Discussing and Defining Defect(s)

“Aaaaggh!” Eden groaned in extended agony, getting settled in for the start of her second day of work.

Today co-worker Shira was on time, also getting herself settled. “Whatsa matter, E?”

“Couldn’t sleep, due to that intense sugar plus chocolate buzz from yesterday. And now we have to do it all over again! How do you survive this?!”

“I told you twice yesterday, at lunch and end of day: hydrate! Eat veggies and/or savory! Avoid sugar, butter, most other dairy products, caffeinated coffee, tea, etc., and especially chocolate!”

Plink plink. Plink.

“Uuuaaaagghhh!”

“You’ll do fiiinne” Shira assured her, briefly patting her shoulder then moving towards her own seat. “Just follow what your body wants as best you can, and my pacing lead beyond that.”

About 1/3 hour into this new day of advanced chocolate candy consumption, Eden brought up a burning question she’d intended to raise yesterday, but to which she hadn‘t gotten around. “Why on earth is this company paying us to eat all their defective chocolates?”

“Because we’re awesome” she smiled between bites.

“No I mean why are they paying anyone to do this? Or even volunteers or slave labor or whatever? Can’t they just re-melt the chocolate and do a make-over?”

“Nope. Remember their registered trademark motto: Quality without compromise®. Chocolate’s not aluminum nor any other meltable metal: you can’t just re-melt it and maybe filter out the junk and re-use it. I’m no chocolatier, but there are plenty around here who make it clear that even for lesser chocolate products, re-melting changes the characteristics of the chocolate. With the quality level here, that does Not happen.”

“Why don’t they just sell them at a lower price as seconds or defects or out-of-tolerance or however they want to brand it?”

Both their mouths were (again) full. Eden took her chewing time to study her next-up candy: a Milk Double Caramel.

“I don’t see anything wrong with this one whatsoever!”

“Lemme see.”

Eden handed it over for Shira to study.

She handed it back, “Take about a 1/4 bite from the end facing you, then look inside at the remainder and tell me what you see.”

She did. “I see the remainder of a high-quality chocolate candy of the Milk Double Caramel variety that does not look like it belongs here.”

“Aim the inside my direction, please.”

“See that void near the lower left corner?”

“That’s a defect?!”

“Here it is, for sure. The filling is supposed to entirely fill the interior.”

“I get that they may have some amazing whizzy high-tech way to detect these kinds of defects on the production line, but how did you know?!”

“I’m good at my job” she smiled, her face to Eden looking particularly fat as she plunked in her next mis-made morsel.

“How long have you been here, anyway?”

“A month, almost exactly.”

“How much trouble will I be in and how much will you hate me if I ask you how fat you were when you started?”

“Depends whether you and I keep up with what’s in our bowls whether either of us is in trouble or not.” She ensured she’d less likely be via eating two in-bowl tasty treats at once—easier since it was a pair of caramel patties.

To Eden’s near-stunned amazement, Shira slipped her handheld (a fairly recent iPhone) out of her cleavage storage zone.

“How can you pull that out and not get in trouble?!”

“You asked me a job-related question, and I need to show you a pic to give you a clear, memorable answer.” She held out her device for Eden to see, “This is a pic of me a few days before starting here.”

“HHHHHH! Oh fuck no!” Eden’s mouth fell open, growing more agitated and panicked by the second looking at the average-slender woman Shira had been so very recently! “You can’t have developed your big boobs and belly and butt and everything else in one month!”

“Sure I can—and did!” Plop—another chocolate in her mouth, this one a Milk Pecan Bud. “Proof’s right in front of you” she wiggled and swayed slightly in her seat. “Size 12W to 20W is entirely possible in one month when a person eats chocolates as a career for a full 40 hour work week each week, then best attempts at regular nutritious meals atop that.”

Eden felt like her face was going to melt, if her brain didn’t get there sooner. “And you’re good with this?!”

“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s very sensual being fat, and I’m all about sensuality! I should be able to do at least as well as a fat belly dancer than I did as an average-build exotic dancer, and far be it from me to complain about the 30B to 38G upgrade” she swayed her upper body slightly.

“38G?!”

“So far. It’s only the first month, and having never been in the fat realm before plus no clear pattern from my family members, no idea if I’m already at or near my setpoint or just getting started.”

“Setpoint?”

Shira had to wave her off, mouth already full of more fine chocolates.

With a small rush of new chocolates in her own bowl, Eden had her own mastication work to do.

“Each of us has a metabolic setpoint which our body strives to maintain, adjusting for food intake, variations in exercise hence energy burning, etc. My body’s been trying hard to burn off all the excess energy from the excess caloric intake in chocolate form. And here’s some more….”

After their next chocolate chewing pause, Shira again continued, “For reasons beyond my pay grade, there are ways to overwhelm this regulation system, resetting it. Yo-yo dieting sets the setpoint ever higher. We’re not doing that. If or when we stop all this chocolate consumption, our bodies may burn most of it off, maybe some extra for insurance—I donno. If we revert to our former ways, we may drift back where we were, or may remain slightly to more than slightly fatter. Once a person has more fat cells they never go away—that part I got.”

Eden collapsed at the thought of this 6 month penance permanently altering her physique. There were only a couple of candies currently in each of their bowls to attend to, which they did.

“So the fat cells may empty out, but because they already exist, apparently they’re easier to refill—another reason weight-loss diets rarely long-term work for anyone.”

“So I avoided a criminal record but will wind up a fat blob instead. Grreeeaaat.”

“Nah, not a blob. You’re more likely to have more the the shape you had coming in: mid-body padding down below.”

“I don’t even get to have big boobs like you?!”

“How do the women in your family run?”

“Small” she pursed her lips.

“Yeah, well, we’ll have to find out. Mine run a significant range, though with no one else alive with whom I’m in contact in my current range of plushness, I have no valid comparison points.”

“Plushness?” she raised one eyebrow.

“Sure! Just like our furnishings in here.”

“That’s the other thing I don’t get—another thing I don’t get: why would See’s go to the expense to have this nice friendly airy homey space just for us to sit on our fattening asses on nice comfortable furniture that’s at least as padded as you are and I’m apparently going to be, rather than out somewhere in one of the regular work areas on a stool like everyone else?”

“Front office doesn’t work on stools.” She munched a Milk Butterscotch not-quite-Square, then added, “They have nice offices and chairs too. For that matter, as factory floors go, this one’s pretty pleasant.”

“You worked on one?”

“A little while. Shipping and receiving kinda thing.”

“Didn’t work out?”

“Not with a nearby co-worker who was hornier than me—if you can imagine such a thing, which I have trouble doing. Anyway, he preferred shipping his love log versus the packed cardboard boxes we were being paid to handle, and I preferred receiving his shipment versus those same kinds of boxes. We both got canned, he got into my can a little more for a day or so, then we went our separate ways and that was that.”

A flurry of Almond Buds both Milk and Dark piled into their bowls.

“So OK, I get that the company’s perfectionism won’t let them sell the perfectly viable candies we’re eating. What’s wrong with this Orange Cream?” she passed it over.

Shira needed a moment to study as she chewed.

“A little bit of bloom on the bottom.”

“This slightly cloudy part?”

“Yep. Happens to home chocolatiers all the time, i’ve seen in videos. Major no no for a company like this.” She handed the chocolate back.

One aspect of their jobs that neither Eden nor Shira understood was why it mattered which of them ate which chocolates. All Shira knew was that if she just popped that Orange Cream into her mouth when it had been sent down the tubing/piping/etc. into Eden‘s bowl, something bad would happen somewhere to someone.

Remaining utterly flummoxed by the whole situation on her second day, Eden was beyond questioning such things, with so many more pressing, obvious questions unanswered.

“One more time with feeling: I get they can’t or won‘t sell what we‘re eating. Why can’t they give them away to charities, or Make A Wish, or someone who’d be delighted to have them?”

“Is there a part of ‘Quality without compromise’ you’re not understanding?” Shira didn’t entirely tease. “Not a spokesperson, just an employee in the same job position as you. I gather than they don’t want anyone to have substandard candies associated with them.”

“Fine! Private label these!” Munch, munch. “These could be Trader Joe’s Chocolate Delight Assortment in some totally different box and related packaging, and I’d buy them and love them!”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

“Look at the Milk Bordeaux™ in your left hand or the Raspberry Truffle with the out-of-tolerance white lines you just pulled out of the bowl with your right.”

“No time to look; I gotta keep eating these!”

“Quick look.”

She did, then pushed the Bordeaux into her mouth.

“Ever seen any other chocolates with exactly these patterns of enrobing and marking?”

“No.”

“Branding. Even in a different package, they’re still recognizable as See’s chocolate and related candies. Quality without compromise, hence private label packaging isn’t sufficient to disconnect the brand association.”

“Alright fine; I give up. They’re feeding us a whole bunch of out-of-tolerance chocolates which for 98% of the world would be perfectly viable, paying us slightly over minimum wage to trash our health and get fat together.”

Shira shot her a questioning glance as she chewed.

“Fatter together!”

“That’s my girl!” she smiled. “Sit back and enjoy the riiiide.”