Stretching the Rules 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 if they are not suitable for you 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.  Asstr.org accepts donations if you’re feeling rich or even if you’re not.

Luv Karen

Liam watched her totter off the elevator in her high heels and look round.  “Can I assist?”  He asked “I’m looking for Ms. Hunt the office manager.”  She hesitantly replied.  He pitied anyone who had to deal with her but he guided her to Ms. Hunt’s cubical as requested then wondered off to grab a mug of coffee.  He could hear Ms. Hunt’s voice as she bullied one of the junior office staff who stood before her desk quaking about a task that had been completed five minutes late the previous day.  On a whim he grabbed two thinking she’d need one after meeting with the office battle axe.

He slipped his left arm around her waist and carried her off to his cubical.  There was something about her, it almost seemed as if she was playing a part.  “Was your venture successful?”  “No I might be desperate for a job but I hope I’m not so desperate as to work for her.  I quote ‘All our positions are filled by open competition so apply over the internet like all the others and stop wasting my time.’ Can you believe her?”  “Well she is correct you know to prevent family members etc being hired the new rules are you have to apply on the web site.  I’ll write the address down for you.”  He cut and pasted the address then printed it out on a sheet of paper and handed it to her.  “I understand the last time Ms. Hunt posted something she had 782 applications to process and she had to go through them all so these days she tries hard not to hire people.”  “Oh, so it’s difficult to even get an interview?”

He nodded, “But I have a target of a hundred applications and two interviews a month or they’ll cut my benefits.”  She leant forward slightly widening her knees and giving him an excellent view of her sheer lace panties.  “Let’s just pretend you want a job and I’ll interview you for it, then you can say you’ve had one.”  “I guess so.”  She handed him her C.V.  He looked in his draw and pulled out the office junior list of questions and asked about her experience with franking machines, and photocopiers.  They used to have the questions on the computers before they found out that the LAN administrators could read them and sell copies.  So now they were handled with an old fashioned type writer so at least they would be secure.  It was soon obvious that she hadn’t any relevant experience at all which puzzled him as she seemed fairly bright.  He threw a couple of off the cuff python questions at her which she answered quickly and accurately.  He thought that was odd.  Then he looked at her more closely, her short thin dress was the sort that an office junior might wear but the colour was exactly right.  Her makeup wasn’t over done as he might expect.  Her high heels had a brand new look about them.  He began to have unprofessional thoughts about how much he desired her body and felt his body harden.  “It’s normal to ask for a reference so name and phone number?”

He drew the interview to a close “I think that’s all for now, thank you.  Do you need the words we’ll bear you in mind?”  She slumped in her chair.  “No but thank you.”  “Try looking on the web site for job openings I understand quarter past four in the morning is a very quiet time for the web site so you should have no trouble getting on.”  She bit her lips and they both stood.  Before he realised her intent she was on her knees and had unzipped him.  “It seems a waste not to take advantage of it.”  She lowered her lips over his erection and tasted his pre-cum.  He’d had blow jobs twice at interviews before, generally by desperate girls who were under qualified for the job but this one was special.  She took her time and made him ache for relief before she finally brought him to his climax.

“There is a company policy about such behaviour between employees and their supervisors.”  “But I’m not an employee and you said yourself you couldn’t give me a job straight from an interview without doing the internet web application thing and going through all the interviewees who apply.”  She smiled at him and rose to take her leave.  “I can offer you a casual employment office junior for six months, there will be no extensions and you’d have to apply through the web as normal for any jobs that come up.  Just be here at eight tomorrow morning.”  She practically skipped out of the office.

On a whim he rang her reference.  “Christina you say, what sort of job is she applying for?”  He paused for a moment then made up a grade, “SP 1, we talked about Python programming at the interview.”  “Ah yes you know about her Ph.D. then, she did say she’d been advised to omit all her degrees and apply for a simple office job to keep her going to something in her field turned up.”  He extracted the title of her Ph.D. work then hit the internet and read through her paper.  It was well thought out and showed both her knowledge and how she had applied it to the problem.

Christina’s alarm rang God 4 am why would she have put the alarm on for 4 am?  She rolled over and found her lap top and bleary eyed logged onto the jobs web site, 4:14 nothing.  Perhaps another day, she pressed the refresh screen before logging off, low and behold an office junior job appeared applications cut off 4:45 EST, a quick cut and paste of her CV and the deed was done.

Later she crawled out of bed and donned her office junior guise, this time though she thrust her heels in her back pack until she got to the office.  If only she’d known the difficulties in getting a job after a Ph.D. she might not have been so enthusiastic about doing one.

“Good morning, I must say you look more comfortable without the heels.  Grab a mug of coffee and then I’ve a few things for you to do this morning.”  She didn’t bother changing into her heels as planned from her much more comfortable hiking shoes and trailed along behind him.

“Alan I’d like Christina to run the data collection this morning, can you hand hold her.”  “You mean observe?”  “No actually type in the commands and press the buttons.”

“Julia I’d like Christina to run the monthly update process this morning can you make sure she does it correctly?  Thank you.”

No sooner had Christina completed one task than she was dragged off to do another until eventually Liam took her into the coffee room with its microwaves, coffee machines and water fountains.  “Meet Mary and Dave they’re co-workers of mine.”  Mary admired her hiking shoes and asked if she knew anything about python since she had an error in her code.  Christina glanced over it and suggested if Mary declared the variable explicitly first it might solve the problem.  She barely caught the nod that passed between the three of them as Liam immediately ushered her off to sign a letter of acceptance of her job offer.  “Now since Human Resources like things on paper with signatures could you be so kind as to sign this job application form as well?”  Christina signed where indicated.

The afternoon was not so hectic and she managed to slip to the coffee room alone.  “Hi, I’m Kayla you must be the new casual.” “Christina.”  “Did they take ages to offer you the job?  I’d given up on them when they called me for an interview.  You know I’d forgotten I’d even applied since it was seven months since I’d written in.”  “Seven months?”  “Ms Higgins told me they had to interview all seven hundred and eighty one applicants and at only four or five a day it took them seven months.  Apparently they offered it to five other people first but by the time they’d offered they found other jobs.  Ms Higgins was telling me it takes even longer for a permanent as they have to offer it internally first.”  Christina was shaken by the red tape.

The next morning was more relaxed and after Christina had programmed the photocopier to print both sides and bind the thirty page set eleven times they celebrated by rewarding themselves a mug of coffee.  They met Dave and Mary in the coffee room, Mary had a python program printed out and asked Christina’s assistance on part of the code.

“Ms Foster here from HR tells me we’re demanding a Ph.D. for an office junior position?  Why?”  “Oh that, well I recall you specifically said someone would need a Ph.D. to figure out how the damn thing worked, the first time you tried to get a photocopy out of our new fully featured copier.”  “That’s fine he followed an upper management directive.  We can use that to defend the requirement in the competition if need be.” Ms Foster left the office.  “I was joking.”  “It screened out the applicants nicely though we only had to interview one rather than eight hundred and seventy one, think of all the time and money we saved.  By the way I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Robertson our new permanent member of the team.  This is Ken by the way he signs our leave forms.”  Christina stood up and gave Liam a look that promised retribution later but shook Ken’s hand.  “I must fly I’ve a meeting to attend.”

Christina waited until Ken was out of ear shot.  “I don’t recall mentioning my Ph.D. or you mentioning I was permanent.”  “Well officially you aren’t until you’ve signed this letter of offer and to keep the books straight could you sign this one as well.”  Christina looked at the two letters, one was for a permanent position and the other for a casual employment.  “And the one yesterday?”  “That one was for the term.  Remember the conversation in the coffee room when Mary asked you about the python code?”  “Yes?”  “That was your board of three members all of whom had a salary above the position’s.  You answered correctly so that gave you the term position.  Once you’d signed the letter of offer for the term position you also signed the job application for the permanent position.”  “And let me guess the second conversation in the coffee room.”  “I knew you were a bright girl, this time I restricted the internal competition to the division and screened on experience.”  “Hence the sit next to Nelly and do the various tasks under direction on the first morning.  But how can you say I have experience having done something once?”  “My prerogative as the manager running the competition allows me to say if the experience was enough or not.  Besides no one else had experience in doing all the different tasks you did on your first morning.”  She closed her eyes and counted to ten.  “You’ve done this before?”  “I followed all the rules where’s the problem?  Oh I read your thesis by the way what equipment do you need to continue your research?  I have both the mandate and an interest in that area so we’ll have to discuss the direction of your work later on.  Officially I’m supposed to submit a proposal then they’ll find me some funds in the next financial year.”  “Unofficially?”  “Well Mike who heads one of the other sections got his funding approved for equipment but he’s being advised by HR on staffing so his staffing application looks like it will take another year before he can fill the position so he has money to spend.  We give him our shopping list he buys our equipment this year and I submit another request for our equipment for next year and we buy his equipment with our next year’s funds.  Now I’ve a list of $ cut off points it doesn’t matter how much we spend but there is additional red tape at each cut off point so if we can squeeze the equipment in under the cut offs so much the better.”

A week later Christina announced that as it was her birthday she’d like him and Mike to come and have dinner with her at her place that evening.  “And don’t worry about the supervisor staff relationship thing, Mike will be there to chaperon you.”

He rang the bell and the door was answered by a ravishing tall blonde who greeted him with a slightly prolonged kiss on the lips.  “You must be Liam, I’m Alison by the way, I’m quite certain we’re going to be very good friends.”  Alison led him to the sofa and sat down beside him, Christina handed them both a glass of sherry then turned to answer the door bell as it rang once more.  “Michael, how good of you to come.” She gave him a hug and kissed him on the lips then led him back by the hand into the room.  “Now guys Alison has her CV already and it looks to me as if it matches Michael’s job description.  Now we thought that if Liam was to hire Alison then she could transfer to Michael’s empty staff position the same day.  Now we wouldn’t want to influence you by suggesting that Alison is quite willing to bed Michael because that would be against the rules, but I could bed Michael, and Alison is quite willing to bed Liam and we’re quite sure that wouldn’t be against the supervisor / staff rules now would it?”

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Apparently job seekers at more than one job center have been advised to dumb down their CVs so they could get a survival level job until something better turned up.