by Bo
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The moment of truth was finally here. We had been waiting with trepidation for the past three weeks, waiting for the staff meeting with the new president of the corporation. RalphGranger had been a corporate raider in the go-go 80's, though he'd worked hard to shed
his blood and guts image during the 90's. Those in the know were skeptical of his strategic planning practices and even less enthused with his management style.
My department looked like a morgue when I arrived. Everyone was speaking in hushed voices and if you listened carefully, you could hear intermittent nervous laughter which was quickly choked by the reality of the moment. As I surveyed the office, I couldn't help but
think how long it had taken me to assemble this team of highly motivated people who managed to walk the fine line between being independent thinkers and team players. At five
minutes to nine, I received the call which summoned my group of thirteen to the president's office. As we filed out, I couldn't help but see that we looked like we were heading before a firing squad. I chuckled at the thought as I followed and quickly did a reality check which
greatly put my mind at ease. It was only a job after all.
Granger's secretary ushered us into his office. There were only twelve
chairs so I encouraged my staff to be seated, hoping that it would conceal the fact that their knees were knocking. Precisely on the hour Granger, an apparent legend in his own mind, quickly walked in from the rear. After a few minutes of cursory yet enthusiastic commentary on the
history of the corporation and his pride in being chosen as our new leader, he lowered the boom.
"This company has no good reason why it's share of the market has become so pitifully small," he bellowed, pausing to take a sip from his water glass and to let the fear sink into his audience. "In it's forty-three year history, never has the showing been this pitiful." After
a ten minute harangue, in which he called us soft, lazy and overly-content with ourselves, he ended the meeting by insisting that we figure out how to increase productivity by at lease thirty percent within the next six months.
He asked me to stay behind as my staff practically fled. "I think that you and I are going to get along just fine, Rogers." I swallowed hard, trying not to laugh in his face and said, "How's that?" He looked quite startled, having been spoken to so directly.
"Two reasons. The first being that you made sure that all of your staff was seated for the meeting. The second by yet again challenging my authority with your frank response. By standing throughout, you've indicated that you're a natural leader who doesn't need the safety of the group to hide behind. You also maintained a very strong and firm stance, not an easy thing to do under the conditions that I created. I want you to attend a special seminar that I've scheduled for the other Senior Vice Presidents to see if we can't get this calamity whipped
back into shape." With that, I was dismissed.
During the day, I received eleven phone calls from the other group heads. As their meetings had gone much the same as mine, we were all breathing a collective sigh of relief that maybe the situation wasn't as bad as we had all been expecting.
The seminar was to be held in Phoenix at one of those renta-center campus type places for corporate get-togethers. Unlike the typical seminar, we were instructed to dress in our suits as usual for this was to be a working session rather than a corporate retreat. Twelve
department heads from each of our sixteen offices worldwide would be in attendance. There would be no golfing, swimming or tennis though the facilities were right there.
Day one in Phoenix was nothing less than eye-opening. There were nearly two hundred of us in the seminar room. I looked around and realized that I knew about half of the guys there and it dawned on me that there were no women in attendance. The realization that I
had worked for such an "old boy" firm for nearly eight years didn't sit
particularly well with me. As the speaker got underway, we were instructed to break into groups of twelve to do be evaluated on how well we functioned within a team. It didn't start getting interesting
until the nearly the end of the third day.
We were paired off randomly as we moved to another room. I noticed that the furniture had been changed from the auditorium style seating of the previous day. There were now ninety-six small tables, each with two chairs. We had five minutes to get acquainted with our partners when the fun began. We were instructed to arm wrestle. The loser was told to
take a seat on the floor. The winners were then instructed to tie the
hands of their partners to the legs of the chair. We were then told to remove our shoes and to force our partners fully to the floor using only our socked feet. Many of us were nearly brutal in our attempts to get our partner down. About two thirds of us managed this task by forcing our feet into the faces of our none too willing counterparts.
I felt somewhat sorry for Bob, the comptroller from Seattle, despite the
fact that I hadn't known him long, and didn't have much respect for him. Boy did he squirm. After another five minutes, we were told that the proper position for the next exercise was in fact for the winner to have his socked feet firmly planted in his partner's face. I started to chuckle at this point because I'd forgotten to pack socks, consequently today was day four in the same dark, thin socks. Now I have a bit of a foot odor problem to begin with and forty hours in the same pair of socks doesn't help the situation at all.
As the exercise began, we were shown a film of Bugs Bunny cartoons. It
lasted an hour or so, this was mainly to give us time to relax and get comfortable with our present circumstances. Every time Bob squirmed, I applied more pressure to get him to submission.
I really got off on feeling his breath under my soles and occasionally
glancing down at the look of horror on his face. What little I knew of him, he was a 34 year old accounting whiz with a wife, three kids and the most amazing holier than thou kind of family values I didn't
care for at all. I kept one foot firmly on his chin and placed the other very lightly over his nose. I just wiggled my toes and moved them back and forth, lightly brushing his nose for nearly thirty minutes. I could smell my own feet above the collective scent of the others. I had a raging hard-on throughout most of the movie and really got into having my feet on his face. I kept thinking about ninety-five other poor buggers in his position. As the film ended, he had totally resigned himself to the fact that he was under my really smelly eleven-and-a halfs. We were then asked a series of questions and told to stand to give our answers. I was quite surprised by number of guys who just stood right on their partner's face, myself
included. It was a head count situation where we had to stand to indicate our answer to a multiple choice question. We were told that score was being kept so this exercise was serious. The questions seemed to go on for hours and boy did I get to love giving my answers. I could almost feel the poor bastard's body wince every time I stood up on his face. By the time we were done we had answered fifty questions. I was kind of bummed when we finished. We were then instructed to put our shoes on and file out. Our partners would be untied by the instructors and attended to if necessary. I took one foot off Bob's face and replaced my shoe, tying it and adjusting my sock, and then the other. I couldn't help placing my shod foot on Bob's chest while I tied the other shoe. I looked down smiling at Bob's quite red face and said, 'Thanks, this was fun, "as I walked away.
That night, I felt like a million bucks. No one knew that I regularly planted my sweaty feet in my partner's face at home, though it was always in a sexual context involving two very consenting adults. But that's another story. We finished off the week, the remaining two days, with more exercises involving feet. I did feel sorry for my losing partner on the last
day, day six in the same socks! I apologized and told him about my sock situation as I left the last exercise. He suggested that I could have washed them in the sink in my room the night before. Truthfully, the thought never occurred to me!
Back at the home office, the following Monday, Granger called me in immediately after I got in. "I hear that you did exceptionally well at the seminar. I knew that you would. I've also heard about the conditions that you subjected your partners to and that you didn't lose a single bout of arm wrestling."
I blushed slightly and told him that I'd been pretty determined and felt comfortable knowing my true place. "I knew that you and I were going to get along just fine," he said. "As you know the Varitech Corporation was started in 1957 by Malcolm Varitech. He was a most interesting man with many avante garde ideas on management. He knew how to get the most out of his senior staff by making them feel like kings. I'm going to re-instate some of his procedures and I'm sure that you'll find that your once lame position, in a once lame department, is going to be greatly improved. His idea was for his employees to associate working with stimulation and superiority. You should be getting to work but first, come
over here."
With that I went around to the back side of his desk as he pushed himself back. Sticking out from under it was the most handsome beefcake that I'd seen lately and he had a huge grin on his face. I then looked down at Grangerís feet and sure enough, his shoes were off.
I was going to like the Presidentís new policies a lot!
Continued in Part 2...
