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CHOCOHOLICS SYNONYMOUS
The Chocolate Chip Cookie Convention was held in Coachella, California, today amid growing allegations that Chief Confectioner Elmore Fudge has been covering up cases of chronic chocophilia for years. Complaints of fewer chocolate chips in cookies have been surfacing in the media for several years, but nobody took them seriously until a group of elves came forward and admitted to secretly eating millions of the chips instead of putting them in the cookies where they belonged. Even though the industry routinely screens all elf applicants to root out chocoholics, and performs random tests for elevated levels of chocolate in the blood of its workers, it seems that a number of closet chocophiliacs have been secretly consuming cookie chocolate for decades instead of making it into chips and baking them in the cookies like they were supposed to. "I know we take an oath to abstain from eating chocolate altogether," Arsenio Carob, former Assistant Cookie Elf for the Southern Region told gathered reporters, "but I just couldn't help myself. All that chocolate whizzing along on the cookie conveyor made me crazy, and I had to eat a couple of chips every now and then just to keep my sanity." Chief Fudge found out about Carob's chocophilia several years ago, but instead of filing a formal complaint and putting a report in his personnel file, he had the elf transferred out of his region. As a result, Carob went on to consume tons of additional chocolate chips before the situation finally became public. Now thousands of cookie consumers have come forward alleging that they have been shortchanged of millions of chocolate chips in their cookies over the years and demanding reparations. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Convention was convened to address those claims and create a policy to handle future incidents, and so far they seem to be doing a credible job. Timothy Spewdata, spokesman for the Chocolate Chip Cookie Council, said that "the purity of the chocolate chip cookie industry has been threatened, and we intend to meet that threat head on." To that end, he announced that the Council had, in secret session, decided on an Almost Zero Tolerance policy toward chocolate craving elves. "The new AZT policy provides for punishment at three different levels," Spewdata explained. "First time offenders will be counseled by their immediate supervisor and put on thirty days suspension; for a second offense, the elf's Confectioner's Certificate will be revoked; a third occurrence of aberrant behavior will result in immediate retirement at only 2/3 of normal benefits. This policy will be implemented immediately, and should serve notice that we are deadly serious about addressing this issue." Meanwhile, the debate rages about whether the Council's long-standing policy of requiring elves to totally abstain from eating chocolate has actually contributed to the widespread chocophilia among the cookie bakers. The question has also been raised whether those elves who only like white chocolate should now be allowed to be bakers. |