Vampires don’t exist… or do they?

“Mayhaps we could return to business, sirs?” said Count Dracula irritably. “I am not a man given to flights of fancy around my - hilariously unusual - name.”

The group of chuckling businessmen suddenly looked crestfallen upon realising they were not pretending to be vampires (which do not exist) and bats (which do) in front of an ancient Transylvanian evil, but in front of the chairman of the board of their employer. Who had been inexplicably named Count Dracula.

“Sorry, sir, we are…” He fumbled for a laser pointer and addressed the PowerPoint presentation on the screen. “We are on course to exceed projected revenue growth in all major product lines this year.”

“Good.” Replied the Count. “I am particularly interested in our operations in the medical industry. What is the reason for the large increase in expenditure in this sector this year?

“We have expanded, sir, into… a new area.”
“What new area?”
“Several of them, sir!”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be more specific?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t like it.”
“Why will I not like it?”
“Because we bought a chain of blood banks.”
“I see.”

The chairman leaned back in his plush leather office chair and steepled his fingers.

“So, let me get this straight, you - you bunch of idiots - have engineered a situation where I, the hilariously-named Count Dracula, am the chairman of the board of executives of a company that has just bought a chain of blood banks. Can you even imagine how that would look on the front page of the tabloid newspapers?!”

By now he was standing up and leaning on the desk, bellowing at his subordinates, who were cowering in fear.

“How many did you buy?”
“Sir?”
“How many blood banks did you buy?”
“Seventeen.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”

After an inappropriately long pause had been and gone, another came along to check where the first was. It had a good look around and decided to follow its comrade in buggering off pretty sharpish.

“Right, we need to fix this mess. How much was the acquisition?”
“Seventeen million dollars.”
“Seventeen million dollars. Sell the lot.”
“As in, liquidate?”

The third pause came looking for the first two, found them looking a bit worried, and then they all decided to head down the pub and wait for all this to blow over.

“Did you just… suggest liquidating a blood bank?”
“We’ll make smoothies.”
“What the HELL…”

And then the executive vampires fell upon the entirely human Count Dracula and drained him like one of those machines that juices oranges.

Wait, no, vampires don’t exist!

The Count just fired everyone else in the room and nobody got bonuses that year.