I am surrounded by extremely petty thieves!

[Service Staff Steve]

So, today I witnessed two incidents of thievery/idiocy that just made me sad for humanity.

Case #1:
I was stocking drinks in our coolers like usual and this woman comes up to me
SC: Are these cream cheese? (pointing to a pile of single serve cream cheese packs that we keep in the coolers)
ME: Yes.
I turn my back to continue stocking drinks and turn around to see her filling up a paper lunch bag with cream cheese one handful at a time.
Me: excuse me, but you know that those cost money right?
SC: What! I thought I could take them for free to bring up to a patient's room.
Me: I'm sorry, but I think those cost 27 cents each, and by the looks of it you have 10 dollars worth.
SC: These can't be 27 cents, ask the cashier!
Me: (to cashier) Hey, how much are the cream cheese packets?
C: They are about 30 cents each.
Me: Thought so. Sorry miss but you have to pay for those.
SC: that's not right!

She then took the bag and dumped them all back into the bin and walked out. I swear, she was filling that paper sack to the brim!

Case #2:
We had some leftover onion rings from a previous order and I did not want them to go to waste. So I put them in a paper tray along with some fresh ones to make it a full order and placed that under the heat lamps for any customer to grab. About half an hour later, I took an order from a new customer and was putting everything on the grill. It was at that time I noticed that she was munching on onion rings, but did not have the full tray of them with the rest of her food. I look over to our heat lamps and what do I see... the onion rings that I put out are still there, but half the serving is gone! This woman literally just walked up and grabbed a handful of onion rings to eat while she waited for her food .I threw out the rest of the onion rings and in the end the food that I had tried to save went in the trash anyway. Maybe that's some weird sort of karma, I don't know.

[mattm04]

I get that all the time. One day when a bunch of the assisted living places in the area bring their buses by a customer informed me we were out of sugar for the coffees. I refilled the dispenser with 50+ packets. Not five minutes later they are all gone. After that i kept all the condiments behind the counter fr a few hours.

[Erin]

My dad is one of those petty thieves. He takes packets of fake sugar (the ones in the yellow packets) when he's at a restaurant and they have it. But he usually only takes 5 at a time, and never takes the entire pile of packets. Apparently he likes that fake sugar in his Cream of Wheat.

I tried to tell him he's being a sucky customer, but it doesnt seem to work.

[CruiseShipGirl]

My grandmother has gotten to the point where none of us want to go to a restaurant with her anymore. She takes anything that isn't nailed down. Rolls, sugar packets (she's diabetic - wtf?), jams, extra napkins, etc. No cutlery, at least when I've been with her, but she's not even subtle about it.

[hobbitt97]

Pack rat

My grandmother and grandfather had gone through the great depression. They loved to go to McDs or BK or other restaurants and take ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar, artificial sweetener, mustard or whatever was available. (She had a collection of salt and pepper shakers). Grandma had one draw that was full of ketchup packets.
My older brother was graduating from a very prestigious somewhat ivy league college. My parents, my grandparents and I were all invited. The day before the graduation the families were invited to an afternoon tea. There was a variety of finger sandwiches and petit four (little mini cakes) available. My grandmother took a whole tray of the petit four and dumped it into her sizeable pocketbook. I'll never forget the look of horror on the other guest's faces. I turned and walked away in the opposite direction so as not to be associated with her.
That night grandma ate ALL the petit four and was sick the next day.

[MoxisPilot]

My mom used to steal/save all kinds of packets - ketchup, duck sauce, soy sauce, mustard, sugar, etc.

She learned her lesson when one package of duck sauce popped in her "packet" drawer and lured ants.

As for myself, I used to take packaged crackers from places like Olive Garden, but I've stopped since learning that it's a bit tacky.

[BookstoreEscapee]

We used to have a stash of ketchup/salt/pepper/etc. packets and stuff from fast food restaurants when I was a kid, but it was all leftovers from when we went there, since they usually gave us more than we needed. Plus my mom and my brother both worked at McDonald's at some point so we tended to collect stuff. Now they don't tend to just toss a whole handful in the bag anymore (heck, half the time they don't give you any unless you ask for it...or even ask if you need it). Plus most of the fast food places near me have the pump containers for ketchup so you don't get packets at all unless you get your food to go.