Want Moths With That?

Normally smooth and shapely by design, most of the chocolates were as you see here, ridden with furrows, some of them with little white squirmy things in them.  Insect larvae!  Burrowing creatures!  Since I had probably popped one or two without noticing this depredation, I had a negative reaction, which you are invited to guess:

• OMG

• Yikes

• What a waste

• Sound effects attendant upon a Technicolor yawn

• Trip to the emergency room to get a CAT scan for crawly creatures

OK, it's a bit of a trick question:  It was actually a combination of 1, 2, and 3.  Nobody has ever accused me of excessive (or, really, any) sensitivity when it comes to food.

My next reaction, given that Lindt is a major international company that presumably knows how to make insect-free chocolates, was that somehow the chocolates became contaminated while in my custody.  I very reluctantly discarded the couple of pounds I had remaining.  It seems I wasn't fast enough.  Look again at those photos and consider conservation of mass-energy:  Where did the missing chocolate go?  It turned into moths.  Thousands of slow, tiny moths.  These moths follow me wherever I go.  They visit my office, that of my colleagues, and they perambulate 3-dimensionally down a long corridor at my place of striving.  They are not an unalloyed disaster, since, as I mentioned, they are slow and provide sport for those of us with decent reflexes.  It's mostly an even match; they are not without avoidance instincts which seem to be improving, further evidence for the theory of evolution.  But many of my co-workers aren't keen on the Lindt-moth challenge, and at some point this will become "old."  

As I mentioned, my original thought was that somehow the chocolates became contaminated after I bought them.  But I was accidentally able to perform a controlled experiment that proved they were born that way, or at least acquired their infestation before I purchased them.  It seems that I had split the bags of chocolate into separate moieties, one of which I transported home immediately after purchase.  It had somehow become buried among the other bags, boxes, and bars of chocolate co-resident, which isn't difficult around here.  And when I found and broached that bag, its contents, too, suffered from the furrows and larvae of faulty sterilization.  I belatedly realized that the chocolates I purchased from the Lindt company-owned store were "defective" in a rather nasty (and, presumably, actionable) way. 

This is America.  Did I go to my streetcorner lawyer and have him demand satisfaction?  No!  That is not my way.  And the "damages" I suffered, due to my fortunate or unfortunate lack of sensitivity, were largely caused by a chocolack.  (It is only recently that I have been thinking about the cost of an exterminator.)   My original "demand" to Lindt, unsurprisingly, was "Replace my purchase with chocolates without insect larvae."  If that isn't the soul of reason, I don't know what is.

Lindt Didn't Quite See It That Way

Lindt is a Swiss company.  Switzerland is a country without streetcorner lawyers, and the lawyers they do have are trying to keep UBS and their other banks out of jail.  And — who knows? — perhaps they view the insect larvae as bonus protein, or have found a way to harness hordes of slow-flying moths to miniature farm implements that they sell to bordering Liechtenstein, seeing how small the farms there must be.  In any event, Lindt seemed far less concerned (and totally unalarmed) by the infestation than those to whom I showed the shocking photos or chocolates.  Lindt was actually aware that this happens on occasion.  As far as compensation for the discarded chocolate, they sent me, pick one:

• A million dollars and flew in their Maître Confiseur to offer an apology

• My weight in larva-free Biancotto chocolates

• A check sufficient to replace the several pounds of discarded chocolate, along with a heartfelt apology suitable for framing

• A paltry $30 worth of gift certificates and a list of places where their stores might still be open so I could try to find a substitute

No trick question this time, and no prize for the correct answer.  Except it is not the correct answer, because, after several tries at communicating my dissatisfaction to Lindt and to their representative, Liz Lindahl, along with further attempts by email and telephone to just get the name of someone who could offer a more nearly satisfactory solution, I am resorting to the Power of the Blog to obtain restitution.  If and when this is resolved, you will find a follow-up below.  Meanwhile, enjoy these excerpts from a somewhat-more-extended correspondence with Lindt USA.

Unsurprisingly, this matter was finally resolved to my satisfaction.