In Which I Get What I Paid For

The sound of clinking glass rises above the mixed murmur of voices in the conference room. Hushed conversations end as all eyes are drawn towards the head of the table. A man in a cheap rumpled suit raps a ballpoint pen against the side of a half-empty glass of water, and clears his throat noisily.

"Enough idle chatter, everyone. We haven't got much time to get this new snack product on the shelves, so let's get right down to it." He shuffles around a stack of paper on the table in front of him, selects one sheet of paper from the middle of the stack and holds it up. He leans his head back a bit to look at the paper from under his glasses. "Our research team has come to the conclusion that we need to add to our product line a type of party mix, or a 'snack blend'. We'll be selling it at a range of Dollar Stores around the country, and apparently our consumers have been asking for it for a while now. It's up to us to decide what goes in it. Any ideas?"

Silence reigns in the conference room. There are five people sitting around the table, and they all cast awkward glances at each other, willing someone other than themselves to be the first to speak. Someone sniffs lightly, and another anxiously clears his throat.

"Nothing? No one has any ideas whatsoever?" Bad Suit asks.

"Well, I've always thought that pretzels are pretty much the staple to a generic party mix," said the man sitting at the opposite end of the table from Bad Suit. He slides his glasses up on his nose with his index finger. "So I guess we could put some pretzels in there."

"Pretzels are good. What shape of pretzels?"

"Uhh..." Coke-Bottle Glasses stammers, "pretzel sticks? Pretzel circles? Pretzel twists?"

"Good enough for me!" Bad Suit exclaims, and scribbles down a note. "Can't go wrong with pretzels, so why not have three different shapes? Consumers are stupid. They'll think each shape tastes different." He laughs a bit greedily to himself, and runs a hand through his greasy hair. "What else?"

A woman wearing too much makeup raises her hand. Bad Suit gestures openly, giving her the floor.

"I know a guy who works in the Cracker Department who is always talking about how they always have so much leftover cracker dough from their production line. Why don't we take the scraps from them, bake them up, and add into the mix?"

"Brilliant!" Bad Suit shouts. He scribbles another note down, and looks up at Avon-oholic, who is now chewing on the bottom of her lip nervously. "What now?"

"Well, the guy I know says that the scraps leftover from the production line look a little funny after they've been baked. He says they look like white inch-worms, or maggots almost."

Bad Suit flapped his hand at Avon-oholic dismissively. "Doesn't matter. People won't actually be looking at it while they eat it." He tabulates the total amount of items he's written down so far. "Okay, people, we've got four items for our new party mix. I think it's missing one last piece."

"I know!" shouts a man with a comb-over and a painful-looking cold sore on his upper lip. "I just came across a storage room filled with unsealed boxes of these wafer-like things that look like slices of petrified German Shepherd turds. They've probably been in there since the fifties, so they're stale as heck. Might actually break a few teeth here or there. They taste like shit, too."

"Bah," Bad suit says. "Throw a dash of salt on 'em and people won't know the difference. They'll probably think they're pumpernickel chips or something."

Cold Sore/Comb Over leans back in his chair with a content smile on his face, folding his hands together behind his head. Avon-oholic can't help but notice the dark rings of sweat around his armpits, and looks away in disgust. Coke-Bottle Glasses fiddles with the calculator function of his watch, all of them waiting for Bad Suit to finish writing his notes. Bad Suit finally looks up, and focuses his beady eyes on the two people left in the conference room who haven't spoken up yet.

"You," he says, gesturing with the end of his pen. "Do you plan on contributing to this meeting?"

A man who looks like a living presentation of a J-Crew catalog sits up in his chair. "I... uh... I guess I could see what kind of spice blend we could add. I'm working on this new flavor additive that sticks to your fingers, kind of like the orange stuff from cheese curls? It's kind of salty and hurts your tongue, and it's almost impossible to wipe off your fingers with a dry napkin."

"Sounds perfect!" Bad Suit says. "What about you?" He gestures to the only other female in the room other than Avon-oholic. "Give me a slogan or a catch phrase."

"How about 'the Ultimate Snack'?" says the woman wearing a low-cut blouse who was the reason for a recent workplace Sexual Harassment seminar.

"Couldn't have come up with a better idea myself," Bad Suit says happily, his eyes drifting down below DD-Cup's neckline. He pulls his eyes away with effort, and scribbles a few last words down. "Alright people, I think we're done!"

The five employee's push back their chairs and get up to leave. Low conversations begin again amongst themselves as they head toward the door.

"Whoa, hey everyone, sit back down!" Bad Suit says loudly. "I only meant that we're done with this particular project."

A few low groans can be heard from the group.

"Oh, enough of that. We just need to come up with a few borderline-obscene names for generic food products, and then I'll let you all out early for the day. Any ideas?"

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I swear... My imagination can run pretty rampant sometimes.