Posted on: Monday, May 2, 2005

ABOUT MEN

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Like a lot of other places, our office has been plagued by a petty thief: the person who steals things out of the community refrigerator.

For a long time, it was hard for me to get worked up about this.

After all, if somebody really needed a late-night Diet Coke that badly, he'd be welcome to mine. (Beer, of course, would be another matter.) And it was hard to muster much outrage when somebody swiped a cup of Dannon Lite cherry yogurt; it's not exactly my cup of tea.

All of this changed the other day when the thief — or maybe it's a ring of newsboys gone bad — took a whole box of chocolate-chip cookie dough I had bought as a fund-raiser from a co-worker's daughter's and left in the freezer to take home.

The creep! The audacity! I was planning to save that dough for a late-night case of the munchies on one of those nights when I get really depressed over the Cubs never getting to the World Series and have to watch a rerun of the 1986 Chicago Bears' (only) win in the Super Bowl to revive my spirits.

So now, the perp has my attention. Remember the sequel to "The Falcon and the Snowman," when the Falcon (or maybe it was the Snowman) escapes from prison, hides in the hills and sneaks into town at night to steal from a carport refrigerator to stay alive, but on the third or fourth day eats a meal laced with rat poison by the homeowner who is out for revenge?

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm still ticked off.

My wife, who probably would have enjoyed a cookie or two, suggested I put up a Fridge Cam to catch the thief on video — video being the best law-enforcement device (think van cams, Rodney King and all those loveable chase scenes and crashes on "Cops") invented in the past 50 years.

I was all set to jump into action until I started thinking about the repercussions. If the office cam worked really well, what would stop my wife from installing one at home to monitor my own indiscretions?

What if I were caught on tape polishing off all the leftover brownies before she could get any? What if there was indisputable evidence from the Pantry Cam that it's me who keeps putting back the bag of chips with nothing but crumbs inside? What if the film showed me drinking milk out of the carton or dipping into the peanut butter jar with my fingers?

Still, something has to be done about the refrigerator thief. Maybe we need to lockbox the fridge, the way real estate people do with a vacant house. Maybe a little static electricity shock could be rigged up. Maybe someone could invent a version of The Club to protect the yogurt. Maybe the Diet Cokes could come with a GPS tracking device. Maybe corporal punishment ...

What? Wait a minute.

My school-mom supplier has just interrupted my outraged rant with an important piece of information. The cookie dough wasn't left in the freezer after all. She put it inside a brown plastic bag and stashed it at the back of the refrigerator, where the thief wouldn't see it.

Never mind.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.