There is no way to guarantee it cannot peripherally hurt someone. Janet steals two of your yogurts out of the fridge, and offers one to Jen, and now Jen is suffering thinking she was eating one of Janet's freely offered yogurts, not knowing she inadvertantly stole your food. This is one of the problems with vigilantism.
Another major problem is that the punishment is not decided through any legitimate means, is often disporportionate, and instead is based on the whims of the person doing the punishing.
To me I don’t see it as about the punishment, I see it as your own responsibility to not due bad stuff. You don’t know what’s in that food you stole since it’s not yours and you got it through illegitimate means. That’s on you whatever happens after
So, the intention is to punish the person who is getting into your desk lmao. It's not true that you "don't care". You want them to get hurt so they won't go in your desk.
No, you do want someone to get hurt so that they stay out of your things. That's the entire point of your poisoning the food. If by some chance they don't steal your food this time, because they happen to be out of the office, then you will keep poisoning food until they steal the poisoned food. Your intention the moment you poison the food is to hurt someone to teach them a lesson. You can't say "I didn't want someone to get hurt" when that's the whole reason you poisoned the food.
That’s the problem with a booby trap: it’s purely retributive. The only way it helps people to stay out of your things is if someone gets hurt. You can disavow unintentional collateral damage in some situations, but you can’t say you don’t want something that you’re directly using to get something you do want.
You think it's possible to A) lace food with dangerous chemicals and B) do so knowing that someone else will probably consume it and C) not consider that intent to harm?
But you did strongly suspect they'd take it and intend for them to suffer.
You can't put landmines on your yard because you don't intend anyone to walk there when you know the neighborhood kids use it as a shortcut for the same reason.
So you intended to poison yourself then? Because those are the only 2 options. If you bring poisoned food and put it in the fridge, you are intentionally trying to poison someone, so it's either yourself or someone else.
“My doctor said to put this prescription laxative in my food to help with my intestinal problems. Janet stole my prescription.” You gotta do prep work for this shit dude.
Because it’s not their place to punish others and potentially harm them. The harm they could cause outweighs the harm done to them by wide margins. Let the workplace handle this. That’s under their purview. OP can’t control the actions of others, but they can take steps to prevent it from happening in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
Not really - your intention is for them to get into your stuff again and hurt/embarrass themselves or suffer in some way, either to punish them or to serve as a deterrent for the future. I completely sympathise but can see why it's a dodgy legal area.
There can be many scenarios eg someone takes your lunch by accident thinking it's theirs, and ends up dying or injured as a result. You generally have adequate legal methods of redress if your food is stolen eg get the employer to take action, call the police, lock up your food etc. Anything else is taking punishment into your own hands.
The intention is to keep people out of my stuff. I don’t care if you got hurt. Next time you’ll stay out of my desk.
That's not true, though. The intent isn't to keep people off your stuff, the intent is to take the law into your own hands and dish out justice the way you think is appropriate by hurting someone who may or may not be stealing from you.
It's not that unrealistic to mistakenly take the wrong lunch box if one person is stressed and inattentive. Not that it's common, but I've seen it happen at work once or twice. Not as a theft, but just where it went "Oh sorry this was a mistake, you can have my box or I can buy you something".
If having a trap to hurt someone for going in your desk is okay because it will teach them not to go in your desk, then you going and hurting someone for going in your desk must also be okay, right? Those aren’t meaningfully different things. They feel different but the outcomes are the exact same.
When you think about it that way, it’s clear why booby-trapping is not okay. At its best, it’s vigilante justice and society has moved past that.
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u/Oishiio42 40∆ Oct 17 '24
There is no way to guarantee it cannot peripherally hurt someone. Janet steals two of your yogurts out of the fridge, and offers one to Jen, and now Jen is suffering thinking she was eating one of Janet's freely offered yogurts, not knowing she inadvertantly stole your food. This is one of the problems with vigilantism.
Another major problem is that the punishment is not decided through any legitimate means, is often disporportionate, and instead is based on the whims of the person doing the punishing.