One of the business development guys brought another huge bag of m & m?s in to work yesterday. Last time, if you recall he brought in plain and peanut, and there was an overwhelming preference for the peanut variety (ewww). Well, I was eager to see if this would hold true again, but sadly I only had plain candies to work with. I quickly decided that I needed at least something to do, so I decided to put out 2 bowls of candy to see if there was any difference in people?s eating habits. I put equal amounts of m & m?s in an orange plastic bowl and a white faux china bowl. After about an hour is was clear that people will from just about any vessel, given that it?s contents are free. The were, however many many inquiries about where the peanut candies were. So many in fact, that the service manager offered to put out a bowl of roasted peanuts to calms the masses. I decided that it would be more interesting to put the peanuts in with the plan candy, and see if people are really after peanut m & m?s or just peanuts in general.
My theory was that people would grab handfuls of the peanuts and the chocolate and just scarf them down trying to recreate the taste and texture of their beloved peanut m & m?s. I was surprised to find that people usually picked through the mix to get to peanuts, and then left the m & m?s and then, very strangely-would take chocolates from the other bowl. This amused me to no end, to see people contaminate all the candy in the mix bowl, and then grab candy out of the non mix bowl. A few actually commented as they rummaged through the mixture for the valuable peanuts. I need to think of some other way to spice up the experiment…