The Department of Commerce released numbers earlier today indicating a significant drop in the productivity of management-level employees at American corporations in the last 6 months. The drop has been directly attributed to the Tiger Woods scandal and the millions of hours that these highly-valued employees have had to spend learning the names of other professional golfers in order to make idle executive chit chat.
The lost hours may just be the tip of the iceberg. In preliminary surveys, the department has logged countless stories like that of Oracle V.P. Mark Gunderson: "Last week I was in the elevator with one of my fellow V.P.s and we tried talking about Phil What-his-name and Vidge-ay?, Vee-Jay?, the Indian guy - you know, from India. It was total train wreck - we've been avoiding each other ever since. Imagine if he had been a client" Stories like these indicate that the derailment of America's only nationwide, year-round sports icon has caused incalculable damage and it may be years before we're out of the "Woods".
A recent study sponsored by the FDA has confirmed an increase in the consumption of sea salt among Americans. Though medical experts were quick to cite the growing number of Americans on low-sodium diets as a reason, the data indicates that the increase began precisely in 1983 - the same year that producers universally agreed to call their product "sea salt" abandoning earlier product descriptions such as "tidal residue", "wharf scrapings", and "crystallized fish urine".
