So, I have a little dilemma. Here's the situation: Lately, I have been keeping a few cans of Starbucks Doubleshot in our office fridge as an "emergency coffee supply", backup for those days when I suddenly conceive a desperate need for a milky espresso drink 15 minutes after the cafeteria has closed for the day.

The cans have been disappearing faster than I expected. At first, I thought that I was simply forgetting how many cans I'd consumed, but after a couple of instances of finding no Doubleshots when I was pretty darn sure I remembered having Doubleshots in the fridge, I started keeping a log.

The log tells the tale: on Friday, there were two Doubleshots in the fridge. This Monday morning, there was one Doubleshot in the fridge, and since I was in San Diego the whole weekend, I think it's safe to say that I didn't drink it. (It's interesting that the stuff seems to disappear over the weekend - this may offer some clues as to who the thief is.)

So, I'm considering my available options:

1. Complain to HR. This will give me the satisfaction of bitching to someone official, but I don't really see what they can do apart from sending out a cranky e-mail reminding everyone that integrity is one of our corporate values.


2. Stop keeping Doubleshots in the fridge. This is in many ways the path of least resistance. However, I would need to develop an alternate emergency coffee strategy (learn to like the free coffee available in the breakroom; walk to the Starbucks up the road; etc.)


3. Leave a bitchy note on the fridge. ("Do not steal the tech writer's emergency coffee supply. When you steal the tech writer's emergency coffee supply, you make the tech writer sad. When you make the tech writer sad, you accrue bad karma, which puts you at risk of spending your afterlife trying to program a complex piece of consumer electronics equipment using a half-sheet of badly-photocopied instructions translated from Japanese into English by someone who was fluent in neither language. We hope your six ounces of purloined creamy coffee goodness were worth it, pal.") This has the advantage of providing some amusement to everyone who uses the fridge. On the other hand, it's unlikely to make the perpetrator stop, unless they were rationalizing their thievery by telling themselves that I wasn't missing the stuff anyway.


4. Devise a booby trap that will do something mildly painful or embarrassing to the thief. This has definite appeal, but I haven't come up with anything yet. It would also have to be a trap that wouldn't be sprung by me in a moment of carelessness, or by someone else who was merely rearranging the contents of the fridge to get at their lunch. I'll think it over.

Any of you guys ever have a coworker who swiped your stuff from the communal fridge? How did you deal with it?