Rejected Again by Karen Blayne

Oh by the way red tape first.

Be warned these short stories contain mature content or naughty bits and as such may corrupt you if you’re under 12, 16, 18, 21 or 25 depending where you live thus they are not suitable for you so put them back on the shelf and let them age for a year or two.

They were sort of scribbled for fun. They were first posted on asstr.org. If you’ve paid money for this book just be aware the author has not received any payment. In fact no one has permission to charge money for this book and copyright is retained by the author. All copies must be of the full document. Asstr.org accepts donations if you’re feeling rich or even if you’re not.

Luv Karen

Rejected again, the damn plans had been rejected seventeen times, this time because the sub division density was too low in one area and too high in the other. Each submission was taking six months including the appeal before being rejected. Give me a break. It was taking on average eight years to get these sub division plans accepted, eight years of tying up the capital in the land before we could get any return. Last time it was damn storm water management whatever that was. We built houses for God’s sake not Arks. I was fuming.

There was a tap on the cubical entrance. “Come in.” I growled. Two female students crept in. “We thought we had a summer job but no one wants us.” Some idiot a year ago had said we should reach out to the community and listen to them as a PR token before submitting the plans, help them feel involved and part of the decision making process. So some other idiot had thought to kill two birds with one stone, hire a couple of summer students to listen to people. We could always ignore what they said but the act of listening would look as if we cared. He was let go when the money got tight six months previously but his legacy had turned up in my office now. Still his cubical was still empty and next to mine. I reread the reject letter in front of me as I spoke “The office next door is empty so it’s all yours. Office professional dress code is knee length skirts, long sleeved blouses, and stockings.” One quaked the other stood her ground “But we’re summer students and I don’t own any knee length skirts.” I looked up at them both. They were neatly dressed in short skirts, tank tops and ankle socks. I relaxed a little “Well I suppose we could have an office student dress code that was a little more relaxed. Now go and explore and find the washrooms and the coffee machine. There’s two mugs on the filing cabinet you can keep.” The damn sales guys are forever coming in with free mugs with their company name scrawled on the side.

They scurried out and I stared at the blank wall. What on earth could I give them to do for the next four months? Well there was always the Glenvale sub division I suppose, the ink wasn’t even dry on the contract we’d signed for the land. One of our competitors had gone under with the recession and we’d picked up the site for a song. The plans hadn’t even been submitted the first time. I picked the folder that contained the site and our standard detached four/five bed-roomed triple garage on a fifty foot lots laid out with long gardens for swimming pools, they’d sell at a premium prices once the market recovered and in eight years time hopefully that would have happened.

“OK girls here’s the deal, we’re a property developer and to be honest we’re having problems with red tape. It’s taking us eight years on average to get our sub division plans approved so the guy who used to be in this office had the idea it would look good if we listened to people first and that was to be your job this summer.” “What happened to him?” “Davies? We downsized him, too many crazy ideas.” They looked at each other. “Here’s the Glenvale subdivision file, have a look at the red tape, make sure we have an answer for each question then throw it in to City hall for their rejection.” “Approval?” “They’ve never approved anything first time yet. I expect it to be rejected at least fifteen times with six months delay on each rejection by the time we appeal. Oh and here’s a preauthorised credit card for a $1,000 so use it for coffee and cake whilst you’re listening to people.” “Do we report back with what we find?” “I don’t give a damn what you do with the information just don’t bother me with it. It’s a damn PR exercise for God’s sake so go look pretty and listen to some idiots including any sales guys who turn up.”

I walked back to the office to find the phone ringing from the VP of sales. “I need houses to sell, tell me no houses and I’ll have to lay off my sales staff.” “You have the six plots left on the old subdivison, the next subdivision damn well got rejected again.” “So lay off time?” “Lay off time.” I got onto the architects and our internal designers and chased them to get me a new plan drawn up before we ran out of cash and that wasn’t going to take very long.

The summer was a disaster. The builders we usually used went under because of cash flow problems. The bank manager took a personal interest in our overdraft. Apparently he’d noticed that some idiot was selling our company shares short, did we really need the full amount? As an act of faith I mortgaged the house to the hilt with him and brought buy options in the company to show him I thought it was solid. If the company shares maintained their value I’d just about be OK and we won’t talk about if they tanked. Most serious of all the drought meant most golf courses were unplayable.

For some reason the folk in the office went round on tip toe apart from my two students no one entered my office and even they just slipped in and out with my signature book. The bank’s name came up on CallerID, we were going under I could feel it in my bones, I just knew it. How was I this morning, did we want to expand our working capital overdraft? This is the same guy who’d been hounding me for months about reducing it? I told him I’d bear it in mind.

Then I got the call from Sales, when could I release phase two of Glenvale? Phase two what the hell were they talking about. I called over the partition to the girls to get their asses in my office at once. “Why are sales calling me about phase two of Glenvale?” “Because they’ve sold all of phase one?” I looked at them, they couldn’t be that dumb, no one could be that dumb could they. I spelt it out slowly to them in words they could understand “You can’t build houses until you get planning permission. We only sent the plans in for their first submission when was it two months ago. They hadn’t even had time to have their first rejection yet.” “We sort of changed them and they weren’t rejected.” I paused speechless in astonishment, they’d dared change a comma on the plans after I’d paid good money to damn high priced architects and consultants, I hated to think what havoc they had caused. “I think we’d better distract him quick.” The tall blonde one came and knelt at my feet and before I could blink had her mouth round my woody, her head started its bobbing motion. The brunette came round and nibbled my ear and did smoothing things with her fingers before joining her co-worker on my pecker. One tongue was bad enough but two and I was totally distracted.

When I’d calmed down I asked them what they’d done. “Oh well since you said they always got rejected we thought we’d ask why and listen to people.” “So we headed over to City Hall with the plans just before lunch time and found a planner and asked him where could we get something to eat.” “So he invited us to join him in the cafeteria.” “It was a bench seat and we had him between us, you know one thigh brushing against him on both sides.” “Anyway the centre of your area was master plan zoned VM2[53r] not R2B which you needed for single family homes.” “So we got him to draw over the top of your map what we’d need to do to make it fit the plan.” “We were practically holding hands well our fingers were brushing each other.” “Holding hands with the planner?” “No silly I had my hand resting on one thigh with my thumb over his crotch and Jess was doing the same on the other side.” “We just slowed down if he stopped talking.” “He just kept thinking of new things to mention to us.” “I had my smart phone record everything so we could listen to it again when we got back to the office.” “We might have leaned into him to see better but it was the cafeteria after all.”

I looked at them there had to be more. “Then we looked at the old files to see why they had been rejected and sort of just asked people what they wanted.” “We went to the committee meetings at City Hall and listened to what they wanted and what the frustrations were.” “So that’s how we did the land swop.” “Land Swop?” “We sort of traded bits of your land for a disused school in the city centre that was zoned institutional.” God give me strength. “We don’t build schools why would I want an old school with the wrong zoning.” “To build sheltered accommodation for the elderly.” “Why would I want to do that?” “Well we talked to the elevator salesman and he told us that the elevators would serve sixteen floors not the ten in the original planning zone.” “So we talked to the major who had “build more sheltered accommodation” stuff in his election whatever and added the six extra floors at marginal cost for his social housing.” “We kept the top floor for premium penthouse suites but mixed the others up social and condo together.” “You increased the number of floors without going through the planning process?” “We just went to the committee of adjustment.” “Whose chairman was a supporter of the light rail project.” “And they needed our land to take advantage of the 90% funding available from other levels of government.” My head was spinning.

“Which bit of land did you swop?” “Oh the bit in the middle of the development with a strip either side for the light rail station so they could run it out to the major suburb the other side of your development.” “We kept the air rights above the station.” “So we have less houses to sell?” “Well no we just changed the design on the houses to fit the plan so they’re smaller.” “Triple garages are very profitable.” “They let us raise the density since the light rail meant they wouldn’t have to upgrade the highway to four lane and they’d have more passengers for their light rail thingy.” “We used a design that collected the rainwater off the roofs so that helped the storm water management and meant the City didn’t need to upgrade its water treatment plant.” “And the storm water management plan meant lots of multiuse paths so its bicycle friendly.” “And you did all this behind my back?” “Well you signed off on it.” I looked at them “What do you mean?” “We just buried the papers for your signature in the signature book in the middle with all the other boring stuff.” “Get out.” “They haven’t actually built anything yet.” “Get out.” They scurried out and I called sales.

“Great concept 20% off, Julia thought we’d capitalise on it by raising the price by 25% for a week then having a 20% off sale. We sold everything first day at the plus 25% price, the ones with granny flats all going in the first two hours. Once we noticed how fast they were selling we added premium lot prices to the remaining units.” We ran through the numbers again. They were bringing in much more per square foot than our fifty foot lots were no wonder the bank manager wanted to lend us more money.

I called them in, “Explain 20% off.” “Well we listened to the sales guys, one of them wanted to tell us about locks, how his lock which only cost 5% more than our standard was ANSI grade one and could be rekeyed by the end user. So we asked him what that meant in normal English. Apparently the insurance companies offer lower insurance rates for houses with those sort of locks, which got Lisa started on running costs.” “Go on.” “So we talked to all sorts of people and figured out that if we used rainwater for flushing that would cut costs.” “Then we looked for houses that did it and found a town house design that the City had already approved that was a research project with real numbers to show how much cheaper it was to run.” “Some sort of eco standard. It had all sorts of bits to save energy and stuff including solar water and electricity.” “So we substituted that design for your four bed roomed houses and that nice reporter man with the skull cap talked to us about it and being no news time in summer they ran it on the front page and it sort of took on a life of its own.” “So we put something together quickly for the web site.” “Apparently with solar panels half the cost is the connections and by having lots together it’s cheaper. Plus the hydro company guy went ecstatic when he realised that it would save them distribution costs.” I put my head in my hands and wept. I pay good money to market research people, consultants and architects and these two come along and turn it all upside down. “We were just having fun that’s all.” “We didn’t mean any harm.” “Go away and leave me in peace.”

On their last day I had them in. “Sign.” One document was their formal letter of resignation, the other an offer to buy one unit for a dollar. “This can’t be right, town houses cost more than a dollar besides I haven’t got any furniture.” “I’ve paid you an extra week’s pay so you can pick out the furniture for the model homes.” “But they’ve all been sold why do you need a model home.” “We always sell the model homes complete with furniture at a discount to the sales staff. At the moment we haven’t got any sales staff because we laid them all off thinking we didn’t have anything to sell.” “Oh.” “We sold everything through the web site which you put together so you were our sales staff so in this case they’ll be model homes for a day then we knock them down to you and I set the discount. You’ve saved us a million or two in time saved alone so just accept the keys.” They showed their gratitude in the usual way so I upped the budget for the furniture on the model homes.

We got branded the listening company, and one of the private equity players made a leveraged takeover bid hoping to gain an insight into our method of working and process. Best of luck to them, with profit from the stock buy options I’m taking a very early retirement, certainly I’m spending the winter down south playing golf. The girls have emailed me about working together on another sub division when they graduate next year, apparently they need a token male to front the project.