Quality Without Compromise®

Chapter 1: sweet gig?

Fishery Award 2022 Nominee
https://www.deviantart.com/swahilimonkf ish/art/The-2022-Fishery-Awards-Nominees-908262742
in the Best Writing category!

**All trademarks and rights thereto belong to See’s Candy Shops, Incorporated.** They are presented here solely to indicate that they are intellectual property of See’s Candy Shops, Incorporated.


This is a work of creative fiction, which may contain references to actual public figures, corporations, and other business entities. Nothing within this fictional story is meant to represent any actual thoughts, behaviors, actions, inactions, nor any other aspect of any real persons, corporations, or other business entities.




***** Sweet Gig? *****

Glancing nervously at the security camera, Eden Offen popped yet another deluxe chocolate confection into her mouth, this one a Butterchew®, enrobed in decadent dark chocolate.

{Enrobed} she mused in her mind. {What kind of word is “enrobed”, relative to food? Is the center some form of royalty?! Or maybe that old horndog dude with the last-century erotica publishing empire that always wore a robe.}


Of an age where Hugh Hefner was (barely) still a household name, Eden totally blanked on it.


A freshly-imperfect milk chocolate caramel dropped into her bowl with a plunk, soon followed by those thin hard sticks the company called Molasses Chips—available in Milk and Dark Chocolate varieties—and used for ballast, to exactly hit the one or two or whatever pound mark on the scale when packing the boxes.

Those white boxes, with the picture of the old lady with round wire-rim glasses, who would‘ve been her great grandmother’s age, at least. Or maybe her gran’s, since in her family the generations were spaced far apart. Famous all over the U.S. west coast and many other parts of the world amongst the chocolate cognoscenti, for *very* high-grade chocolates of many kinds. Always in those white boxes with black print and decorations—always. Sold in the very retro, very black and white porcelain-laden candy shops, standalone, in malls (for places which still had malls), pop-up kiosks at events, and elsewhere, by ladies in white uniforms capable of making anyone who wore one look like a matronly granny just off her nursing shift, whether 20 or 80 years old in chronological reality.

Eden had a whole lot of time to think about things, as long as she dutifully tossed whatever chocolates appeared in her shiny stainless steel bowl into her mouth and ate them before the bowl overfilled, or, more precisely, so many piled into the bowl that she’d fall behind on consuming them and never catch up.


*Plink plink*: 2 more. Despite having eaten these fine candies with family on many a holiday past (as well as on her own when she was being a naughty lusty girl, later woman), she’d not memorized the names, knowing most by sight only.

The first one in her mouth had a dark chocolate square base with a preponderance of fully exposed nuts on top, bound together by caramel or similar. To her it looked a lot like how she figured her teeth and gums would look when this ordeal was over.

That first of this new pair was already history, sliding down her gullet. The second she hurriedly tossed in was one of the more traditional fully “enrobed” offerings: the rectangular one with the chocolate candy sprinkles some of her relatives called jimmies for reasons unknown. While she could take or leave the sprinkles, in See’s-Land these sprinkles meant one of her favorites was coming her way, no matter whether rectangular, round, or any other shape.

She studied the picture-with-names flyer she’d picked up, learning (likely learning again) that the first one was named Dark Walnut Square. She had no need to memorize these names—all she had to do was eat what was given to her. She did this unnecessary studying to alleviate boredom, since any personal tech usage, whether handheld or otherwise, was forbidden whilst on-duty.


Before she could locate her tasty sprinkle-laden confection (already on its way to partially become part of her) on the flyer, at about the same moment several chocolate balls rolled noisily into her bowl and the room door opened. The timing of these events startled her, making her jump slightly.


“Oh hey! Someone else today” the new arrival alliterated with a smile, closing the door behind her. Her smile and its aim directly at Eden persisted as multiple parts of her bounced multiple ways during her beeline walk straight over, arm extended for a handshake. “I’m Shira.”

“I’m Eden, and I’ve *got* to get these balls in my mouth!”

“That’s the first thing I said to this guy I met last night—and about as fast after meeting him, too! Dang, it was worth it” she gazed blankly towards the window, a serene expression on her face.


By this time Eden had already popped the quartet of chocolate spheres into her mouth and was almost finished chewing them. {Could be about my age} she thought as she munched. {Then again, I don’t look my chronological age—thankfully!—and “middle” spans a long range. Smoothness and perfection of her skin suggests younger. Her tubbo fatness suggests older.}


“How’re you liking–”

–*Plink* Plop *Clunk!*—3 candies fell into the bowl next to the unoccupied wide plushly upholstered seat across from Eden’s. As the third one fell, Plop *Plunk*—2 more arrived in Eden’s bowl. Just as she reached for them, *plink flop *plop—3 more came in for her and 3 for Shira.

“Mmmm, guess we have work to do” said Shira as she took her seat, popping the first chocolate into her mouth. “We’ll catch up more when we have some free mouth time.”


* *
Free mouth time remained sparse. While there was never a flood of chocolates into either Shira’s or Eden’s bowls, the roughly 1 liter capacity of the bowls suggested the threat was there. Not knowing how many candies would drop when—totally random—Eden found it prudent to go with the flow of their arrival. Apparently so too did Shira, judging from what Eden picked up watching her.


The weirdness and newness of the situation and stresses related thereto compelled Eden to slip in a few words to break the nearly half hour of (for her tense) silence where she could. “What’re you in for?”

Shira swallowed her current partly-chewed chocolate fast to reply, “This isn’t a prison!”

“Didn’t you (chew, chew) do like a plea bargain thing?”

“It’s not a plea bargain, it’s a *job*.” Chew, chew, chew. “They‘re paying you, right?”

“Dollar above minimum wage, yes.” Crunch, crunch. “Wasn’t exactly entirely voluntary for me, though.”

“What happened?”


Eden held up and waved her hand as she chewed her way through a couple of caramels, one milk, one dark. Eventually her mouth was clear and able to say, “Hurled a molotov cocktail towards an open window here.”


Shira bolted upright, nearly choking on her current confection. Indeed, she needed to pour herself some water and sip to help her finish swallowing before she could either speak or consume her next chocolate. “Here at the factory?”

“Original Los Angeles factory we’re in, yes. Maybe I shoulda done S.F.” she ended in a mutter.

“Why would you do that?! It’s just a candy company!”

“*To get their attention!*” she yelled. “*Emails didn’t work! Paper letters didn’t work! ***Nothing*** worked!*”

{Oh shit. I’m in with a lunatic} she thought as she chewed. “What what what were they ignoring that matters so much to you?”

“*Who the hell writes ‘Rose Bowl Parade’ and gets away with it alive?!* **It’s the goddamned *Tournament of Roses Parade*, fucktards!**” she screamed more at the room in general than Shira.

{OK, what did they tell me to do in case of emergency?!} she grew more frantic, fiercely masticating the latest majority-crunchy arrivals in her bowl.

“Or *Rose Parade*, if one’s being terse. *Everyone with even a pea-brain knows this!*”


To Shira’s relief, Eden shoveled the growing pile of fine chocolates from her bowl into her mouth all at once. Needing to keep working on her own, the two women studied each other for awhile as they chewed.


“Are you a Pasadenan?” Shira broke the minute or so of verbal silence.

“*Yes*—generations so! My grandfather and his father and a brother or something *all* worked in the City of Pasadena parks department. Grandfather got into the Association and worked his way up–”

“–The Association? That 1960s sunshine pop band who did Along Comes Mary and Cherish and all that?”

{How the fuck old *are* you?!} Eden thought and stared at her interrupting apparent co-worker, blowing through the latest confection in her bowl—a lemon truffle. “[url=https://tournamentofroses.com/history/]The *Tournament of Roses* Association![/url] He worked humbly in many positions for years and years and worked his way up as those who want to do so and are eligible all do until his turn came to be *President* of the Tournament of Roses Association, and ride in as well as be in charge of that year’s **Tournament of Roses** Parade.” She had to quickly stuff some recently-arrived chocolates in her mouth so as not to fall behind. The mix of white, milk, and dark chocolate all at once was suboptimal taste-wise, but it was what it was, and she swallowed it fast to add, “*It’s a matter of ***family honor*** and*** common decency! *And they won’t fix iiiiiittttt!***”


“Do you need an early break, Ms. Offen?” burst out of a concealed loudspeaker.

“I knew they were monitoring in here” she muttered softly Shira’s direction. “Is that you, Mr. Easter?”

“Yes.”