‘Anti-Theft’ Lunch Bags
When victimized by workplace food thieves, some curse, others write threatening notes. Some might even contemplate surveillance cameras, if they’re hit often enough.
Being an inventor, Sherwood Forlee found another way to fight back when his sandwiches repeatedly went missing from the communal fridge at the SoHo ad agency where he worked reports The New York Post.
“It kept happening, and one day I’d had it,” says Forlee, 29, a designer and mechanical engineer who worked in the firm’s product design division.
He considered stealth laxatives and sandwiches spiked with cat food. But the light-bulb moment came when he was scanning the fridge in the apartment he shares with three roommates in Brooklyn, and came across an unidentified food item crawling with mold.
Next stop: the “anti-theft lunch bag,” a plastic baggie customized with green splotches that make a fresh sandwich look like a spore factory, deterring all but the most desperate snack stealer. When he put it to work in the office, the theft stopped immediately.
Charging $10 for a box of 25 bags, Forlee quickly sold out of his first run of 2,000 boxes. With a boost from Target, which briefly featured the product on its Web site, demand has held steady, and he’s currently on his fourth run.
Photo by thinkofthe.com.
Jaclyn Wells on October 20th, 2009 2:02 pm
lol…that is so funny and what a genius idea for him to come up with that! I’m sure that definitely stops people from taking his food now, however, now he may just have to worry about people actually thinking it’s spoiled and throwing it away for fear it will start to stink up their fridge.
Angela Shupe on October 21st, 2009 5:53 am
Now that he has sandwiches down, we need a way to get co-workers to stop stealing drinks and crackers/chips too. I’m not sure the fake mold would look legit if you put chips in that bag instead of the sandwich.
Leave a Reply