Since this is the most critical of the responses, I'll reply to it. I'm going to say what I agree with and what I don't agree with.

Weak opener. It introduces three characters I know nothing about, and nothing of interest is established about any of them. It also uses three surnames, one given name, three pronouns, and two determiners in the space of two sentences -- the overload of words referring to characters is repetitive and makes the prose dense.

I agree that it's a sentence with toom much information. I'll fix that.

I agree as the very opening line, it is weak. BUT it is not necessary to hook the reader right off the bat. Many books from my favorite authors don't start with perfectly hooking opening lines. You'd have to read more into the chapter to get a feel for it. As I said, I'm not clever. I won't be able to write lines that grip you like a fishing pole. I need to stick with what I can do and at the very least, I can put together some shabby pieces of dialogue.

Why is there any follow-up on this? There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the man isn't a lunatic or a prankster ten-year-old with a voice modifier.

I agree. There's some gaps in logic for these two guys if they just go straight into it. I'll fix that in my revisions.

Ill-defined. Any number of people could have the same dialogue and emotional responses that he has.

I agree. There was barely any conflict in the chapter. I didn't reveal anything about him other than he's lazy and his boss makes him a little bitch. I don't know how /u/handsomejack94 got a feel for him yet.

Ice Queen stereotype: nothing new or compelling.

I agree. It's nothing new and compelling because I cut and pasted my idea of JK Simmons in the Spider-man movies over an attractive female boss. It's been done over and over again, and in this case, I wanted to write the expected. My aim with Clarke is to somehow write in a moment of weakness or some kind of secret that she's hiding to make her more vulnerable. Don't know the details yet.

He seems unnecessary. Clarke could call Allard directly to her office and assign the lead/ give the information for the lead. There's no plot point or character development that requires him.

It's like arguing semantics. So in the plot, Allard has to get to Clarke's office somehow. Clarke can call him herself, or someone else can do it. I made Michael Taylor do it to introduce a character. When I worked part time, I would always be asked by my boss to call people to the back of the grocery store. He could have called them himself, but he didn't. I don't like this part of the critique.

Michael is the best-developed character in the piece.

Uhh... he is?

Simply stating mundane information kills the immersion and pacing.

I'm trying to emulate Chandler. If I open Playback right now, I can find numerous examples of bland (non-dialogue) prose.

She hung up.

She looked less angry.

He looked down at his fist.

I looked at my watch again.

Granted, the sentences around my own bland prose aren't as eloquent and sightly as Chandler's. I still believe that pieces of bland prose are (generally) okay this early into the story.

Too many words in the dialogue and non-dialogue. There's substantial over-emphasis/ repetition of points

Everyone touched on this. They fonlded this. You guys assaulted my word count. I get it. I use a lot of words. ALTHOUGH, I will continue to be stubborn and write in redundancies where I see fit, just because I like to write that way.

Thanks for the critique. You and /u/Handsomejack94 helped me cut this down by a large margin and that's what I was looking for. Clarity and prose are what I wanted to fix and you people (dogs? cats? horses?) are pushing me in the right direction.