I thought I'd start a thread for questions regarding grey morality -- but for, like, REALLY tiny instances that can slightly grey up your soul.

For instance: my German coworkers have arrived today and will be here for two weeks. As I brought a ridiculous amount of M&Ms of various types since Germany is cursed with only three variations (also skittles and junior mints, which went over...interestingly), they have brought scads of chocolate with them. They have also slipped me a couple of bars for my own personal consumption.

I fully plan on not sharing with the people on my team, because of the previously mentioned scads available to them. HOWEVER! I am debating on whether to share with my husband.

See, my husband has a tendency to eat everything available in the fridge, even if I purchased it for my personal consumption. We've discussed this tendency in the past, and have a pretty good truce in place: if I say please don't eat all of this, he won't. But he has a problem with sweets. Seems he can't quite keep his mitts off of sweets, and I often have only a piece of a chocolate bar, or a few scoops of ice cream, or a single cookie, and when I return to the sweet later, it is gone. This is mostly forgivable, since he'll replace the sweet in time when I wish for a sweet.

But this is GERMAN chocolate. A little tougher to come by. And it was a gift to me. And I want to take my time eating it, without fear that it will disappear.

So, shall I leave it at work and sully my soul with my selfish behavior while enjoying my chocolate, or shall I bring it home and risk its disappearance? I'm leaning heavily towards selfishness!

Go with the selfishness. If you have a change of heart later you can take some home to the spouse.

How much chocolate? Would it be easy to, say, take half or a quarter home and leave the rest at work?

Two bars. So, technically I COULD bring one home and keep one at work.

Or. Have two bars of chocolate. Seriously, I feel almost bad for how much I want to not share this chocolate.

[Bleep] sharing. Sharing is almost as bad as telemarketers.

Leave it at work...but tell him. Also tell him why you are leaving it at work. You are allowed to feel a little selfish and have something you don't want to share. He should understand, but if you tell him you relieve yourself of the burden of guilt. Unless of course the guilty part makes it taste better.

Times like this, you should ask yourself...

What would Cookie Monster do if he had fancy German Cookies?

Are you refering to this video? Because it's actually not a bad approach: take almost everything for yourself, but give away the very last piece, and it still seems kind of generous. I dunno about the music, though.

Yeah. A small portion of one bar is more than enough sharing of a gift given specifically to you.

There really should be no call on you to share it at all and to feel guilty about this is silly.

Keeping two chocolate bars isn't that big of a deal. Sharing is nice, not required.

I often hide sweets from my spouse, for the same reason. But in this case, I would at least bring one chocolate bar home and split it evenly. You'd still be getting 3/4ths of the chocolate. Marriage demands a few sacrifices.

Pish! Sharing chocolate was never part of my wedding vows.

You can save him half of one bar, if you feel like it. Heck, if you're feeling especially generous, you can cut both bars in half, bring those halves home to your husband, and keep the rest at work for yourself to eat as slowly as you want. But you don't have to. The chocolate was given to you.

This thread makes me wonder how minor theft needs to be before it ceases to matter. For example, in my previous job, I routinely sneaked into another department's pantry to steal their water. My own department's pantry was on the floor above, and due to my slightly bum knee, I didn't want to walk up the stairs but was also too impatient to wait for the world's slowest elevator. I only took hot water from the heating tank hooked up to the mains, and never touched their bottled water. So perhaps I added a few cents to the other department's water and electricity bills over the course of the whole year.

Personally, if not sharing the chocolate bothered me I'd eat all except for one good sized bite and bring that home with me so he that he wasn't missing out on anything.

Are they even billed separately?

As for the chocolate... I'd go with the 'keep 3/4 and full disclosure' option.