Pool_2

one employee is missing. No? Just how many of our employees are missing?" Mr. Price's haughty aggressive demeanor blanched to the answer of thirty one, but they weren't exactly regional employees - though that revelation was to follow. Thirty one what? Quit? That was the generalization of the spontaneous babble of the circled company. The speaker's clarification was even more deflating, "No. No! That's not what I said. One hundred eleven QUIT. Thirty one are missing. The missing are not locals. Not employees, not ones we'd admit to. All the thirty one are, mmm, well, do you call them officers? Representatives? They're all YOUR people." This was a photographic moment, an opulent room, with glorious trappings and a ring of men with chocolated mouths agape. Except the speaker's and the one other. Bizarre or not, the account rang true. There were quite a few known players who had been uncharacteristically noncommunicative lately, thought just to be too busy to small talk. But in this case, no news was not good news. No matter how the questions were put or rephrased, it seemed as if it the disappearances did not follow on threats or even complaints, challenges by any competitor, no turf challenges, nor changes within the greater organization, nor investigations, or anything else. Nothing. The speaker confessed, "We all thought, those of us left, that is, we all thought that you kept pulling your men for other jobs.. uh.. projects. Three of the missing people disappeared right after I asked them to politely request of you how you expected us to do our work when you kept pulling the muscle.. the man power we needed." B.J., to whom this was not an unfamiliar tune, whispered at some length in the chairman's ear who never took his eyes off the speaker. With Mr. P's eyes still barbed into the once cowering man's frowning wrongly accused gaze, he asked, "Miguel - the