A Taste of Chocolate
My mother worked at Fanny Farmer’s chocolate factory when I was young. The factory itself was within walking distance of our house. My favorite activity when I was old enough (around 9 or 10) was to walk down to the factory and wait outside the exit door when her factory shift ended so that I could walk home with her. At least that is what I told her.
In reality, my real reason was to utilize all the cute little boy looks I’d been practicing. All of the female factory workers on my mother’s shift left at the same time as she did. The cuter I looked, the more likely I was to get an offering of chocolate from one of those workers as they left. My only hope was, “Please don’t let my mother be one of the first ones to leave,” for there would certainly be no chocolate coming from her.
I’m not quite sure how all those workers managed to leave the factory with pilfered chocolate. My thought is that they were allowed to leave with pieces of chocolate that had imperfections that the owners did not want to put out to the public. Then again, they could have just taken some. Who’s going to miss a few chocolates from the assembly line.
I know when I was working at J. C. Penneys, as a stock boy, I couldn’t believe how much good merchandise was thrown out down the garbage chute just because they had slight imperfections in manufacturing. The Penneys’ management did this so that workers wouldn’t purposely mar items in the hopes that they could get to walk out of the store with a discounted item. If any of Penneys merchandise had a problem, it was destroyed. I guess as long as you’re not massively imperfecting chocolate, letting a worker walk away with a few pieces is within the range of acceptability.
The trick to getting chocolate was not to pick up my mother every day. You had to spread out the cuteness, otherwise, you would become just a piece of ignored furniture to the regulars and free chocolate would never again be offered no matter how cute you looked.
My mother only worked for Fanny Farmers for a few years, so my so-called free source of chocolate was now gone (as much as a “free” source of chocolate would be for an 9-year-old since I never actually paid for chocolate before or after she worked at Fanny Farmers).
However, my love for chocolate never waned. Of course, my desire for chocolate and sweets at a young age added to other issues growing up…cavities.
Which also led to my mother’s next occupation. She went into dentistry as a dental assistant. Needless to say, I didn’t pick my mother up from work for that.
