Christmas chocolate etiquette

The festive season is always a whirl of extra out-of-hours shifts and complicated rotas, but I want to get on to some more serious matters for December – ones that might mean you need to start planning for next Christmas right now.

Yes, I’m talking about Christmas chocolate etiquette roulette.

You can choose your friends?

So, you can choose your friends, but not your family – and, for most of us, NOT your work colleagues either. We might get a fleeting glimpse of an interviewee during his or her tour of the building, but otherwise you don’t get to know new people until they start.

This means, like with many families, you don’t really get to know them until stressful times hit – like Christmas.

You don’t know each other’s little likes or dislikes and then, when it’s all crammed into a stressful shift, the little things become BIG THINGS – particularly when you’re hungry, tired and tearful. Even the littlest things can push you over the edge.

Appropriate chocolate etiquette

Ah, chocolate. It’s such a wonderful thing that it’s mentioned in vet nurse job adverts (in lieu of payment sometimes, it seems), yet the festive influx of large boxes of Celebrations and Roses doesn’t always equal happiness. A number of chocolate etiquette issues need to be raised…

The wrapper returner

Oh, woe betide you wrapper jokesters. After a long shift, the last thing I need to find, when I allow myself a chocolate, is that some one has lazily (or “amusingly”) returned empty wrappers to the box. This is wholly unacceptable and I think should be the subject of a standard interview question. You don’t need one of these on your team at Christmas.

The empty box leaver

Yes, I agree that saving the empty boxes make for good storage options, and reduces landfill and all that, but seriously, MOVE the box then…

Much like the wrapper returner, nothing is going to make me turn into a raging lunatic more than the promise of a chocolate to find nothing there. Or worse, an orange cream sitting lonely at the bottom of the box.

I don’t want the orange cream. Who does? But we’ve all been there. Late at night. Hungry. Shift going on forever, and a little treat would make it so much better… even if it is an orange cream. You’re alone – nobody will see if you just nibble the chocolate off the edges…

The chocolate strawberry lover

For orange cream, you could also see strawberry cream or other such noxious flavours (Bounty, I’m looking at you) regularly left until the desperate states I describe above.

I think now is the time for a serious recruitment question or two:

• Should you be deciding on your team based on chocolate preferences?
• Could we achieve team harmony by reducing the chocolate roulette and spreading the chocolate choices across the whole team?
• With the time and expense of normal recruitment tests, would a simple tick box of favoured chocolates be more beneficial?

Unlike many personal questions, asking about chocolate during interviews probably isn’t against employment law. However, an even spread of toffee chewers, Bounty lovers and praline fanciers in your team could reduce this area of festive stress.

Get planning for Christmas 2020!