The Candy Dish

There's nothing more amusing at a dull job than setting out a candy dish and watching ones coworkers. It's way more fun than trying to keep a desk plant healthy in the artificial office light, more fun than killing a betta or goldfish softly in some inadequate office fishbowl. When I worked at a dot.com a few years ago, I sat next to the candy dish person, who actually was on Weight Watchers, was overweight, and who seemed to derive great pleasure from watching people come to her candy dish. Actually, it was a whole candy drawer. There was a drugstore across the street, and she would go and buy several bags of fun-sized candy bars and dump them with pleasure into her file drawer. It was fun to see the dieters come to the drawer and apologize or make excuses for taking candy, to which Ms. Weight Watchers would reply in this smug, purring voice, "That's what it's there for... enjoy..."

At my previous workplace, I started the candy experiment, but it didn't last long. For one thing, I had to buy organic chocolate, because we were selling organic vegetables and that was our mission. I bought a display box of these mini chocolate squares, which was something like $25. The CEO, whose office was closest to my workspace, wiped the whole thing out within a few days. The funny thing was that she wouldn't talk to me, make eye contact, or anything. She would just glower, come over, snatch some squares and storm away. No exaggeration - I quickly realized that not only could I not afford to keep this woman-beast in chocolate, no one else was getting any of it. I abandoned the candy experiment.

When I started my current job, I started the candy dish again. I started with spicy, chewy ginger candies from GingerPeople, because I like those and they kind of serve the same purpose after lunch as a breath mint. Interestingly, one of the women there, whom I considered a borderline anorexic, liked the ginger candies. She would come by, give me a small smile and sometimes a sad little shrug, and take a candy. She would always dig around a little in the dish before selecting one, which was interesting, because they were all the same.

I started giving other candy to see what else she would eat. Turns out she would eat Starbursts and other sour, fruity candy, but not the cheap chocolate. However, my boss LOVES cheap chocolate, and when I first offered mini Twix she said, "Oh my God. I LOVE TWIX. LOVE THEM," in the same tone one might use when saying, "Oh my God. I love Cristal. Love it". I mean, wow. It's just a Twix.

I love the people who have to tell me a little story or a reason when they take candy.
"For the ride home," or "I just need a little something" are both common. People have a lot of food issues. The normal people come by maybe once every few days and take a piece without comment and just go away and eat it. These normal people are also the same ones who occasionally contribute a bag of candy themselves to the dish. The freakish people are the ones who eat candy all day, or the one who complains bitterly about her weight, makes self-deprecating comments about her body at awkward moments (such as in an all-staff meeting), berates one of the thin girls for working out several times a week (every night she tries to talk this girl out of going to her "outdoor boot camp"), and eats tiny frozen South Beach Diet or Lean Cuisine meals.
She comes to my candy dish and inevitably says something strange like, "I really hate you" while taking candy. It's all very fascinating.