Part 40
When Tim closed the conference room door behind him and turned toward the six females in the focus group, their conversation stopped, and they looked at him, open-mouthed.
"You're kidding," Ponytail gasped.
"OMG!" her brunette friend from the original focus group said.
"You're the naked hunk from the ads!" blurted out the Latina.
Tim felt his face start to get warm. "Y- yes. I mean, I was in the ads."
"Hell yeah you were!" the redhead said. "And you were great!"
"T- th- thanks, I guess," Tim said, aware of how stupid he sounded, but unable to find any other words.
"What are you doing here?" Ponytail said, smiling at him. "Are you here for the debriefing?"
"I hope so," whispered the shorter of two women with shoulder-length sandy-blonde hair. Several of the females laughed.
Tim hadn't caught what she'd said, but he was somehow sure that he didn't want to. He shook his head slightly, and cleared his throat. "Well, yes. I'm here to debrief you."
The taller of the two blondes whispered, "Are you sure it isn't the other way around?"
Tim caught a little more of that, but he plowed ahead. "I've got a few questions I want to ask you, as a supplement to the feedback you've already given us on the ads."
"We thought they were so great!" the Latina said enthusiastically. "The ads were both really funny, and sexy, too."
"You're an amazing actor," the redhead jumped in. "You looked so embarrassed when those girls took advantage of you!"
"Have you been in anything else we might have seen?" asked Ponytail. "Any commercials, or maybe a tv show?"
"What?" Tim said. "No. I'm not an actor."
"Don't sell yourself short," said the second brunette. "I mean, commercials aren't Shakespeare plays or anything, but you were totally believable."
"The girls were good, too," said the redhead. "I think I might have seen a couple of them in commercials before."
"No," Tim said. "They aren't actors, either. None of us are!"
"Oh come on," one of the blondes said.
"No, that's the point," Tim said. "We're all typical people who work in an office. That's the conceit that is supposed to make the ads work."
"So those girls all work for you, in an office?" the second brunette said.
Tim nodded his head.
"And you're their boss?"
Tim said, "Exactly."
Ponytail's smile got a little wider. "So when that little Asian girl depantsed you on that ladder, she was an employee, yanking down the pants and underwear of her actual boss?!"
Tim's face felt hot now. He cleared his throat. "Yes."
Several of the women were giggling, and the Latina held up her hand like she was a schoolgirl in class. "You're saying that when those women snuck into the shower and peeped on you, and then sent you running out into the alley without a stitch on, your employees were forcing their male boss to streak?!"
Tim said, "Okay, that's not exactly how it works. There was a script, and we all wrote it together. And then we performed it."
One of the blondes was incredulous. "You helped to write a script that ended up with you getting stripped and running around your office nude?!"
Ponytail snapped her fingers and pointed at Tim, getting the attention of the other girls. "That's not how it started, though!" She turned to the other females. "I told you girls about the original two ads, when it was the girls in the office who were stripping themselves to get his attention."
She looked back at Tim. "But when your company found out that women are the target buyers for the Naked Attraction, you were stuck, weren't you? You couldn't NOT let yourself get stripped, after you'd already forced your employees to embarrass themselves that way, could you?"
"Look," Tim said, trying to regain control. "We've got a job to do here, so let's get started." He looked at Pam's clipboard. It contained several sheets of paper. He flipped through the first couple, trying to gather his thoughts, and ignore the whispered giggles of the females around him.
The top sheet listed the focus group members. "Um, let me put your faces with your names first."
The women introduced themselves. Ponytail was named Beth, and her brunette partner from the first ads was Martha. The redhead - really more of a strawberry blonde - was Stephanie. The Latina was Marisa, and the shorter of the two sandy blondes was Debbie, while the taller was Brittany.
"Great," Ted said. He motioned everyone to seats around the table, as he sat down himself. He flipped to the second sheet on the clipboard, which was the one that Pam had hurried handwritten her comments on. "I've just got a few questions to discuss with you all."
On the other side of the one-way glass, Tim's four employees were watching, along with Pam. The four of them had watched in surprise as Tim had first walked into the conference room with the focus group girls.
Anna had said, "What is he doing in there?"