n's Tomb in Red Square. In the days of Bell System's monopoly, these annual events served as traveling pep rallies for the company's small investors, complete with World's Fair-quality exhibits in the lobby, a free box lunch on every seat, and a heart-warming video at the end. But in the leaner, meaner world of competition, there wasn't much room for pep rallies that didn't deliver anything to the bottom line. Tough Calls The first thing to go was the box lunches, replaced by coffee and do- nuts. The donuts were dropped the same year we did away with most of the exhibits, which incredibly was not until this 1996 meeting. By then, AT&T's annual meetings had become platforms from which the company's unions could decry the perpetual downsizing. Union lead- ers would fly in from Washington to lead groups of their red-T-shirted members, bused in from the nearest AT&T facilities, in a refrain of embarrassing questions and heckling. If previous annual meetings had been pep rallies, the 1996 meet- ing was a public lynching. First, Allen was pelted with questions about his compensation at an early morning news conference, then he had to face an auditorium filled with militant union members and angry shareowners, most of them retirees, who applauded wildly whenever anyone said anything critical about him and laughed derisively when he tried to defend himself. In a year when the company had already endured four months of media coverage that Allen described as more "unfavorable and relentless [than] I can remember," the union mem- bers actually had to vie with other hecklers for time at the microphone. By contrast, Evelyn Y. Davis, the septuagenarian annual meeting gadfly, provided comic relief. Proud of her multiple facelifts, but too vain to admit that she had become hard of hearing, she delivered her remarks in a shrill voice still accented by her native Dutch. At one point, when Allen tried to refer one of her questions to the company's president, Alex Mandl, she screamed, "I vill not deal vith vun of your flunkies!" Man