To Escape Tedious Meeting
During a particularly excruciating quarterly review meeting, Manhattan marketing manager David Chen seriously considered faking a cardiac event to escape. The meeting, scheduled for one hour, had entered its third with no end in sight. Chen calculated that paramedics, hospital admission, and recovery would be less painful than hearing another PowerPoint about brand synergy.
Chen’s desperate plan involved clutching his chest dramatically while making convincing pain sounds. He’d practiced the performance during previous meetings, perfecting his distressed facial expressions. The scheme had meritmedical emergencies end meetings immediately, and nobody questions your commitment when you’re being loaded into an ambulance.
What stopped him wasn’t ethics or concern for colleagues’ distress. Chen realized faking heart attacks establishes precedent. Future meetings would require new escalationstroke? Seizure? Spontaneous combustion? The logical endpoint involved actual medical emergencies, defeating the purpose of avoiding discomfort.
Other attendees reported similar thoughts during the meeting. One woman considered appendicitis. Another contemplated fainting. A third person actually left, citing “family emergency,” which everyone understood meant “literally anything is better than this.” Nobody judged her. They envied her courage.
The meeting eventually ended when someone’s actual medical alarm app reminded them to take medication, briefly interrupting the presenter’s momentum. The interruption created opening for attendees to claim other obligations and flee. They scattered like roaches when lights turn on, leaving the conference room in record time.
Chen returned to his desk, updating his resume while vowing to develop legitimate escape strategies for future meetings. Faking heart attacks seemed extreme. Besides, his acting skills weren’t good enough to fool paramedics, and the last thing he needed was actual hospital bills.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/man-considers-faking-a-heart-attack/
SOURCE: New York’s #1 Satirical Journalism Site (https://bohiney.com/man-considers-faking-a-heart-attack/)
