An employment law expert has warned that workers who steal another colleague’s lunch could end up costing them their jobs.

Melbourne lawyer Roxanne Hart warned that workplaces usually have strict policies prohibiting the act.

She added that cutting a co-worker’s packed lunch may seem harmless, but it amounts to workplace theft.

“You can be fired for gross misconduct on the spot, and gross misconduct includes theft, but for theft to be proven, an employee would have to believe, on the balance of probabilities, that you intended to steal from them,” she said. yahoo.

She said sneaky lunch thieves will usually try to avoid blame when confronted by a company’s human resources department.

“Any employee caught stealing someone else’s lunch will just say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize it wasn’t mine,’ or ‘I thought it was common,’ and then the employer will have some doubts about the intent of the theft.”

“But technically, workplace theft is serious misconduct.”

Ms Hart believes most first-time fridge burglars will get a warning when caught.

Employment and business lawyer Roxanne Hart urged would-be lunch thieves to think twice before nibbling on colleagues’ tables.

But, she warned, the punishment could escalate for new thefts.

In an Australian corporate Reddit thread, an office worker revealed that another member of staff had stolen the leftovers of his daughter’s birthday cake from a labeled container in the fridge.

She then revealed the most disgusting detail – her co-worker had taken the slice with the biggest frosting.

“I need to know that karmic retribution is happening somewhere in the world,” she wrote.

Her post was then flooded with dozens of similar stories.

“I used to work in temp recruitment,” said one reader.

“We sent a temperature to a customer for a few weeks and got reports that lunches were missing from their fridge.”

They revealed that the temporary worker’s contract had expired after a month, but the employer then reported that a strange smell had begun to linger behind the photocopier.

“They moved the copier away from the wall and the remains of the stolen lunches were pushed between it and the wall and were rotting away,” they explained.

“The customer checked the CCTV and saw the temp stealing lunches from the fridge, eating as much as he could and stuffing the leftovers behind the photocopier.”

Common crime can bring stiff penalties if bosses and HR staff can prove a worker stole lunches

Another office worker revealed that their office’s resident thug was sacked following a reign of terror but refused to go quietly.

“There was a guy at my workplace who was heavily suspected of stealing people’s lunches and snacks from the fridge, but he was never caught in the act, so he couldn’t be disciplined.

“About a year later, the guy was fired, for other reasons, and apparently he was very upset about it. That day, the refrigerator was ransacked and a bunch of food was stolen for the first time in a year.

“That was a while ago and there have been no problems since. Now it’s pretty obvious that this guy was the one who pulled off one last heist on the way out.

One reader revealed the moment their colleague playfully ruined another’s lunch.

“A colleague mistakenly took someone else’s lunch, which he thought had been microwaved.

“After he took it out of the microwave he realized it was someone else’s lunch, a salad, which should not have been microwaved under any circumstances.

“She put it back in the fridge, but the owner of the salad took it out of the fridge to eat it for lunch before it got cold. He was not happy.