As a student, I was living in a flat together with other students sharing the bathrooms, toilets and kitchen.

Sometimes, things in the kitchen vanished. Well, such things happen. Occasionally, I found a replacement in my place in the fridge or shelf, or some other delicacy in exchange. Occasionally, something just vanished. Oh, well. No big deal.

But two things really aggravated me:

• My nice, tasty original Heinz Ketchup (no advertisment here, I just really liked the stuff at that time) was used up incredibly fast, even when I was absent.
• The same happened to my sugar, which I kept openly in a nice sugar bowl with a spoon in the kitchen.

This stuff was never refilled. It just vanished. Well, I knew how to get them…

My parents used no-name ketchup from a very cheap store, so when I once went home I picked up an empty bottle, thoroughly cleaned it and filled my lovely, costly and trademarked Heinz ketchup into that bottle.

I could store it for ages. Nobody took it. Heck, even when I actively _offered_ it, nobody wanted it. Problem solved.

The sugar thing was a bit more tricky. Of course I could have taken it into my room, but then I would have to drink my morning tea in the kitchen either without sugar or take the sugar with me and remember to lock it up again. In addition, this wouldn’t have been fun, would it?

So I exchanged the sugar with salt. Left it a few days. With satisfaction I noticed that some of my “white gold” has vanished, but not as much as if it was sugar. I enjoyed the picture of disgusted facial expressions I imagined and the thought of coffee or tea being poured into the sink, ‘cause it was salted. Later I exchanged it with sugar again and used it, but at random occasions I exchanged it with salt again, so nobody could ever guess if it was really salt or sugar in there.

Sometimes I even salted my own tea, which was useful when I was doing sports (one of the things I learned during military service), which probably helped to fool any observer. It did not take long and nobody dared touching my sugar again…