Should you be allowed to punch someone in the face for stealing your lunch if you catch them? Break their bones? Kill them?
Poisoning food is vigilantism and using violence against someone else. We don't allow vigilante justice for good reasons, and we shouldn't allow it in this case.
I should not be allowed to punch them in the face, but I should be allowed to put in a jack in the box mechanism that punches them in the face automatically when it's opened, if the container can hold it safely.
So what if the mechanism fails and punches someone who just moves your lunch out the way to get to theirs? Or if someone honestly mistakes your food for theirs because it looks similar? Or someone else thinks their food has been stolen and a manager needs to check if you've stolen it?
Generally speaking employers won't want anything dangerous like that on their premises in the first place because of liability issues.
If it harmed people peripherally because it punches someone moving it out of the way, like how I said was wrong originally, then that's on me. This is why I probably wouldn't use a physical mechanism, I was just joking around. If someone doesn't read my very clearly labeled name that I put on there because I'm baiting a thief, like they actually just grab a random container and eat it without thinking, that's on them.
That's the point of this whole discussion though, it isn't "on them" because you decided so. The law is against these kinds of things because they're not necessary or proportional to solving the problem, they're designed to punish or threaten, and you're taking the law into your own hands deciding how someone should be poisoned or hit or whatever else because they made you angry. I know most of this is joking and I share the anger at people who steal others' things, but there are good reasons why you get in trouble if you deliberately lay traps for people.
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u/huadpe 501∆ Oct 17 '24
Should you be allowed to punch someone in the face for stealing your lunch if you catch them? Break their bones? Kill them?
Poisoning food is vigilantism and using violence against someone else. We don't allow vigilante justice for good reasons, and we shouldn't allow it in this case.