Put the chocolate down, and no one gets hurt!

My biggest fear when I took my job as a receptionist... okay legal assistant... ok I'm a lawyer... was that I would turn into one of those awful front-desk ladies with two divorces and a chocolate fetish... and just in case the boss needed help with gift ideas for secretary's day... she reminds him with clever stickers bordering the form letters calendar at the office:

"Chocoholic!"
"If it ain't chocolate, it ain't breakfast!"
"Chocolate: Here today... gone today"
Or, my favorite,
"Forget love! I'd rather fall in chocolate!" Well guess what. That's exactly what's going to happen. Because of that sticker.

Well I ran into an interesting situation last week. We had a large basket full of chocolate poker chips as a part of a promotional for the firm. The chocolate was about as tempting to me as chili in July but other people didn't seem to mind and the goodies went fast. Although to break the ice when co-workers come up for more chocolate, they'll inevitably make a chocolate joke about the diminishing pile... to which I always find myself playing along, "I know, it's like they're calling to me!" "... oh is it choc. o'clock again already?" "I'll be with you in a second... I just have to take this chocolate." They love it.

So in a couple of days I had inadvertently become the self-proclaimed choco-crazed receptionist I hate, short of only a few stickers and probably a couple of bra sizes. But I still hadn't eaten any chocolate. I realized then that I've been resenting the wrong person this whole time. It's not the crazy lady in the office who loves chocolate... she doesn't even like chocolate; it's the crazy people in the office who love a chocolate joke. It probably started with a basket of candy after a trade show, and ended with a new sticker for the 'receptionist' at every holiday because "she loves chocolate," and I'm sure that all began with a poor receptionist at some sticker making factory whose boss thinks she, and every other society-created, chocoholic receptionist nation-wide only need an hourly wage and some cocoa reinforcement to keep her a happy and productive worker... or better yet... human being.