Let's set the scene - it's a typical office on a typical morning, with nothing particular strange or out of the ordinary.
A co-worker has his lunch of shrimp fried rice stolen from the communal fridge and, after raising the issue with HR, is now viewing security footage. The unsub is most likely a fellow co-worker and, as determined by our narrator, the lunch of shrimp fried rice was in the fridge for less than an hour before it disappears. This gives us an exact timeframe to check footage and determine suspect.
The twist? The unsub sits right in front of our narrator and didn't even eat food. We cross now to the Twitter stream which caught the imagination of the internet. Play this if you need to get in the mood.
Points to clarify: he bought the shrimp fried rice around 11:30am (carry out) and put it in the fridge to chill until he takes lunch at noon. So she had exactly a 30min window of time to do what she did. There was no intention of microwaving the food
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
After charges were dropped, HR sent a company wide email about not stealing people’s lunches. She is scheduled to arrive at work in 20min. My blood is on cocaine
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
From the moment she walked in, I’ve just been staring at her. Watched her open her email and now she clicked on the goddamn HR email! Holy fuck strap in - here we go!
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
!!!! After seeing the HR email she says out loud “woah. Someone stole a lunch? Who would do something like that?” !!! I may have to run out of this room
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
This shits about to get crazier. After he says that she goes “oh it was your lunch?” BEAT she continues “well why would you go to HR about that?!”
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
Dude just sighed and went back to work after she said what she said. She looks frightwningly calm
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
This is real. This is happening. We know who did it but we don’t know why. It’s a post production company so we’re in fact open today. She’s been sitting 3ft from me this whole time
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
Unbeknownst to the guy and the woman, I just ordered 3 shrimp fried rice plates for lunch and will be hand delivering them
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
She took the fried rice from me with a big smile on her face. She’s eating it and loving it. This is utter ruthlessness
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
I wish I could close this up with a neat little bow, but, it appears that we may never know why she did it. Maybe she doesn’t know she did it. Either way I’m now forced to work 40hrs a week next to a cold blooded individual
— Zak Toscani (@zaktoscani) March 30, 2018
And there you have it. So what have we learned? What's the lesson to be gained from all of this? For one, the likely motive here is that our unsub thought the lunch was hers, dumped it after thinking it was leftovers and thought nothing of it.
The other part of this, and it's a point the unsub made herself, is reporting something like this to HR. Surely, in the grand scheme of things, this is on the lower ends of it. We're not talking about sexual harassment, we're not talking about violence in the workplace, we're not talking about damaging someone's reputation - this was an honest mistake and the victim took our unsub down over it.
Was he in the right? Does anyone come out the better in these scenarios?
Who knows. (silence) Fade to black and...
Executive Producer
DICK WOLF
Via Twitter