The Vanishing Lunch
A free B1-level English story for language learners, readable online in English, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
Maya's lunch keeps disappearing from the office fridge, and she sets out to find out who has been taking it.
Maya always brought her lunch to work in the same blue lunch bag. For two weeks, though, something strange kept happening. By early afternoon, her lunch was gone from the office fridge. At first she thought she had simply forgotten it at home. But she checked twice and knew she hadn't.
She mentioned it to her coworker Oscar, who sat at the desk next to hers. "Maybe someone's taking it by accident," he said. "I've seen that happen before in big offices like this."
Maya wasn't convinced, so she decided to pay closer attention. On Monday, she wrote her name on a sticky note. She stuck it to the bag before leaving it in the fridge. By one o'clock, the bag had vanished again, sticky note and all.
That evening, she stayed a little later than usual and watched the kitchen from her desk. Around noon the next day, she saw a young man from the marketing team walk into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and took a blue lunch bag without checking the label. He was already halfway down the hall before Maya caught up with him.
"I think that might be mine," she said, trying to sound friendly rather than annoyed.
The man looked embarrassed. "I'm so sorry! I just started last week, and someone told me this fridge was for anyone to use. I have the exact same bag, and I honestly didn't check the name."
Once they compared bags side by side, the mix-up made sense. Both bags were the same shade of blue, bought from the same shop near the station.
Maya laughed, more relieved than upset. "At least now I know I'm not losing my mind."
The new employee offered to buy her lunch to make up for it, and she happily agreed. From then on, Maya wrote her initials on her bag in permanent marker. The mystery of the vanishing lunch was finally solved.
