by BigBird74 » Mon Mar 14, 2016 12:08 am
2.
When I finally emerged from my apartment block, I was the very image of elegant, business-like understatement, dressed in a figure hugging, knee length black dress all covered up by a long cream coloured coat. My long auburn hair was pulled back into a long ponytail. I strode confidently on my three-inch pumps to my waiting car, twisting and turning my body as I manoeuvred myself into the plush leather seats, my skirt riding up past the knee to the middle of my shapely thighs. As the car left the sidewalk, I checked my face in my little hand mirror and smiled at the beautiful young woman looking back, my lush red lips painted to perfection, complementing my slightly shadowed eyes.
Today I was visiting one of our hotels on the main road running out of Manhatten and into upstate New York. It was far away enough to be considered semi-rural, just at the point the greater city of New York petered out into rolling fields. It was going to take some time to get there, but should be worth it. We were in the middle of expanding our hotel network aggressively, aiming at cutting the ribbon on a new premises every few months. Many insiders thought us insane. It could take months, if not years, for a new hotel to operate efficiently and they said this could not be done according to the timetable we had set ourselves. An important part of my job was to see that this did not happen. I was in charge of setting common policies for all staff across our family’s sprawling empire. This covered simple things from uniforms and appearance to detailed policies on leave and pay.
The hotel I was visiting today was considered an outstanding success. We had not seen any of the problems associated with other hotels at this particular branch and I was travelling there today to see what we could learn.
I sat back in the deep leather seats and took a moment to gaze out of the window, watching the ‘ordinary’ people hurry about their lives. I found myself wondering about their lives. I tried to guess what kind of work they did; what they wished for; how old they were; what drove them to do just what is was they were doing. People watching is a double-edged sword. One moment you can feel terribly superior, sure of what you are and why you are there, then the doubt can set in. I would find myself questioning why I was so lucky, what had I done to deserve this? You see I was not all I seemed to be. A big part of the reason why I preferred the shade to my sister’s sun is that deep down, I could be deeply insecure. This would typically manifest itself in what people would see as occasional bouts of shyness, but that was only part of the story. Over the past few weeks, I have gorging on a steady diet of online erotica that I recently discovered on an unusual story site called Changing Mirror.
For whatever reason, I was increasingly finding myself drawn to stories that dwelt on humiliation and loss of power, both themes provoking a fire inside of me that I could only quench by looking for more material. Recently I had come across websites full of pictures of girls in a variety of bondage poses, all trussed up in an intricate web of ropes and knots. The imagery was still fresh in my mind and I felt a knot in my stomach. I reached into my bag and took out my laptop. Somewhat guiltily I glanced up to check that the driver was not watching me, my actions starting to border on the furtive. The fact that he spoke to me like a modern-day princess, while inside my head I had images of me tied up like the girls from the website, only made me shiver. I crossed and uncrossed my legs again, letting my skirt ride higher up my legs, my silky thighs rubbing and sending a cascade of pleasurable emotions running through me. I opened my laptop and went to my now favourite website and devoured another story. The time passed rapidly as the town turned to countryside and we arrived at the hotel.
“Miss Webb. We are here”, the chauffer’s voice informed me crisply.
“Thank you Charles. I am not sure how long this will take.” I paused feeling that little pang of guilt at making him wait, not what one would expect of a high-flying executive I thought to myself. I pushed the feeling to one side, collected my things, and left the car, striding into the hotel.
3.
Upon entering the hotel, I was greeted by the manager, a stern faced man who radiated an air of deadly seriousness. I smiled and shook his hand politely. Once the formalities were over, I was quickly ushered into a meeting room where I was surrounded by men bombarding me with meaningless compliments about my work. I smiled inwardly. The fakeness of the whole situation, both my own feelings and their empty gestures embarrassed me slightly. This was a problem with working for a large company family - the obsequiousness that surrounded me risked seriously clouding my judgement. It was something I needed to watch for carefully. That said, the few times I had encountered genuine resistance, I had found myself a little lost for words. Now that I look back at it and imbued with my newfound sense of eroticism, I could see that maybe – just maybe – this had provoked feelings of submissiveness in me.
After settling down for the presentation, my mind inevitably wandered. The room we were in was separated from the body of the hotel by a thick glass window that was frosted across its middle third, letting those sitting down inside the room to gaze out into the main lobby. I nodded and half-listened to the presentation, while looking out of the window and started my favourite game of people watching again.
Outside of our room was who I assumed was a middle-aged Latino woman. Her stature was short and stout, with thick limbs. The dress she wore was ill fitting as most off-the-shelf work clothing usually is. Her hair was dark, almost jet black with occasional flecks of grey running around her temples. The style was truly awful, like some hangover from the 1980s: short bangs and a long ratty looking mullet. She was mopping the floor and was slowly working her way past the window. As she skirted past, I thought of her life and how it would feel to be trapped in such a dead-end job. The image that came to mind of her drab existence appalled me. I could picture her at home cooking food for some slob of a man, wearing a stained vest, days of stubble coating his droopy jaw. I breathed in smelling his sweat and odour and shuddered inwardly, the whole scene playing out in my mind.
I looked back across the table towards the manager who was explaining how his staff were recruited through a new agency. I smiled. This was code in our industry for hiring illegals. I watched as the cleaner stepped out of sight and went one step further in my imaginings. Surely she was an undocumented worker. She was trapped in a world of low wages with few, if any, rights. I was familiar with the complaints of the various NGOs I had dealings with, who would describe the virtual modern day slavery some of these workers would find themselves in, effectively indentured by an informal understanding between my company and the authorities. Sure it was illegal, but without it everyone would have to pay more and we would have less money to devote to campaign funds. That circular logic meant we kept the right people happy and were largely left alone.
Thankfully the meeting drew to an early close and we were escorted around the building to see how things worked in practice. As I progressed around the hotel, I took some mental notes of useful things the manager had done to keep the place running well. Still, I sniffed, it basically seems to boil down to cheap – very cheap – labour, which was something we could not emulate in our flagship properties, though perhaps it would be possible at other locations further out of town. It may even be an option to use this model at our newer locations, where all the staff were new and would not know one another.
Towards the end of the visit, we were ushered into one of the penthouse bedrooms, a suite that had been developed specifically for premium customers. At first I felt rather underwhelmed, but then the room opened up into a cavernous interior replete with the gaudy ornamentation favoured by the newly rich. It was rich trash to the extreme! In the corner of the room, somewhere behind us, came a crash. We all turned around to see the thick-set maid I had watched earlier. She had knocked over a bucket and was on her hands and knees mopping up the spilled water.
“Sorry… I clean now”, she said in her thick accent.
The manager was clearly upset and, as he approached her, the maid seemed to quiver. It was then something weird happened, I also started quivering. It would have been totally imperceptible to anyone watching, but to me it felt so… so… nice. For that split second, I imagined having someone with such power over me. The whole scene seemed to bring together many of the fantasies I had played with on the story site. I breathed in deeply as we stepped from the room, leaving the awkward situation behind us, though, as we walked down the hallway, the scene and the feelings I experienced replayed again and again in my head.
On my journey back home, I sat frozen in my seat smiling a little at the dirtiness of what had happened back at the hotel. I squirmed thinking of the seediness of the whole affair and opened up my laptop to visit my favourite website.