The Curious Incident of the Worm in the Toblerone

In the middle of a busy Friday last week, I receive a request from a service provider with whom I have been wrangling for 3 days that I should now send in a further written request for a S$65 refund to their claims department.

20 minutes later, the red haze lifted and I clicked the 'send' button on my email to despatch said written request. Some unseen person in some claims department will now read an email that will give them a lot of stress (and rightly so, thanks to their freaking horrible no-results software - and no, I'm not talking about Windows).

How did I become this angry complaining person? I used to be really placid when I was, like, 9. Then I met the Worm in my Toblerone which changed everything. In retrospect, I think the Worm got the worst deal, but anyway that's beside the point.

I was watching TV one evening and I had ducked into the kitchen during an advertisement break to grab a snack. Picked out a triangle of Toblerone from the giant bar, and was running back to the sofa to eat it when I saw something move. On. my. piece. of. Toblerone.

It was a worm, rearing up and screaming Noo nooo don't eat me!!! into my face. A live, white, blind, writhing worm, oozing its white body out of a hole in my chocolate, just inches from my mouth.

So of course I screamed and tossed the thing into the rubbish chute. Told my mom who packed up the half eaten box of Toblerone and drove me to Jason's Supermarket to return it.

Returning a bar of chocolate with a disgusting live worm in it? How easy is that, right?

Two hours later, we were still being harangued by the Jason's "customer service officer". I say that in quotation marks, and with more than a little irony because although that's what she told us she was, I think maybe they just misspelled "lunatic" in her employment letter.

First of all, she insisted that Jason's would never ever bring in a worm with their chocolate. No worms in the rarefied Jason's stratosphere!

Then she said if there's a live worm in the chocolate, where is it? Where is our evidence?

Then she said well if there's a live worm in the chocolate, it just shows how fresh their stuff is.

In a magnificent finish, she concluded by suggesting we should take up our complaint with the cocoa farmers as clearly the worm must have come from the cocoa tree. And since Jason's does not actually own the tree ...

I remember standing there for, like, an eternity, everyone staring at us because the Mad Bitch was speaking so loudly, and my mother just nodding and looking really pissed off. I didn't say anything. When you're 9, you tend not to be heard anyway. Also, I was so angry that I was speechless (something that will never happen again).

Maybe she was an Advocate for Worm Rights, posing as a customer service officer. The worms should be so happy!

I think we left, still holding the chocolate, which was slightly melted from the Bitch Fires of Hell From Whence She Came. On the way out, my mother actually stopped to buy some more chocolates. From Jason's.