Hall Of Panties

The very fact that a single mailgirl program could exist anywhere was confirmation to Abby that the world she'd been living in for the past few years had slipped into some other dimension, some sort of alternate reality, some sort of sick fantasy land dreamt up by some unknown pervert. The world had gone off track right around the time that Abby had been graduating from Penn, twenty-two-years-old, full of promise, and oblivious to the deranged revolution then percolating on the far side of the Pacific. First it was Tokyo. Then Osaka. Kyoto. From Kyoto to Seoul, Seoul to Singapore, Singapore to Hong Kong.

A few weeks prior to that morning with Mailgirl Number Five, Abby had been eavesdropping on a conversation between two Employee Relations representatives at USF Plaza. Diane Harris, who earlier that day had had to confiscate a vibrator from a woman on the 32nd Floor, joked that it was like the entire building had been doused with animal pheromones over the past few months. It wasn't just the mailgirls -- behavior and conduct issues of a sexual nature had been popping up all over, among men and women both. It was how Abby felt about the overall mailgirl phenomenon worldwide: it was like the whole world had been doused with those same pheromones over the last few years, and everyone had collectively gone out of their minds.

If she hadn't lived through it, Abby never would have believed the penetration and staying power the concept achieved in just a few short years. It managed to cross cultural divides, and find footing in Germany, Scandinavia, and Benelux. The United States had been late the party, but there were already a few dozen companies who'd rolled the idea out on the West Coast, and USF was among the vanguard here in the New York Metro region. It had spread like a cancer, and the more and more it transitioned into the mainstream, the more and more it was becoming normalized.

Conservatives had blamed feminists and the Sexual Revolution for providing fertile ground for such an anathema to take root. Abby was willing to concede that there may have been some truth in that argument, as contradictory as a straight line between Women's Lib and Mailgirls-in-Chains might have been on the surface; for every women's rights group picketing and protesting a company initiating its own mailgirl program, there was another lined up in support, who viewed a girl's decision through the lens of a "woman's right to choose." Mailgirls were volunteers; at USF, they had to re-affirm their decision to participate in the program each and every morning. And a shocking number of mailgirl alums -- most, even - lined up in support of mailgirl programs elsewhere. Despite everything they'd been forced to endure, there was a large percentage of former mailgirls who loudly championed the concept worldwide.

It shouldn't have surprised Abby that there were men everywhere willing to launch these sorts of initiatives at their own companies. Nor should it have surprised Abby that, among women, there were plenty of masochists, closeted exhibitionists, and bimbos willing to prostitute themselves for the large sums of money that regularly followed mailgirls around. But Barrow, when he'd recruited Abby to help him expand his vision to Park Place, argued that a nineteen-year-old, or a "true" submissive, or an already fully-blossomed nymphomaniac wouldn't do for what USF was looking for.

"There has to be an element of...almost..." he had said, pausing for dramatic effect, before continuing, "...'schadenfreude' with our girls."

Barrow's argument was the one that held that the superiority the mailgirls instilled in the non-mailgirl staff drove superior performance company-wide. There were plenty of measurable and quantifiable data points that fed the bottom line, but Barrow's ideal mailgirl was more than just a piece of ass.

"We're looking for women, not girls," he explained. It was the only time that Abby had ever heard him use the term "women" in connection to the mailgirl program, and he'd never use it again.

Abby Wagner Williams had gotten mixed up with Human Capital at the recommendation of her boss, Christine Klinger. Barrow's little team of analysts and technicians would continue to oversee the mailgirl program overall, from Manhattan, even as the program expanded to Jersey City. However, they'd needed someone to help them scout talent at the back office, and Chris had apparently told Barrow there was no one better than the Junior Vice President of Talent Management for Park Place, Princeton, and Paramus. Which was why Abby found herself beckoned over to the Plaza, up to the 18th Floor, through the Hall of Panties, and into Will Barrow's corner office.

Scouting "talent," in this context, was not exactly the sort of Talent Management that was written into Abby's job description. She'd been a management consultant down in DC after Penn, and returned to Philadelphia to pick up an MBA from Wharton with a focus on Human Resources. She'd been recruited by USF after business school to help them redesign career-pathing company-wide from an office at USF Plaza in-town, but that project had ultimately stalled out when USF hired a new Director of Human Resources. Abby was shuffled off to Jersey City and assigned to Chris, and had been commuting back-and-forth over the Hudson from her condo in Chelsea ever since. Annual performance evaluations, talent review sessions, assisting in setting individual and departmental objectives -- these were the sorts of things that Abby had been responsible for over the last three years, for USF's back office in Jersey City and two smaller satellite offices elsewhere in the state.

She was no longer an up-and-comer. Her next step here at USF, with all probability, was to take over Chris's job at some future point - which was essentially Abby's job today, but for USF's entire Northeast region. But Chris was only in her early forties, and likely wasn't going anywhere in the near future. Abby had taken a couple of recruiting calls outside of USF for a few opportunities back home in Boston, and another down in Philly. But Jon was a Long Island boy, and having success at Pierce & Pierce, so Abby had ultimately decided to stay put. Jon was longer an issue, but the calls had gotten less and less frequent in the last year or so.

As much as Abby's first instinct was to recoil from the idea of being involved with Human Capital and the mailgirl program, she'd said "yes." She wasn't sure she had much of a choice, if she were being honest about it. But it was an opportunity to do something different, as monstrous, sadistic, and maybe even evil as it may have been. With the divorce, she certainly had the time. Getting her mind off of her failed marriage and the financial morass she now found herself in certainly helped, too. And, though she didn't like to admit it, there was a sick, perverse pleasure in taking her misery out on the poor, unsuspecting mailgirl candidates at Park Place.

The bitch manager who told Abby she didn't have time to conduct her team's performance evaluations, and that Abby should just do it herself? On the list. So-and-so was mean to one of her friends in Human Resources? On the list. That girl who passed Abby in the lobby, and just seemed sort of stuck-up? On the list.

Abby would have to have been naive, though, to not suspect that Barrow was sizing her up as a mailgirl candidate, herself. Never in a million years, she told herself then. No matter how much money he offered, or what he tried to hold over her. She'd rather show up jobless, homeless, and penniless on the doorstep of her parents' house back in Massachusetts than subject herself to the daily humiliations the mailgirls were treated to at the Plaza. And the fact that Jersey City would be piloting a new 24/7 concept -- in which the mailgirls were never allowed to get dressed, never allowed to leave the building, never allowed a respite from their exposure and embarrassment -- only further cemented her resolve.

All that being said, though, Abby herself couldn't have better fit the profile that Barrow outlined for her. He didn't want to go any older than thirty-four or thirty-five, but he also didn't want to go any younger than twenty-four or so. There was no doubt in his mind that he could fill the roster with perky little twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of college, but that wasn't what he wanted Abby looking for. He also knew the task would be easier if they were scouting around on the lower ends of the payscale, where the administrative assistants and call center reps could be found. But, no - Barrow wanted her to come back to him with some of the best-and-brightest USF had to offer, junior executives and management-track types, preferably with advanced degrees.

"A JD. Or a Masters," Barrow had thrown out as examples.

"An MBA?" Abby asked, pointedly.

"Exactly," Barrow replied.

Girls had to be about or above average height, maybe five-foot-four as a floor and five-foot-nine or five-foot-ten as a ceiling. And, then, the task that really and truly had taken Abby down the rabbit's hole: Barrow wanted only "8's, 9's, and 10's." He'd take a "7," if Abby could build a case, and if there was potential to get her up to an "8" with some diet and exercise.

Abby was thirty years old, an Ivy League graduate with a Wharton MBA, stood five-foot-six, and was capable of admitting that she was good, solid "8." Maybe even a "9," on a good day. She was a C-cup, with a good figure, and kept herself in good shape; she was going to the gym more often in the last few months, now that she'd need to "get back out there" and meet someone new. She had shoulder-length red hair, green eyes, and a smile that stretched ear-to-ear when she was happy.

If it weren't her making the list, she was sure she'd be on it.

And so Abby's involvement in the project was also partly self-preservation. Not only would she build up a roster of candidates so perfect that Barrow wouldn't need to look her way, but she'd also go a step further and provide him with the leverage he needed to assure him that any candidate on that list would have no choice but to say "yes." Casey Campbell had had a surprising amount of credit debt, for example; insurmountable, even. Theresa Gutteridge had regular instances of including alcoholic beverages on the receipts she submitted for reimbursement - a common enough practice, but one that she could technically be fired over. And Kristen Metkovich, a lesbian, had two instances of sexual harassment filed against her by female team members; Abby had had to "encourage" the second one out of a hesitant so-called victim just last week, but she expected it to pay dividends when presented to Kristen today.

Even Kaitlyn York, one of the recruiters who sat in a cubicle just outside of Abby's office, and who had a passing resemblance to Olivia Munn. She was on the list. A "9," for sure. She and Abby were friends, of sorts. Work friends, at least. And the betrayal that Kaitlyn would feel when Abby and Barrow sat down with her would cut Abby to the core. But if it were the choice between Kaitlyn and Abby, Abby was going to nominate Kaitlyn. She didn't dare leave Kaitlyn off, for fear that Barrow might see her omission as either a glaring error or as an attempt to protect one of her friends.

With midyear reviews behind her, and year-end performance evaluations still a few months away, Abby was able to throw herself into Barrow's little project. She lived it and breathed it on a daily basis, and it had begun to affect her. She couldn't ride the subway without rating other passengers -- the girls, at least - on a scale from 1 to 10. She couldn't have a conversation with her friends or coworkers without risking a glance at their chests, and assigning a best guess as to their cup size. She couldn't walk the halls at Park Place without imagining USF's female population doing so in the nude. The naked pictures she'd begun looking up online for strictly research purposes had turned into movies, and soft core had transformed into hard core in short order. Abby, who'd watched a dirty movie maybe once or twice in her entire life before that summer, was now pulling up pornography evening after evening; rare was the night that her bedtime routine over the past few weeks didn't involve a twenty-thirty minute session with her tablet.