The Cutlery Thief

A few years ago the kitchen of the company I worked for suddenly had no soup spoons or dessert spoons. One day there was about 40 in the drawer and the next day there was none, to the great annoyance of everyone who ate breakfast cereal, soup, and similar food at the office. Someone had stolen about 20 dessert spoons and about 20 soup spoons while apparently not stealing tea spoons, knives, or forks.

For a while I kept my own soup spoon in a locked desk drawer, but that was a hassle. After a couple of months of unsuccessfully lobbying management to buy more spoons I went to an op-shop (thrift-shop for American readers) and bought most of the soup spoons and dessert spoons they had and donated them to the office. After that everything was good for about a week until all the regular knives were stolen. They didn’t steal carving knives or bread knives, just the type of knife you would use to eat dinner or make a Vegemite sandwich.

After the knife theft management agreed to buy new knives.

Not long after that the company had financial issues and I was laid off, so I don’t know whether the forks ended up being stolen later on. If the cutlery thief wasn’t among the people laid off then I’m sure a fork heist happened sooner or later.

I remain mystified as to why someone would want to steal cutlery. The security around laptops wasn’t great and walking out of the office with a laptop would look much less suspicious than walking out with a bag of spoons or knives. One would expect that stealing a laptop and selling it to buy cutlery would be a better option.

If anyone who lives in my area wondered why their local op-shop had a sudden lack of spoons, I’m sorry that I don’t have a satisfying answer for you, just many more questions.