Christmas Sales Story

Take her outside and pants her? What? We always look forward to the holidays so we can ublish this Christmas story from Carol, one of our humor workshop participants:

"After years of conflict between the outside and inside sales force, emotions hit a crisis point one snowy day in the middle of December. The manager gathered the mixed force in a small, heavily windowed conference room The discussion heated up the room like no climate control thus known.

Passions boiled over when an inside rep accused outside reps doing their Christmas shopping on company time.

The room grew silent after several sharp intakes of breath. Outside sales reps unleashed their sales claws while sales fangs bared themselves behind nervous quivering lips. This was room of sales animals ready to pounce with sales adrenaline running on high, primed for a kill.

The manager in charge of the meeting teetered on the knife's edge of an ugly explosion of defensive anger, a possible homicide, and her managerial concern to keep the room under control. Fine, upstanding career professionals had been acccused of the worst transgression known to their trade, i.e. squandering precious sales time on selfish acts of shopping. The outside reps meant to set the record straight at any expense.

Unknown to many in the room, behind the cool professional and pristine demeanor of their manager, lurked a prankster somewhere near the level of a sorority sister. In unladylike fashion, the manager led the charge, 'Take her out and pants her.'

The room erupted with laughter as each person looked outside at the heavy dusting of snow and imagined the well deserved feel of ice on a bare butt. Sure, some left in a huff, some just shaking their heads, and one or two made a note to themselves to be more careful next Christmas.

With a little humor the manager expressed how seriously she took the accusation---not very---and she diffused the highly charged anger that threatened the good work she was trying to accomplish by combining the staff."

Excerpt from Laughing Nine to Five.