Co-worker steals my lunch, so I put ghost peppers in my food.

So I like to bring my own food into the office, and we have a fridge to put things into, and I have food tubs with my name on them.

A co-worker would sometimes, quote, not see people's names on food and think it was theirs,

so they'd heat it up and eat it and then apologize

after the fact. They did this enough for it to be an annoyance to their co-workers, but not enough for our

employers to really care. This has been happening with my food for once or twice a month. Last

month I'd had enough, and I like spicy food, but I don't bring it into the office, as sometimes I'll let people try some of my food and my cooking. I ordered a bag of ghost chili peppers and put the full bag into a big pot of chili that would last for several days. I took this into the office and had it for lunch every day. Midweek, my lunch went missing, and I was waiting for the person

who was stealing my lunch to get a shock when they ate it. What happened in reality was someone

got sent home sick, and the next day they were off, and I was told that they went to the doctors

for stomach pains. Two weeks went by, and the co-worker who was off refused to talk about it and said HR was involved,

so I knew they were going to try and get me fired. I went home and ordered another bag of ghost chilies

and made another batch of my chili, this time with only one of the chilies in a single tub. I put this in

the freezer and the following Monday I was told I had an HR meeting that

day. I refused and said they needed to give me 24 hours to find someone to come into the meeting

with me, and the next day I had my manager come into the meeting, and I brought in my now-heated,

ghost chili-infused chili. The long and short is, I was told I could be fired for trying to poison the person who was stealing my lunch, and I asked if they admitted to stealing people's lunches, which they did. I then said I have a batch of the chili in question with me, and I like spicy food. My liking spicy food shouldn't stop me from having it at work since it doesn't smell when heated like

fish does, and my manager agreed it was on the person who took my lunch without knowing how

spicy it was, and I shouldn't be held liable if they eat something of someone else's that

doesn't agree with them. My manager and I then ate some of the chili and offered it to the

people in the meeting, some of whom

tried it and agreed that while it was spicy, it was clearly what I liked as I was fine eating

it. The meeting ended and nothing happened. I wasn't taken into another meeting and my lunch

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