On Corporate Announcements (And Monkeys)

           Today, I received an email from Corporate in my place of employment that could only be described as tickling.

The context of the email was to solicit suggestions to streamline day-to-day operations, but this being the third email in the series, the tone was more of a “don’t be afraid to call things out like they are.”
That wasn’t the tickling part.  One sentence in it, however, was.
It read, “Perhaps you’re afraid of being beaten by 4 monkeys.”
Which immediately set my mind adrift by such a specification.
Why would exactly four monkeys accost an employee for speaking up?  Perhaps this is their way of telling you, subtly, that you will not be beaten by merely four monkeys for voicing your opinion.  You may, however, be attacked by an elite ninja squad of three (or fewer) highly-trained monkeys, or worse, assaulted by a thronging mass of as many monkeys as Corporate can afford to throw at you.
And considering the bonus pay of our CEO last year alone was enough to give every single employee a $1/hour raise for the entire year (assuming, of course, a 40-hour work week and no overtime) with a considerable amount left over, I’m sure that would buy quite a few executive attack monkeys.
Which led me to wonder.. could such a thing even exist?
So, of course, I had to research it.
According to pets.costhelper.com, the cost of acquiring a monkey legally in the United States is between $4,000 and $8,000 each, depending upon species and age.  This does not take into account any equipment (such as a cage) or upkeep costs (food, attention, etc.) that would be involved.
And while monkeys appear to be fond of flinging distasteful biological waste at random targets, that isn’t exactly what we have in mind.  Targeted attacks would require specialist training.  As far as I can tell, training a monkey to perform a task can run upwards of $1,500 if you hire someone to do it.  Since ninja attack monkeys aren’t exactly within the realm of legality, I can only imagine the cost would be significantly higher.  So, for the purposes of this hypothetical scenario, I decided that twice the average training cost would be sufficient (based purely on statistics I pulled out of my own colon, of course).
With that being said, I’m sure any monkey that would be capable of attacking someone with any reasonable expected damage would run closer to the $8,000 end of the spectrum.  Plus training, that’s $11,000 per Corporate ninja attack monkey.  
While we’ve been somewhat assured that we won’t be attacked by a squad of four monkeys, that leaves effectively every other number conceivable (within the budget) open to possibility.
An elite squad of three pummeling primates would then run approximately $33,000.  That’s nearly the annual salary of most employees I know, and considerably more than the rest.  I’m sure training a mob of cheaper monkeys would be more efficient, perhaps as low as $5,500 per monkey, which would then mean the same thirty-three grand could pay for a small gang of six less-subtle simians.  
I immediately armed myself with a letter opener after figuring out these numbers.  Considering the obvious excess in finances which could afford such an exorbitant bonus for our charming CEO - who sent the email with said subtle hint of impending ape assault - the possibilities of being accosted by monkeys in varying stages of training (as long as there aren’t four of them) was becoming alarmingly real.
Or he could have said something like “don’t worry about retaliation.”  That would have been much more reassuring.