Battlefield – The Office[/b]
By Mongoose750 (mongoose750@yahoo.com)
Laura Pitts was always a bully. When she found out that she was a little taller, bigger, and more athletic than the rest, she used those attributes to her best advantage. An added plus was she had those types of looks that your average homecoming queen would have. She had long blond hair, stood 5’8”, and excelled at rugby. She started enforcing her will in her freshman year of high school, and crafted her tactics to an art form by the time she graduated, with both women and men in her grasp. She didn’t try to run the high school, luckily, but she had tremendous influence and pull, even among the staff.
In college (unlike most bullies, she used her brain), she knew the dynamics were much different from high school, but she still used them to her advantage. She found a sorority, took it over, became president, and conducted a reign of terror among the other sororities, and some of the fraternities and other campus organizations. Only the service fraternities were immune. As for the Sigma Kappa sorority, if any of the long time members heard the term “thinning the herd,” they may visibly shudder about the period Laura and her gang (which they were called instead of the sororities’ proper Greek name) almost absorbed or decimated them like the other sororities. The only thing that saved the Sigma Kappas was time; the war ended when Laura received her Business degree in four years.
In her Business Ethics class, Laura excelled, which was strangely ironic for an ethics class mastered by one who visibly had none. She learned that women still had that glass ceiling that stood in the way of large success, and no, her plans did not include sleeping her way to the top (after all, she was a bully, not a slut). So she decided to do the next best thing; become a secretary or executive assistant, and work her way up the food chain that way. That way, she could use her power behind the scenes.
The first company that hired her witnessed her rise up the ranks by her dedication, intimidation, and elimination. Regarding the last part, like in school, Laura was not averse to getting her hands dirty – dirty with the other woman’s blood, hair, clothing, or whatever else she latched a hold of. In her growing kingdom, most challengers to Laura’s rule was resolved by combat. Since executive assistants as a general rule weren’t gladiators, they either stuck with the status quo, fight it out (and lose), become a part of Laura’s posse, or quit. Turnover was high for a while, then it finally stabilized. Aside from a few lofty positions she couldn’t get to short of assassination, for all intents and purposes, Laura owned the secretarial pool, and sizable part of the company in a way.
It also went without saying that she had a handle on the hiring process as well. Human Resources may be responsible for hiring a new secretary, but it was up to Laura and her crew if they were to stick around or not. If the candidate was liked or even tolerated, they were given the “rules,” and how to act. If the new candidate was a possible threat, or if Laura just plain did not like them, they would be forced or thrown out, almost literally. Because of the elaborate structure Laura made, any possible lawsuits filed against her could only go as far as her word against theirs, and no one would dare oppose the majority rule.
One day, there was a new hire by the name of Amber. She was pleasant looking with black hair that barely touched the nape of her neck. She stood 5’7” with a body that was not fat, but not skinny either. It was more of a medium build that was curvy with long, thick legs. She was polite and pleasant to everyone, and Laura couldn’t stand her.
Why did Laura despise Amber? On the surface, there wasn’t anything not to like. She worked hard, was polite to everyone, didn’t make waves, and done whatever the bosses had wanted. To the untrained eye, Amber looked like an average hard-working secretary. To Laura, this was a silent, but deadly threat that could eventually unseat her and everything she established. She would know, it happened two years before with an eager to please worker fresh out of school. Laura still relished the day where she battered her into submission with her fists. She was serving tables at a nearby restaurant, last she heard. To further add insult to injury, as soon as Amber reached her desk in the morning, she kicked off her shoes, and worked the rest of the day in her stocking feet. A few times she even went to lunch like that. If this was one of her lackeys, it would be no big deal, but seeing Amber do it just made her blood boil. One day, she decided enough was enough; it was time to take this woman out.
The following Monday, Amber was putting files away. She was dressed in a black dress with white flowers on it. The dress was cut high enough to display her legs, but not enough to violate office policy. And as usual, her shoes were gone; she wore a pair of shiny tan pantyhose that sparkled a little in the afternoon sun. Laura had two of her “lieutenants” politely escort her to a workroom that originally meant to be used for storage, but instead was used for “law enforcement.” As the two henchwomen stood behind Amber, Laura walked back and forth in front of her, like a policeman preparing for an interrogation.
“Amber, I am sure we gave you the rules you needed to follow to get along here,” she began. “But I have decided lately that you may not work out well here after all.”
“Why?” Amber asked.
“A few reasons, but let’s just say the main one is I don’t like you. Now I think I’m a fair person, so I’ll give you a choice. You can go ahead and tell the boss you quit, use a fairly viable reason, then clean out your desk, leave here, and that would be that. If not, well the result may be very painful for you. So, what do you say?”
“No,” said Amber simply.
Laura was expecting, even hoping for that reaction. “Very well,” she replied, preparing to cock back a fist. “Alice, hold her if you would, please.”
Amber was a woman addicted to You Tube™, if “addicted” was the right word. One day, she was surfing the Internet for exercises she could do at home, and on the video site, she saw a clip on how to do sumo squats. She also saw a clip featuring a woman who broke the world record for performing the most sumo squats within a certain period of time. The woman looked pretty good, too, so if it worked for her . . .
She started looking for other clips that displayed more of how sumo wrestlers work out, and started doing them as well. As a result, not only did she lose fat, she gained strong core muscles and big, strong legs. She then started looking for self-defense clips. Before she knew it, she practiced a number of techniques gleaned from a wide variety of marital disciplines. The hard work paid off when she killed a rapist a few months earlier. “I didn’t know his neck would break that easy,” she told the dumbfounded police officers.
So when Alice grabbed her hair, Amber remembered an aikido counter for it. Placing a hand on Alice’s, she lowered herself down and quickly turned around, facing her. Alice’s ear-piercing scream seemed to freeze everybody in place.
“My hand, she broke my hand!” Alice cried out as she sunk to the floor holding her broken wrist.
Taylor, the other lackey, snapped out of it, and charged Amber, threatening to rip her dress off and claw her. Amber ducked her head under Taylor’s right armpit, while wrapping her arms around Taylor’s waist. Using the power of her long legs, Amber lifted Taylor up, and dropped her down on her back, executing perfectly a judo throw she’d practiced with full-length body pillows. Of course, on the You Tube clip she’d seen, the throw was done on mats, and the person who was thrown rolled to their feet. In the room, the floor was industrial-type carpet with concrete underneath. Taylor, who only rolled out of bed, landed hard, the breath driven out of her, and seeing not just a few stars rotating around the ceiling.
That left Laura, who couldn’t help but be a little impressed at Amber’s handiwork. She’d never taken out anybody as fast as this upstart had done with those two women. It was going to be a bear explaining Alice’s injury to the company’s health care provider, but it could be done. Taylor will just need to lie there for a bit until things were back to normal. As for Amber . . .
“Those tricks won’t work on me,” she said as she advanced forward with a right cross.
Amber stepped back to avoid the blow, and then grabbed Laura’s right arm, jerking it, taking her off her center, then swung her toward a wall. The bump against the wall didn’t hurt Laura, but then, it wasn’t supposed to. It just put her in position. Amber grabbed both lapels of Laura’s white blouse, and pulled them toward each other. She got that move from a Japanese wrestling/catfight match between two young girls. Amber watched the clip studiously. The winner executed two successful choke holds on her opponent. The first one was a lapel choke, which was what Amber was executing at that moment. Laura’s face turned red, then her eyes rolled back in her head. Amber released her, and she dropped to the floor.
Amber took a moment to look around. Alice was curled in a ball, whimpering about never being able to type or write again, or some nonsense like that. Taylor was hyperventilating, afraid to get up, while Laura was sleeping the sleep oblivion.
Amber was warned by several of the other secretaries about the queen bee and what type of leash she kept on the others. Amber’s reply was as long as she was allowed to do her job, she had no problem. Now that Laura had faced her and lost, she definitely had no problem. But she couldn’t leave things this way. What should she do next?
---
A few weeks later, Amber sat at her desk; her shoeless, stocking-clad legs were crossed and resting on the desk. She was on the phone giving her immediate supervisor his itinerary for the coming week. After she hung up, she sighed. This place would be going down in flames if the secretaries weren’t here. It was hard to believe important business decisions were made by men who didn’t know their head from a hole in the ground.
“Laura, could you come here, please?” She asked.
After Amber defeated Laura, according to the rules, she was now the head secretary. The first thing she wanted to do as the new leader was abolish the rules, but Laura had enforced them for so long, the other secretaries had them ingrained in their psyche, and it would take a long time to change them. But she did make some modifications. No secretary would be bullied, new or otherwise. Everyone was to do their job like normal, and do it well. She wasn’t crazy about everybody reporting to her, but she got used to it.
As for Laura, she wasn’t cruel enough to order her to quit, but she wasn’t crazy enough to let her run free either. Instead, Amber “promoted” her as her second-in-command and hatchet man, or woman in this case. After Laura gave her a rundown on everything and everybody, Amber discovered the bosses were clueless. Laura pointed out that there was a few times the secretarial staff saved their bacon because they didn’t know what they were doing.
“Hey Laura,” Amber said to her, “forget the secretarial pool; wouldn’t you rather take over the company? This whole place could be ours.” Amber could see the thirst for conquest dance in Laura’s eyes. There was even a new spring in her step as she walked away from their meeting. Their new relationship would be very beneficial, both of them discovered. Amber would provide the ideas and goals, while Laura can carry them out, ruthlessly if she had to. With no longer having to keep things running smoothly while trying to dominate, Laura felt strangely liberated.
Back to the present, Amber asked Laura about her meeting with one of the executives.
“He’s still insisting that his idea will work,” Laura replied.
“The same one that he tried a year ago?”
“The same. So I had to heavily ‘suggest’ that he try something else. I’m on my way to grab his files from last year to show him why it didn’t work.”
Amber sighed. “We’ll get rid of him first,” she said.
“Not soon enough.”
“Just wait until I give the word, then you can act.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. By the way, why don’t you take those things off?” Amber pointed to Laura’s high heels. “Just seeing you march back and forth in those things make my feet hurt. Go ahead, do it.”
As Laura eased her feet out of her pumps, she said, “I don’t think Billy (the executive) will like this.”
“It will give him something else to look at,” Amber remarked. “Besides, we almost run this place right now, and we’ll make this place fully ours inside of a year, so why not?”
Laura thought about it for a moment, then tossed her pumps beside Amber’s desk as she walked in her stocking feet to the file drawers.
Amber sat back wiggling her toes. With Laura as her right-hand woman, and the power of the other secretaries behind her, her coup will be successful. First pick off the individual bosses one by one (except for the woman over Human Resources, she like her), and then make a concentrated effort on the bigger ones. After that, total conquest should be easy.
Amber had never attempted a hostile takeover before, but she was confident it would work.
After all, she found out how to do it watching a clip on You Tube.
For comments, suggestions, or story ideas, email the author at shrewsberry@juno.com.
Copyright 2009, Barefoot Heroines, Inc.
