I never wanted to blog about this, but a certain incident has now occurred two times and is now worth posting. Every day, I bring the following items for snack/lunch/snack at work (or a slight variation thereof): applesauce, yogurt, carrot sticks, pretzels, Diet Coke/Pepsi (whatever's on sale), and two gala apples. Sometimes the yogurt is replaced by leftovers or a sandwich or what have you. But the one item that I never fail to bring is my cherished mid-day caffeine boost (aka diet cola).

I should mention that EchoDitto is currently renting office space downtown, so we share this huge floor with whole bunch of other companies/individuals/loud people.

A few weeks ago, on an ordinary Thursday afternoon, I went to the "Village Green" (gag) fridge to get my lunch. I grabbed my yogurt and carrots, but left the soda behind. About 20 minutes later, I returned to find my Diet Pepsi missing. Okayyy… I just saw it 20 minutes ago when I got my lunch. Did it grow legs and walk off? No. Did someone move it from the spacious door shelf to another part of the fridge? No. My can of cola had been pilfered.

I was livid. It would have been one thing if there were 20 other cans of cola sitting in the fridge and I wouldn't have noticed if someone had accidentally taken my Pepsi and left their Coke, but no, there was only one other lonely can of regular Coca-cola. What the hell? We share this office space with what feels like hundreds of other people, and someone had to decide to be cheap and take my Pepsi rather than put $0.75 in the soda machine 2 feet away.

Always being one to make a statement, I scribbled the following message on a post-it note and stuck it to the fridge door: "To the person who took my can of Diet Pepsi: GET YOUR OWN!" It stayed up for a few hours before one of the Regus Nazis (office space leasers) took it down.

Anyway, a few weeks passed and there was no further soda larceny. Until today. I went to the fridge and found that the can of Diet Pepsi I had placed there a few hours before had gone missing. Again. Fortunately, I had an extra can from Monday that I forgot to drink and imbibed that instead. Still, this makes me think: Why the hell would someone want to take my soda, other than the fact they forgot to bring change for the machine? Are people that desperate for caffeine? Or are they just idiots that don't realize that the can of Pepsi they took from the fridge really belonged to someone else? That, or they're just delusional and thought it was up for grabs.

From now on, I fear I'm going to have to write my name on every can I put in that fridge. Either that, I'll have to suck it up and drink it at room temperature.