Poop Candy

This is a True Story From One Of My Jobs. I like the above title better, though.

In my current workplace, there's a small table, just a few feet from my desk, that's usually laden with a variety of candy and snack foods brought in by employees and free for public nibbling. I suspect that it's there to make employees drift steadily toward not fitting in their chairs without first removing the arms. It's succeeding in at least some cases - I gained almost ten pounds in the first month of being assigned to this department. The ultimate goal is no doubt to make us all drop dead from obesity-related disorders before we become eligible to collect a pension.

Today, one of the offerings was a bag of coffee-flavoured Werther's Originals candies. They were rather unpleasant. Reading the ingredients, I found out why. First of all, they're comprised around 50% of some artificial sweetener chemical whose name I can't remember and probably couldn't pronounce anyway.

Second, and far worse, there was a warning printed on the bag: "Excess consumption may have a laxative effect." They were promptly dubbed Poop Candy. This didn't hurt their popularity as much as one may have expected, since it had very little leeway to get lower. I expect they'll languish on the table for quite some time to come.


This reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago, when an ingrown toenail was giving me some trouble. The doctor advised me to soak my foot in a solution of water and epsom salts. I read the label on the package of epsom salts, and found that they have a wide range of near-miraculous powers. One use, though, stood out, so I asked my doctor, "These things only have a laxative effect when taken internally, right?"

To this day, I'm not sure he didn't lie to me. I don't think that doctor liked me much. Sure, his Hippocratic oath would prevent him from actually killing me, but he may have gotten a chuckle from the idea of making me spend a night in frequent gastrointestinal distress.


I take inordinate satisfaction in using phrases that don't turn up on any other site in Google searches. I'd give some examples, but then this entry would become a second hit for those phrases, thereby tainting my victory. I had originally thought that "Poop Candy" might be another rare phrase. I already checked it, though, and there are a few thousand other hits. Just pointing that out in case you didn't already think the Internet was messed up.

Anyway, even though the phrase "Poop Candy" might not be unique to this site, I still have high hopes for "free for public nibbling."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the light fixture in my dining room.