Timid 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.  Asstr.org accepts donations if you’re feeling rich or even if you’re not.

Luv Karen

Erin sat quietly reading in her room, it was her birthday and she hoped her godmother would be along soon.  She lived with her Aunt who was deeply religious and rather strict but the highlights of her life where when her elegant godmother arrived on her birthday.  Each year she would be taken out shopping, she’d be given a budget on how much she could spend then she was free to spend it anyway she wanted to.  She was allowed to make up her own mind and to make her own mistakes and thoroughly enjoy herself.  They’d have lunch together at a posh restaurant again her choice for a whole day she could dream she was someone else.

She’d written out a hundred customised letters asking for a summer job as her godmother had suggested and they were sitting on the side in envelopes waiting for her godmother to pick them up and post them.  She had a suspicion that godmother might be thinking of putting them through her office franking machine but she didn’t really like to think about it too much.

A week later a brown envelope arrived in the post, a letter of offer for a summer job.  She was to report at 7:30 a.m. at Costains.  A bit early but for a summer job she could manage that.

When she arrived there were a crowd of chatty students there.  She felt out of place as one fashionable young lady after another threw her arms round another and exclaimed wasn’t it wonderful to have a summer job even if they were working for each other’s dads.  Eventually they settled down and a woman from personnel arrived with a list of placements "Who would like to work in marketing?" The other students clamoured round her looking through the placements and discussing them between themselves. Eventually all had their chosen cards with their placements on and off they went chatting away.  “Oh didn’t you pick a placement dear?”  “Well no, I was a bit shy about asking.”  “Quiet one are you, well I wonder what we can find for you.  Any preferences?”  “Not really, somewhere not too noisy?”  “What are you hoping to study?”  “I’ve applied for a Physics course but I don’t know if they’ll accept me.” The woman thought for a moment. “Follow me down to the technical section, they’ll have a spare desk at least, we never seem to have enough technical people.”

She knocked on a partition then entered the cubicle “Have you room for a summer student for a day or two until I sort out something more formal for her?”  He motioned to a spare desk and she sat down and looked around.  The woman had left.  “Want a coffee and a donut?”  She nodded, “Good then you can tag along to the management meeting I have at ten o’clock.  Whose daughter are you?”  She looked at him blankly, “All our summer students seem to be some manager’s off spring or other.”  “Oh well I think I’m the exception.  I don’t remember my mom, she left me with my aunt when I was a few weeks old to go to Africa and I don’t know anything about my dad.  My Aunt starts going biblical if I ask anything about them but I don’t think they were married.  Sort of orphan really but mom might turn up one day I guess.”  “If we want to get a good seat near the back its time to go.”  He passed her a vendor coffee mug, “It’s bigger than the paper ones they have by the coffee.”  “Wouldn’t we be able to see more if we were nearer the front?”  “That’s why we’ll be sitting at the back, it’s a monthly management progress meeting.”  “Oh.”  She murmured and hoped things would become clearer later on.

He silently handed her a list of buzz words, “Circle them as they come up, it’s called buzz word bingo, just give me a nudge when you get five words.”  Erin listened carefully and noticed many of the audience were paying rapt attention until one looked round and raised her pen.  The others nodded gloomily and for the rest of the meeting the audience wasn’t quite so attentive.  Afterwards she asked him what it was all about.  “Well it’s a way of passing the time.  If you notice many of the speakers use the same well-known phrases or sayings and it’s quite possible to speak for an hour without actually saying anything.  Many politicians have it down to an art form.”  “God is this for real?   I thought business was all about getting things done.  I mean I’m sure these guys must deserve a special prize for using all these buzz words.”  “Consider it reality management training.”  She shook her head in despair just as the phone rang.  “I’m summoned to the twenty-fifth floor so cover for me.”  “Anything interesting?”  “Not normally they ring down from time to time and have me scan some document or other to see if it makes sense.”  “Why cover for you?”  “Well the twenty-fifth floor is supposed to go through five layers of middle management before talking to me and those five layers get upset at the idea they haven’t filtered my input first.  A bit cloak and dagger but it’s how things work.  Officially I have a romantic interest on the twenty-fifth floor which gives me an excuse to drift up there sometimes.”  “Unofficially?”  “Her husband is my bridge partner.”

All the summer students were assembled to listen to a senior manager’s talk about the company.  They were chatting away awaiting whilst waiting for the manager who had been delayed.  Maria was looking at the org chart “So what’s the difference between a personal assistant, an executive personal assistant and an executive assistant?”  “$25,000 a year each step oh and the executive personal assistant blows her boss.”  “Shouldn’t it be blows their boss?   Just in case it’s a boy executive personal assistant.”  “Get real.”  “So that’s why only guys have executive personal assistants?”  “So hey guys what do you think about my new shoulder bag?”  “Not very fashionable.”  “Yeah but you ought to see the way it pulls in the geeks.  What did I think of the presentation on different wave length lasers?”  “What is an IEEE conference anyway?”  “Dunno my dad got it for me off one of his techies he sent to the conference.”  “Lasers and waves is that the new place to get your lower limbs hair removed without shaving?”  Erin cringed but fortunately someone arrived to make a presentation about the company.  Erin took out a different colour pen and her bingo card.  She managed to circle twenty three different words, she didn’t count the repetitions.  Later she looked at the org chart, every executive in sales had their very own executive personal assistant and strangely enough there weren’t any female executives in sales either.

“So let’s get this straight you want me to go through this document, question it and pick holes it?”  “That’s the deal.”  “It doesn’t look very many pages compared to some of the presentations we’ve been to.  Would you like me to sprinkle a few management buzz words in to pad it out?”  “No I’ll present it at the end of the meeting when everyone is eager to go for lunch. With luck it will go through on the nod.”  “But why wouldn’t you want me to simply say I agree with it?”  “Because I may have made a mistake and it's better we find out here in the office than we spend money and then find out it’s a mistake.”  “Oh the opposite of ‘Just do it’ then?”  “You mean think before you act.”  She nodded laughingly.

Two days later she handed it back.  “In the introduction it says it’s just a minor change to improve our section 23 compliance but when I read it through it’s a massive change to the way we do business.  Shouldn’t we say it’s a new exciting paradigm or some such.”  “No, I don’t want management to think about it just to approve it.”  “Oh so present it as a minor change or amendment and they’ll let it slip by.”  He smiled at her. “Got it in one.”

When they came back from the meeting where he’d made his presentation she got him to explain as much as he could about what had happened at the meeting both the spoken and unspoken words and people’s motivations.  He started and sketched out the room and analysed what each person was after in turn.  It took rather a long time but eventually he was finished to her satisfaction and she could think of no more questions to ask.

“So I think that just about covers it and now it’s time for home young lady.” “That’s a fantasy I live with my aunt so it’s not very home like.  What’s your fantasy?”  “Summer student giving me a blow job.” He joked.  She knelt down in front of him and before he could stop her had his zipper undone and her mouth was sucking in his rapidly hardening rod.  “You shouldn’t be doing this.”  She raised her head “But then it won’t be a proper fantasy would it?” And returned to creating delightful sensations to his body, she even swallowed when he came.  “There now your reward for taking the time to explain everything to me.  Now it’s time for home and don’t you dare mention it to my aunt.”

The next morning he wasn’t too sure just where their relationship had gone to, he hoped they could still work together comfortably.  He fetched her a mug of coffee when she arrived to which she raised an eyebrow and thanked him, as she drank the coffee though the lady from HR came in.  “There you are my dear I knew I placed you temporarily somewhere on this floor.  Now I’ve found you a proper placement.”  Erin glanced at him and giggled very slightly.  “So if you’ll just come along with me, bring your coffee cup with you and your belongings.”  She turned and waved as she stepped through the cubicle door.  He wondered for a moment or two where she’d been assigned but then turned back to do some research into the current priority problem on his desk.

Miss Winter’s number came up on the caller-id.  “Hello, the new owner would like to meet you in the corner office so if you could come up to the twenty-fifth floor.”  He caught the elevator wondering who the new owner was, had they been taken over?   In the elevator the talk was about a reorganisation that HR had been asked to draw up, all very confidential but it was thought that heads would roll.  He slipped a finger up to loosen his collar and reassure himself his head was still there.

He greeted Miss Winters “Come right in.”  She got up and opened the double office door and there was Erin sat behind the big mahogany desk.  “Like my new desk?” she enquired.  He looked puzzled for a moment.  “You already know my god mother Miss Winters, well daddy had a heart attack last night and he’s left me the lot.  Now I still want to go to college so I’ll need both you and Miss Winters to run the company whilst I’m away.  So you’re now my new executive personal assistant and I really think the winners of the bingo competition could win a trip to a series of conferences somewhere for a month don’t you and if we can manage without them for a month I’m sure we can do without them longer term.”