BEVERLY, MA - Imagine you are sitting at a table in a company cafeteria. The door opens, and in march 15 of your fellow employees, single file and in step. They arrange themselves at chairs around a table and sit in unison; each one then places a soda can on the table and opens it in perfect time with the rest. Sounds like a scene from Village of The Damned? Think again!

This is "synchronized breaking", being hailed by corporate executives across the country as "the best thing since sliced bread", developed in Beverly, MA at a tech company called . It was conceived in late 2010 as a management tool to enable supervisors to keep close tabs on their subordinates. It evolved over the following year to incorporate split-second timing and synchronization of actions, all coordinated by a super-precise atomic clock. Synchronized breaking is currently sweeping across the country, and is being lauded as a possible turning-point in the American economy's downward trend.

An interesting side-effect of synchronized breaking that this reporter noted is that, when asking one member of the "break crew" a question, at least 3 or 4 would answer identically at the same time, and not always the person who was asked will answer. Scientists have hypothesized that the activity of synchronized breaking forms a sort of "hive mind", where each individual acts as part of a whole.

"Taking our breaks at the same time, and doing the same thing, is good," droned 5 of the break crew. "It's good for production."

When asked exactly how production was impacted, the crew shrugged and intoned, "We're not big into numbers and data, and we leave that to the bosses. It just makes us feel good. It's almost as good a feeling as having God Himself bouncing in our laps, celebrating the completion of our assigned goals. We're part of the whole, busy and useful."

Some opposing viewpoints do exist. One technician spoke out, but refused to give his name because he was not authorized to speak:
"It's a disgusting waste of company time and money," our source revealed. "You can't tell me that they don't have any time-sensitive processes. There are just some things you can't stop in the middle of, so rather than work through till the job is done, they don't even bother starting it, if it's close to break time. They'll look busy, straighten up their desks, and stare at the wall, whatever, until it's time for break, then they go into their little "pod people" routine. It creeps me out. To top it all off, because those jobs aren't getting started on time, they stay late to get them done and get paid overtime for it. Disgusting."
When asked whether any of these allegations were accurate, management personnel just smiled and replied, "We alllll bundle!"