The Meeting

The first part of the meeting in Barbara's office was primarily a debriefing where Kelly and I answered a series of questions about our experiences in Tokyo observing Hiromoto's Mailgirls program in action. When asked, I gave Barbara my honest impression that despite the sexist and degrading premise behind it I'd found it to be a surprisingly well organized and efficient system. Whether or not it increased productivity as much as they claimed, I couldn't say, but it definitely did the job of moving information and items between departments in a timely and attention-getting manner. I had little doubt that a memo delivered by a nude mailgirl was much more likely to get immediate attention than if it popped up in an e-mail inbox. Also, knowing that a beautiful nude woman would show up when summoned provided employees with more incentive to deliver information and items immediately to whatever department required them.

Kelly and I also told her that we'd both stripped down and spent the afternoon in the nude following our mailgirls on their delivery runs through the Hiromoto building. There was no reason to try to hide it from her since it was a near certainty that she'd already been told about it by her contacts in Tokyo.

"That's great!" Barbara said with a smile. "I'm glad to see you two throwing yourself into this project so enthusiastically. So tell me, what was it like?"

"Um, well, it was humiliating," I said, "but I have to admit that it felt physically more comfortable on my body doing it nude than in athletic wear."

Barbara asked us about the reaction of the other employees to the mailgirls and if we'd witnessed any abuses. "The mailgirls were treated with arrogance, rudeness, and condescension," I told her. "They're considered lowly servant girls and get little respect. But, no, I didn't witness any actual abuses." That wasn't entirely true, but I'd sworn to Mariko I would tell no one about what I'd witnessed in Hiromoto's office.

"Condescension we can live with," Barbara said. "That's not likely to get us sued or the program shut down by the government. We are going to have to navigate carefully through sexual harassment and labor laws, though." It wasn't lost on me that Barbara was more concerned with avoiding litigation and government interference than whether or not the mailgirls were treated with any respect.

"Well ladies," Barbara said as we wrapped up the debrief, "I've heard nothing but good things about you two from Tokyo and I have to say that I'm very happy about that. You're both off to a good start."

I simply nodded, keeping my true feelings hidden as Mariko had suggested. So far the meeting had been cordial and businesslike but I was still nervous that a very large shoe was about to drop. It didn't take long.

"So anyway," Barbara continued, "we were busy ourselves while you were in Tokyo. Things are moving fast now. Hiromoto technicians were here installing the hardware and software for the Mailgirls program in the tower over the past week. Not many people know about this yet so we told them it was an upgrade to our wifi network."

"It's already installed in the tower?" Kelly asked. "What about the rest of the compound?"

"We're holding off on that. We've decided to limit it to the tower for now. Keep it simple until we get the inevitable startup problems worked out."

"When is it starting?" I asked.

"We'll spend the rest of the week discreetly testing the system and finishing up our preparations. Provided all goes well we'll announce the program internally on Friday morning and put out a press release Friday afternoon. We go live next Monday morning."

"That soon?" I asked. I was a little stunned at the speed this was moving. I thought we were weeks away.

"Yeah, Dan is worried this will leak out to the public before we're ready to go," Barbara said, referring to CEO Dan Evans. "He wants this up and running before activist groups have time to organize protests."

"I didn't realize you'd even hired any mailgirls yet," I said.

There was a long pause before Barbara spoke again. "Well, that's something I need to talk to you two about."

I turned and looked at Kelly and she gave me a knowing look. Here we go, I thought.