Gentlemen, I want answers. Our quarterly earnings are in the garbage, and I expect one of you overpaid three-martini-lunch layabouts to have a good explanation why my family’s home-decor company is bleeding money like a physician of high standing using proper, modern medical techniques against female mental illness?
So, what’s to be? Can anyone in this boardroom tell me why sales of our signature terrifying yellow wallpaper are down?
Edwards, I’m looking at you. I didn’t put you in charge of the Smouldering, Sulphuric Interior Design department for you to try to pass the buck on this one.
For 133 years, our iconically sprawling, flamboyant yellow wallpaper design has defined an entire company. My great-grandfather started this business with nothing more than a dream, unquestioned male decision-making, and an inheritance that he took the burden of handling for my great-grandmother, who was… unwell.
And now, for some unknown reason, people don’t want to buy our wallpaper? Are you all claiming that the public no longer has an interest in unclean yellows? Have dull yet lurid oranges fallen out of fashion?
Yes, yes, Edwards. I read the consumer feedback surveys. I’ve never seen such overuse of “repellent” and “revolting” and “strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” in my life. Clearly, none of the surveys can be trusted, and frankly, I find it unconscionably rude that you would even bring them up.
Don’t snivel, Edwards. Histrionics like that would get you locked up for your own good, in a better society.
Give me data, gentlemen. What could be causing this drop in sales? For over a century, housewives have enjoyed our wallpaper so much that they never even want to leave the house, and suddenly, we can’t move a pallet of double rolls to save your golden parachutes.
That’s a warning, Edwards. Take it.
Brainstorm with me, gentlemen. Women are pretty much people, in the most general sense. Sure, they may dress like fools and buy hats and shoes, but frankly, that’s all part of the corporate song and dance. So why does no one want to dance with us?
What do they want? Buttercups?
Desperate times call for desperate measures. No one is leaving this boardroom until I get a decent explanation about this wallpaper slump. The C-suite door is locked and, as you may have noticed, I took the liberty of having bars installed on the windows. We’re in for a long night, and I hope you’re ready to bring some ideas to the table.
Gentlemen, there are things in these paper P and L reports that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind these abruptly descending arrows, the dim shapes of Chapter 7 filings get clearer every day. It is always the same bankruptcy court paperwork, creeping around this room, around this company. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish you would take me away from here, Edwards!
This is not wallpaper sales. This is a nightmare.