Scene: A cube farm’s conference room. A jowly, sixty-ish, ulcerous-looking uber-boss sits glowering at his much younger underlings, who quail in their seats at the table.
Cut to the wall clock. It’s 1:00pm, time for lunch to be over. Someone suppresses a burp.
Cut to three empty seats. The boss glares at them
Cut to door crashing open. A young woman of thin and nervous mien skitters in, jacket, papers, and folders spilling out of her arms. She takes her seat, apologizing abjectly.
“OhmygodIjusthadmycarfixedandthesamethingisstillwrongit…just…wouldn’t…” Her voice guiltily trails off. The boss threatens her with his bushy, prehensile eyebrows.
Cut to door quietly opening. A young man, of a nerdy wimp stereotype, sidles in and skulks to his seat. He half-manages to swallow his fear and attempts a lame bit of levity.
“Logan’s for lunch, heh, never again! If the servers were any slower they could…get…jobs…in…storefronts…heh…” He withers under the boss’s incredulous glare.
Cut to door opening normally. In strides a smartly dressed young man radiating a confident nonchalance. He walks to his seat, bumping the boss’s back with his briefcase on the way. He settles in and parks his elbows on the table, studiously staring into space. The boss stares lasers at him, waiting. The young man answers with a non-verbal “huh?”, and then condescends to catch his drift:
“Oh…my nooner ran long.”
Cut to reaction shot of boss, then to suppressed grin of young man.
Cut to end title:
THE UNITED STATES ARMY. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, SHOOT AT ME?
Music up and out.
I like this. They should use it.
Prehensile eyebrows? Scary.
That’s the ad for the Reserves.
Regards,
Ric
I’m like the third guy but not because of the Army and not even because I inherited a lot of money, but because I am a genius with Excel VBA.
If I was like the third guy it would be because my stock options were worth more than the boss’.
For even better, see: Army Strong – concept ad
If they had the young man “flash back” to having a drill instructor chew a younger him out after his grin, that actually makes a lot of sense. After you have been through boot camp, what in the corporate world could really frighten you?
I had older cousins who were in Vietnam (my father was the youngest of seven, and I had cousins old enough to be parents and uncles and aunts old enough to be grandparents). Although you always heard about Vietnam veterans having difficulty readjusting, frankly for my cousins it provided them with perspective.
When I would tell them about one of my then-teenage angst crises, my then-thirty something cousins would reply, “Nick, what are they gonna do? Send you to Vietnam?”
I didn’t understand that at first, but the older I got, the more sense it made.
I’m nobody in particular and I approve of this message.
The guy ought to have an obvious bulge in his trousers just to complete the scene.