Every year on my birthday, my aunt sends a box of Key Lime Pears to my office. She knows that the pears are one of the few confections not sold by the piece, so I can’t buy one or two for myself on my weekly jaunts to the Ferry Building, the way I do other Recchiuti indulgences.

This year, without thinking, I tore open the box right in the mailroom. Note to self: Never open Recchiuti chocolates in public, let alone at the office at Christmastime!

"Oh, can I try one of those?" asked Sue, wandering in, two other coworkers right behind her.

I paused, then reluctantly offered her the other half of the small piece I'd just bitten into. All three women looked at me like I was Scrooge himself, and Sue quickly grabbed and bit into a whole, entire, pristine pear from the box in my other hand!

"This is $20 worth of chocolate right here in my hand and I only get these once a year on my birthday," I protested.

"Oh, these are your personal chocolates? I thought they were for the company," she said, not apologetically enough, in my view. "What am I eating, anyway?"

I rapturously explained how the pears are sliced paper-thin, drizzled with key lime juice, and enveloped in luxurious dark in chocolate.

"Hmm. Just tastes like chocolate to me," she said.

That's why these are wasted on you, I might have actually said out loud.

So, while Recchiuti chocolates might - astonishingly - not be for everyone, mine are certainly not for you. And from now on, tasting is reserved for the privacy of my cubicle. Does Recchiuti bring out the selfishness in everyone? Who cares, it's my birthday - I can hoard if I want to!