CONFERENCE ROOM B—What started out as an impromptu hallway meeting led to a three hour PowerPoint presentation by Deputy Director Howell. All seven participants were still stranded in the conference room when their colleagues punched out at 5 p.m.

“No phone reception. No light snacks. Not a single chance to pee,” lamented intern Donna Wells.

Budget analyst Tim Gilligan was bothered more by the unimaginative default template used. He commented, “Man, those slides were as primitive as could be.”

Russ Johnson, a staff economist who is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown, ended up missing his six o’clock class. According to Johnson, “The boredom started getting rough. Expressions turned to glossed. If not for the Starbucks coffee carafe the meeting would be lost. Heck, I was lost from slide two.”

Norman “Skipper” Hale’s wife had to drive all the way in from Fairfax to pick him up after his carpool left without him. Shaking his head in disbelief he said, “A three hour PowerPoint?! A three hour PowerPoint?!”

Hale tried to make the best of things by stopping at Whole Foods for coconut water on the way home.

Despite keeping everyone there for a long long time, past when security locked the main door and they had to go out through the parking garage, Howell didn’t make it to the last slide. He promised to CC Gilligan and Skipper too, the staff economist and his RA, the intern, and the rest on an email with the full slide deck there as an attached file.