We were invited to help ourselves to anything we wanted from the conveyor belts. And, we did!
The staff told us that they were allowed to eat whatever Mars products they wanted to during their shift. It sounded great, but they told us that after their first day, they could barely look at a Mars bar without feeling slightly ill.
I knew lots of people who worked there and none of them could bring themselves to eat a Mars bar as they were all sick of seeing them.
But it was very unusual, within large UK companies (of which I worked at quite a few over the years), for everyone, regardless of seniority, to be on the clock, i.e. a physical punch card clock system. that's the sort of thing that made it "odd" at the time. Oh, and having to ask permission to grow a beard. Oh, and having the clear desk policy extended to the contents thereof, such that you weren't even allowed more that a specified number of pens and pencils, and god forbid any personal items, in your own desk drawers. It's coming back to me now, and it was indeed quite strange.
I spent a fair amount of time filling in on an IT help desk in the Slough factory, where there were always trays of today's production to taste, and to test, as it was used as a form of QA. I have to say I never grew tired of it, although to be fair it wasn't just mars bars, but everything from M&Ms to whatever those chewy sweets were called at the time.
The idea that you could get sick of eating chocolate is, IMO, an urban myth, probably propogated as a means of denying just how much of the stuff the staff were actually eating. Too much chocolate? Naah, not a chance.
I asked one of the shopfloor staff what their favourite chocolate was and they answered Cadbury’s Bourneville.
Then Slough in my teens, not far from the Mars factory.
My youth was an aulfactory rollercoaster.
Some of my former colleagues used to work at the factory where they chocolate coated Ferrero Rocher. Two of them developed an allergy to chocolate.
Anyway, back to the Mars bar. I remember in General Studies class back in 1981, reading an FT article about how to use the Mars bar as a unit of currency to measure inflation. Can't find it now, but this comes close...
We had a huge bowl of the various products in our office most if the time donated to us by employees at the Mars factory and I can tell yo that it didn’t shift very quickly once the novelty had worn off.
I liked the Opal Fruits (as they were known back them) and they were always the first to go.