Mr. Squishy- David Foster Wallace

This story follows a focus group in a marketer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads the focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!"  The story is about the deception and manipulation in the operation of modern corporations, particularly those whose success is highly dependent on the public's perception of the company and its products. 
Most interesting to me was that Wallace's structure of the story matches the setting (a skyscraper), but its layers are revealed one at a time in an upward journey that reveals the figures of each lower layer to have been duped by someone above them. The higher levels is where it really gets fascinating. We are introduced to the perspectives of members higher up in the marketing firm and told that the true purpose behind the inter-focus group study is to explore a class of marketing strategy where a depiction of the inner workings of the company is the subject of advertising material. So, Schmidt, without knowing it, is effectively delivering to the focus group a primitive form of this behind-the-product advertising.
Further up, the future of demographic analysis is anticipated to be carried out by monitoring websites rather than running focus groups. Only problem is all of the presently employed focus group coordinators. The inter-group experiment is actually a device that will be used to demonstrate to the coordinators their own inimical influence on the focus groups, using a statistical argument which the coordinators, themselves statisticians, will be forced to accept, followed by their resignation or, if they are so unreasonable as to protest, as evidence against any case they may form in a lawsuit regarding their termination. 
There's also a guy scaling the wall of the building and drawing a crowd that speculates on his activities throughout the story, who in the end inflates his costume which bears the image of "Mister Squishy."
This to me represents the interaction of marketing firms with consumers. Marketers put on a carefully designed performance and the consumers are drawn to it.
I very much enjoyed reading this short story. The amount of detail put into the story was very unique and I think it has a lot to say about marketing and the world in general. Deception and secrecy are huge parts of the marketing and business worlds. Its a scary idea and it makes this story very thought provoking.