My husband’s secretary had a bowl with the little snack-size chocolate bars in it, and everyone would help themselves. Strangely, it seemed to diminish over the weekends. Then her computer caught on fire. When they took her computer apart, they found a mouse had been helping itself to candy and storing the wrappers inside her tower. The buildup had overheated the thing. She now has a candy bowl with a lid.
I’ve kept candy in dishes on my desk for years now, and still have problems. I buy the candy and fill up the dishes (one open, one covered); some people bring candy in and others will give me money from time to time to cover the cost.
This usually works harmoniously, except for those people who never contribute anything but take the largest amounts! There were a few who would wait until I was away from my desk, then sneak in and take large handfulls of candy. Eventually, I had to “hide” the dish when I wasn’t at my desk. Now that Halloween is near, I’ll probably get leftover candy donations afterwards, so that will be good.
Right now, I’ve got a variety of Hershey’s kisses (I love the caramel filled ones, btw) in the open dish, and the Halloween M&Ms in the covered dish. I don’t provide a spoon, but the covered dish does have a post-it taped to it with instructions to POUR the candy out instead of reaching in. The loose candy goes in the covered dish, wrapped in the open one. I put out a bag on Reese’s peanut butter cups miniatures yesterday morning and they were gone by the afternoon. I think I"m going to move to wrapped hard candies after Halloween; the covered dish is usually filled with M&Ms or jelly beans.
I never expect anyone to give me money or buy M&M’s for me. No one forced me to have candy on my desk: it was my choice.
I don’t know if it fits the specific criteria, but it’s a pretty cheap option: those old-fashioned sugar-coated orange slices.
Supermarkets carry them in bulk (or used to) for a ridiculously low price. You’d think that they wouldn’t be as popular as say Snickers bars or toffee candy, but every time I’d set them out, almost everyone would say “These are my favorites, but you never see them anymore!” Unfortunately, they were my favorite as well, so I had to stop buying them because I’d gorge on them, too.
I recently bought a plentiful assortment of fun-sized candy for the office. The order they disappeared was:
Kit-Kat
Twix
M&M plain
3 Musketeers
Milky-Way
Milky-Way Midnight
Snickers
this is the best mouse in the office story ever! mice do enjoy chocolate. peanut butter cups are the ab. fav. for the meeces.