▸ Column · Modern Gotham city office, gothic noir present day
BATMAN replies.
The letter
Three weeks running, someone in my Gotham office has been raiding my labeled lunch containers — every lid marked in fat blue Sharpie with my name, HARRIET. It started with stolen bites of leftover pad thai and escalated to an entire Tupperware of my grandmother's biryani disappearing, after which the thief rinsed the container and returned it to the fridge empty, as though that were a courtesy. So I ran an operation: a ghost-pepper quinoa salad, heavily dosed, and at 1 p.m. yesterday our operations manager Tomasz was coughing violently in the break room, insisting he'd just had "something spicy." I have a suspect. I have no confession. HR says a ghost-pepper sting doesn't constitute a workplace grievance. Do I confront Tomasz directly, keep escalating the heat until denial is physically impossible, or accept that the office fridge is ungoverned territory?
Batman replies
The rinsed container. That is the detail that matters most.
A hungry man steals food and walks away. Tomasz ate your grandmother's biryani, cleaned the evidence, and put the container back. That is control behavior. He is not embarrassed — he is staging a scene. He is telling you he can take anything from that fridge and the only consequence will be a clean Tupperware waiting for you.
I have tracked men in this city who arrange things after the act. They count on the victim reading the tidiness as normalcy instead of provocation.
Do not read it as normalcy.
Document it now. Dates, descriptions, the 1 p.m. coughing incident, Tomasz's exact words. Photograph every labeled container before it goes into the fridge. Request break room security footage from building management in writing — not a verbal ask, a formal written request, so there is a record if it disappears.
The ghost pepper was the correct instinct. You already know how to make a man reveal himself. Now make certain the documentation is in place when he does it again.
Then you go to HR. Not with a grievance. With a pattern. With dates and photographs and a name for what this is: theft. A systematic pattern of conduct with documented evidence.
Give them no choice but to treat it as one.
— Batman
The Joker weighs in
Ha-ha-HA! Bats wants you to file a report. The man dresses like a flying rodent and his answer is always FORMS.
Harriet, you had the perfect moment and you sat there taking NOTES. Tomasz was weeping ghost-pepper tears in the break room, and instead of climbing on a chair and pointing at him in front of the whole floor — you just listened?
Forget the confession. Confessions are boring. You want the SCENE.
Next container, you plant a note inside the lid: Hi, Tomasz. Timed so he opens it at his desk. In front of everyone. No HR needed, no grievance forms — just him, the evidence, and a room full of witnesses watching his face do the math.
One bad day is all it takes, and lunch hour just got very interesting.
Batman wants justice. Ha! That's so like him. I want a story worth telling. Darling, so do you.
— The Joker
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