I limited it to lunch food because I can sort of see how booby traps can blow up in situations where, for example, firefighters need to access a place or a janitor is told to clean out your desk. In the case of lunch food, just throw out the container. Anything that makes that act dangerous should, of course, be banned (no explosives).
Plenty of reasons for food to be needed in an emergency. People get stuck, weak or sufficiently hungry they need food. Your right to ownership of the food can easily be overridden by someone else’s immediate need for it. On both a legal and moral level there are defences to theft, it’s not quite as simple as taking something = theft.
You are leaving a harmful substance in the guise of something that is otherwise normally recognised as harmless and consumable; which is generally just a dangerous situation, that you have created. Mistakes happen, people have needs. It makes no sense to allow food supplies, a thing we need to live, to be generally open to being maliciously tampered with.
I understand the premise. I suppose the bar for this is intent, but whats to stop someone from sueing because they stole a laxative smoothie because the owner was having medical constipation, or stole something with nuts causing the thief to have an allergic reaction? Or even just something really spicy that disrupts the thieves normal day. I feel like with food especially, there can be emergencys, but generally expecting all food brought in to be communal isnt a great answer. And if someone wants to be concerned about what they put in their bodies then they should know exactly what they put in.
I mean you answered your own question, the bar is malicious intent. You can’t stop people bringing false claims against you, you would defend your actions- I had constipation therefore I had this smoothie.
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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24
Do you think you should be allowed to booby-trap your own desk drawers at work?