The sign on the door said the meeting had been postponed.
“Postponed? Really?” said one of them.
“Yeah, postoned until 2:00,” said another.
“Wait, we’re having a meeting today?” asked a third, just happening to pass by in the hall.
“Yeah, didn’t you get that e-mail?”
“No, my e-mail hasn’t been working for the past week. What’s the meeting about?”
“We were hoping y’all would know,” said a fourth employee, just joining the group in front of the meeting room. “All the e-mail said was that we’d be meeting with the boss at 8:45 this morning. Nothing more.”
“Well, now we have this sign on the door saying the meeting’s been postponed. That’s more,” said the first.
“Yeah, well,” said the second. “Not anything to go on.”
“So none of y’all have heard anything?” Asked the fourth.
“Do you think it has something to do with the merger?”
“Is there a merger? What?”
“I heard about it on the news. I think. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“I heard they were letting John go.”
“John? John Taylor?”
“No, not that John. The other John.”
“Oh, I know which one you mean. I forget his name though.”
“Maybe it’ll be a good meeting! Maybe we’re getting bonuses?”
“Cha, right,” snorted one.
“It could happen.”
“In my dreams, maybe. I can’t even remember the last time we got bonuses.”
“Well, anyway, maybe we should actually go do some work if we’re not going to have a meeting.”
“But what if whatever we are going to learn at the meeting contradicts any work that we may get done today?”
“If it were going to do that, I’d think they would tell us now rather than making us wait until 2:00.”
“You would think that, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“Then maybe you should just wait here, paralyzed until the meeting time rolls around.”
“That is actually probably the best plan.”
As they were reaching this conclusion a fifth, unknown to the rest of them, appeared by the meeting room. They grabbed the sign on the door, ripped it off and replaced it with a new one. Never saying a word they walked off, stage right.
“What’s this one say?”
“The meeting has been cancelled.”