“Okay, here’s the deal. Obviously they forgot to tell you. On the seventh, ninth and tenth floors if you know where to look there are some tables set up with a bunch of, well, implements on them. For our use only.” Jan licked her lips. “And we do. We get ourselves off as much as we can. If you feel like it, you do it.” Monika’s eyes were wide now. And she shook her head in amazement. “I think a tour is in order,” Jan concluded.
She stood up. Eagerly, Monika did too. She rubbed a finger over her lips. “I don’t know if I’ll get there in time,” she joked. Pam and Jan both smiled at that.
*
June took a couple of steps into Lindsay’s office. “You wanted to see me?” she asked.
Lindsay beckoned her to come right in. Somehow June felt it appropriate to keep standing as she waited to find what the office boss wanted of her. Lindsay seemed to be checking her out, head to foot. “I hear you want to be a mailgirl.”
June shuffled in her spot on the carpet. “Well, I’m thinking about it.”
Lindsay apparently did not like her indecisiveness. “What is it? Your career? Your self-esteem? You realise that it is quite a pay rise on what you are getting now? How does the money sound?” She quoted a figure as June stood there helpless. Lindsay felt ruthless. “I can see you are still unsure. Here’s a plan: You strip now. To prove that you can do it.”
June took a breath. She had already been through similar with Mitch and Annette. But that atmosphere was more supportive, especially compared to Lindsay’s approach.
“Well?” Lindsay asked sharply. “Strip now or you will never be a mailgirl.” Was this clerk from HR wasting her time. “One chance.” Lindsay felt a rush of enjoyment at June’s conundrum.
June sighed and stepped up close to the desk, facing her stony faced boss across it. Well, she had somewhere to place her clothes. She undressed, folded her top, then the skirt. June had chosen a snazzy black matching bra and panty set. Which was now all that she was wearing, there in her boss’s office. June thought that it made her look good. But Lindsay feigned not care. What she wanted was the worker in front of her undressed, completely nude. Snapping off her bra and stepping out of panties to place them with the rest of her clothes, June was now completely nude. She stood facing Lindsay with her hands at her sides.
Lindsay nodded. “Not bad, I’ve seen better. But I guess we can work you into shape. Now come here so I can give you a closer inspection.”
June wondered at that. “Is that really allowed?” she asked, almost automatically suddenly finding some assertiveness.
Lindsay scratched her chin. “Probably not,” she realised, “unless you agree to it.” She knew the rules, as much as she disliked them.
“In that case, probably not,” June decided, keeping her distance.
“Still, I do have to know how you will interact with staff when you are like that,” Lindsay responded. She got up from her chair to walk up to and around the prospective mailgirl. She looked down her nose at June as she inspected her. “So you know all the rules?” Lindsay sneered, standing close to June, breathing on her shoulder.
“I do work in HR,” June reminded her.
Lindsay sighed. “Do we need another trouble maker?”
Something about that got June bristling. But she also realised that there must be a vacancy for a new mailgirl, something which no one had yet directly confirmed. “Do you need someone who is prepared to work naked in the office every day? Someone from within the company, so there is already a level of understanding of the role?” June smiled at Lindsay, the way she liked to when making a point in a job interview.
Lindsay smiled back, somewhat threateningly. “Let’s put that to the test, shall we?” And quicker than June could anticipate, Lindsay snatched up June’s carefully folded clothes off her desk and stepped back behind it. She sat down, calmly opened a drawer in her return and placed them in there.
June was shaken. “What am I meant to do?” she blurted.
Lindsay crossed her arms. “Be a mailgirl.” Then she gave June an up and down look as if she was seriously contemplating the other woman’s predicament. “Come back and see me at five,” she added sweetly, maybe too sweetly. “We’ll get you dressed then.”
After the initial shock June chose to embrace her predicament. She stepped out of Lindsay’s office and did not flinch when Betty Cuthbert looked up and showed a flash of surprise that the clothed colleague who had gone into Lindsay’s office was now walking out naked. June read Betty’s surprise and even felt a little bit of power that she previously did not have. But how should she exercise it?
*
Lindsay’s final order as June left her office still rang in her ears. “Use the stairs.” What choice did she have? June passed the lifts that would have returned her quickly to the ninth floor from the sixth and instead opened the door to the stairwell to trudge up the three flights of stairs. June had thought about the mezzanine but for some reason, she wanted the familiarity of her own desk first. She took her time since she was not on the clock, not yet. This was both good and bad. It meant that she could stretch out the time before she would have to present herself to her colleagues as she was. Or actually do the mailgirl thing. But it also meant that she had time to worry about the fact that in a short while she would actually have to do that. At least, for the moment, she had the stairwell to herself in her new, exposed state.
Taking a long deep breath, she opened the door to the ninth floor. No one was around. She walked past the lifts. No one was waiting there either. Next was the hard part. She had to head behind the partition and into her office. This was where she had a mild anxiety attack. This was it, into the place where she had worked every day with her clothes on, where the rest of the HR team worked too. She took another breath, closed her eyes for a moment then stepped in.
And the room seemed empty. Relieved, she strode naked past the desks and chairs towards her desk at the back of the room. Martin was sitting at his desk, the one pressed up to hers so that they worked facing each other. He was, as usual, staring at his screen. June smirked as she managed to walk past without him noticing. She sat at her desk facing him.
“Where is everyone?” June asked, as normal as she could be, given her circumstances.
Martin looked up to answer her and of course his eyes dilated with shock. He said nothing for a moment, processing. He could only see her bare breasts above the table. But given what he could see and what they had discussed, he suspected the rest. Eventually he spoke. “Am I supposed to look at you or what?” he asked.
Having observed Annette, June found to her surprise that she could channel the mailgirl’s sass. “You’re a big boy, you work it out,” she stated. “Now where is everyone?”
Martin realised that he could calmly answer that. “Optional training session. Work relations skills. Whatever that is.”
“An excuse to get out of an hour or so’s work,” June smiled. She could be nude and be her old self, she realised.