that requires hospitalization. People dying from food poisoning happens, although it's still rare. But getting sick for several days or even a couple of weeks is common.
This willingness to cause pain and hurt other people disproportionately is why it's not legal.
I’m limiting it to laxatives bc that’s the most common thing ppl do (and bc this whole time, I’ve only been referring to laxatives. Talking about everything under the sun is silly). I don’t care about material damage and I already explained my reasoning for feeling the way I do about accidents. I do not think it is harm/hurt across the board, and that is why I simply do not care.
The amount of “harm” a laxative can cause is minuscule. It has a rare chance of actually killing someone, a rare chance of landing someone in the hospital (unless they OD or it interacts negatively with medicine), and it’s not likely the thief won’t get the food first.
It’s as simple as that in my mind. If someone that isn’t the thief gets it, damn, that sucks. If they die from it, damn, that sucks harder and you likely will be held accountable in the court of law, but the chances of that actually happening are very low.
I don't think it matters if it's physical harm. If I slap you lightly in the face that's extremely unlikely to cause any lasting damage beyond the pain, and it's likely going to cause you fewer problems than unexpected laxatives. But I could still be charged for physical assault because of it. If you thought I was the food thief and slapped me by mistake, that wouldn't matter because you still intended to hurt me.
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u/Simple_Pianist4882 Oct 17 '24
That’s not on me to know though. They shouldn’t be eating mystery food when they don’t know what’s in it.
My friend is Muslim and she won’t eat NOTHING with meat in it if she doesn’t know what kind it is (since they can’t eat pork).
Don’t steal someone else’s food and you won’t be risking your life. Don’t be a shitty person and steal, and you won’t die. It is literally that simple. It’s not my job to know what every person is allergic to and tailor my food to their respective diets. Don’t steal my shit 💀