Satire: Commodity Forecast Meeting Enters Hour Seven as Senior Vice President Expands on Western Decline
Participants reportedly feel "lucky"
DES MOINES, IA — What began as a routine meeting on quarterly commodity forecasts at Hathaway Midwestern Energy Friday afternoon has now entered its seventh hour, with Senior Vice President Andrew S. Sinclair, 48, still addressing a dwindling audience in Conference Room 312.
The meeting, scheduled for 2:00 p.m., brought together two directors, three managers, and four analysts. According to witnesses, the agenda was abandoned almost immediately when Sinclair opened with a 30-minute monologue lamenting that the company’s firewall had blocked his favorite blog — a website widely known for spreading malware and promoting pro-Russia essays under titles like “The Masculine West Must Rise Again.”
“He said something about the spirit of Rome dying in HR departments,” one analyst reported. “Then he started quoting Revelation, and no one’s seen the PowerPoint since.”
For the next several hours, Sinclair reportedly drew connections between the decline of the Roman Empire, “corporate moral relativism,” and the federal gas tax. Attendees described the session as “the longest spontaneous TED Talk in Midwestern history.”
Lead Analyst Derek Jones, 26, who had prepared a 14-slide presentation on forward gas spreads, has yet to reach slide two. Sources close to the situation say Jones — recently married, with a three-month-old child — began covertly texting his wife, Tabitha, around 6:45 p.m., explaining that the meeting was “still going strong.”
Tabitha, who once admired Derek for his independence and sharp critiques of authority, reportedly stared at the message for several minutes before typing, “Didn’t you used to hate these people?” She then spent the family’s weekly grocery budget on an Uber Eats order containing Chipotle, baby formula, and diapers.
As of 8:03 p.m., the meeting remains in progress. Two analysts have been sent home after briefly falling asleep during a section titled “Moral Collapse and the Yield Curve.” The remaining attendees are, according to Sinclair’s assistant, “engaged and deeply reflective on the spiritual dimension of quarterly variance.”