Remember the flap over all the looting going on in Iraq? Well, Time notes that looting even happens in the U.N. When food workers at the U.N. staged an impromptu strike, and walked off their jobs, hungry employees looted and pillaged their own restaurants for food, liquor, and even silverware.

The walkout left thousands of U.N. employees scrounging for lunch - eventually, the masses stripped the cafeterias of everything, including the silverware. ...The restaurants had been locked shut by security until about 1:00 pm when the doors flung open.

The decision to make the cafeterias into "no pay zones" spread through the 40-acre complex like wildfire. Soon, the hungry patrons came running. "It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene," said one Aramark executive who was present. "They took everything, even the silverware," she said. Another witness from U.N. security said the cafeteria was "stripped bare." And another told TIME that the cafeteria raid was "unbelievable, crowds of people just taking everything in sight; they stripped the place bare." And yet another astonished witness said that "chickens, turkeys, souffles, casseroles all went out the door (unpaid)."

Early damage estimates are as high as $9,000, not including several of the restaurants and the silverware.