A professional negotiator retained by Nabisco to “open a channel” with the women on its lawn crossed the grass at 11:00 AM Thursday carrying a leather folio and did not return to the building until 6:40 PM, carrying a plate.
The negotiator, a thirty-year veteran of labor disputes, was reportedly seated at the potluck table within four minutes, handed a bowl within six, and asked within ten whether her own doctor had ever ordered a fasting insulin.
“I came in with a framework,” she told reporters afterward. “Phase one, establish rapport. Phase two, identify interests. I never got out of phase one. Phase one was a woman named Denise explaining why my knees hurt.”
Sources at the table said the negotiator asked a single question about the company’s position around 2:00 PM and was told, warmly, that the company didn’t have one at this table, but that there was more chili.
By 4:00 PM she had been walked through a seven-step appeal for a denied prescription of her own, and by 5:30 PM she had an appointment with a clinic from the patient-vetted directory.
“I’ve mediated dock strikes,” she said. “I have never been in a room where the other side already had everything and was offering me some.”
At press time the negotiator had submitted an invoice for one day, a note reading “no deliverable, see attached recipe,” and a request to be assigned to the lawn again next Thursday.
