This is Going to Sell

(Written in a hurry. :] Sorry if the Toastmaster references get a bit annoying; they were for the sake of whatever humor I could salvage from my mind.)

The Boss thinks he can sell this. He really does.

He has pitched the idea to his wife, barber, and this morning’s cab driver, and the results have been more positive than usual – especially with his wife, who nodded and murmured “oh, that’s just brilliant, dear” and went back to her tae-bo without even a mention of the divorce papers. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that This Is Going To Sell.

He is so certain, in fact, that he doesn’t even wear his lucky leprechaun tie the day of the meeting. He goes tieless; cool, casual, like the suave Boss he is. Hell, he didn’t join Toastmasters for nothing.

Next time, the Boss decides as he enters the meeting room, I’ll go without the toupee, too. Comb-overs are much more stylish anyway.

The conference table has only one filled chair when he enters; Doris MacSomethingorother, nibbling somberly on a cheeseburger, eyes glued to it like a basset hound.

Shoot. He isn’t fashionably late. He’s always wanted to do that.

The Boss plops into the chair opposite Doris and tries to make conversation. “Oh, hey! It’s a lady!” he says. I heard that in a movie once, he thinks, somewhat proudly. “Fired up today, Doris?”

Doris keeps staring at the cheeseburger. Maybe she should join Toastmasters too.

“Oookay.” He rubs his hands together and gets to work, which mainly consists of shuffling a stack of paper from his briefcase so that he will look busy.

He gets so into his work, in fact, that when he looks up all the other seats are filled, and a very short old lady is waiting patiently for him to get up so that she can take her seat.

The Boss scrambles for his papers and hurries to the head of the table. Showtime.

“So,” he says, looking around to check if any peons have supplied him with graphs. “So!”

They all look at him blankly, even Doris. He struggles to remember what he learned in Toastmasters. The Boss puts on his billion-dollar smile (he pitched that to his barber, too) and begins:

“So, you guys like working, do ya?”

The old lady across from Doris nods a little. The rest of his employees are busy watching the ceiling. Praying for their ol’ boss, maybe. How nice of them.

“Well. As you all know, we have been having a hard time with the budget these past few” – the Boss checks the date on his watch – “years – so me and the big guys down the hall with all the cheese decided to do something about it.”

No one laughs. He continues.

“So there’s this little company called the Arsenic Scarab Sanitation, the ASS if yer tongue is lazy, and –”

A few giggles from the conference table. That lazy-tongue bit always kills.

“So they got interested in what we do here, and they’re interested in merging…”

Doris’s giggles have turned to mild coughs. The Boss waits (they teach how to be polite in Toastmasters) for a slight pause and goes on.

“…which means that a lot of big changes are going on, including a…”

The coughs have gotten louder. Doris’s coworkers, concerned, have started to surround her.

“…a SURPRISE!” He tries to say it over the coughs; no one notices. They are helping Doris up, leading her away from the table and towards the exit. But the Boss has to finish, because someone must be listening to this; he’s a Toastmasters-trained presenter, for God’s sake!

He seizes a map from his stack of papers and holds it up like a trophy. “We’re relocating you all to Greenland!” he cries, and waves it around the room, caught up in the glory of this information. “So, what do you all think?”

The meeting room door closes shut.

And he swears that, if not for Doris's upper respiratory infection, This Would Have Sold.