The Sweetest Thief

Before the health crisis enforced working from home, my team had a tin of candy set out. We took turns restocking it weekly and it worked well since we had an area just for ourselves. Then, the candy started disappearing after hours, at incredible rates.

We honestly didn’t really mind because we always got too much candy and there was typically a lot left at the end of the week. But we also knew it was likely a project manager who had a massive sweet tooth and tended to stay late, and we thought it was rude to just take without a heads-up when he could easily afford his own.

So, we wrote, “God is watching you,” on the tin the next time we restocked. We expected that the guy would come to us and say something about liking candy and being put on the restocking rotation, but it turns out that we both overestimated and underestimated the guy’s honesty.

The candy continued disappearing at the same rate, but every Monday, a $20 note would appear below the tin. Our regular candy budget was about $10, so this was way too much. But since we never officially found out who our candy-thief-turned-candy-supplier was, we couldn’t exactly give it back. We started getting a fancy cake once a month with the leftover money.