The boys in the mailroom

Seven eighteen-year-old guys sat in an office listening to Mr Albertson, one of the company’s personnel managers, talking about how glowing their futures would be if they were taken on to work at Tilotson’s.

What the boys didn’t realise at the time was their glowing backsides would be of more immediate concern to them.

Gerry Holmes was one of them. He had just left school, with pitiful exam results and was staring years of unemployment in the face. Tilotson’s might just be his saviour. They were hiring boys for the mailroom. It wasn’t much of a job, sorting mail and delivering it around the vast industrial complex, but Gerry knew that if he worked hard, after a year he could transfer up to a better job at the company. He knew lots of people at Tilotson’s who had started in the mail room and now had good, well-paying jobs.

If he could move up, it meant he would be able to afford the luxuries in life. He might even be able to get a girl. Gerry really wanted this job.

The door opened and a man in security uniform entered with a teenaged boy in tow.

The security man whispered a few words into Mr Albertson’s ear and left.

“Well lads,” he said turning back to the group, “this is instructive.”

“Young Randy has been late for work three times this month and that is not acceptable. Isn’t that right Randy?”

The boy blushed to his roots, but said nothing.

“So guys, you can see a practical demonstration of what happens here if you break the rules.”

With that he sat down in his chair and, grabbing Randy by the arm, he guided the teenager across his lap.

The seven teens stared on, disbelieving.

Holding Randy steady at the shoulders, Mr Albertson pulled at the elasticated waist of the boy’s sweat pants, dragging them to his knees. His yellow-and-green patterned underpants quickly followed.

Then, Mr Albertson spanked Randy with his hand on his bare bottom. Hard slaps rained down across the boy’s cheeks in what was clearly a painful spanking.

Randy gasped a little, but stayed in his place, firmly across Mr Albertson’s knees, and offered no resistance.

The boy’s buttocks were bright red, as indeed was his face, when after what seemed like an age, Mr Albertson allowed him to stand, leave the room and go to his workplace.

“So lads, now you know what to expect. Here at Tillotson’s we believe in rewarding those who work hard, but we also have punishments for those who do not,” the personnel manager said.

Gerry was used to receiving corporal punishment from his dad at home. Only last month he had felt his father’s paddle on his bare backside after he was caught drinking beer at a friend’s house. He remembered how raw his butt was when his father had finished. It hurt like Hell for ages afterwards, but Gerry bore no ill will against his dad: he knew he had deserved his spanking.

So, Gerry was not fazed by the teen’s spanking, but he did think it unusual in a workplace.

Mr Albertson was still talking. “So now you know how we do things here. If you aren’t prepared to accept this you shouldn’t come to work here.”

Three of the seven boys did not return after lunch, but Gerry was not one of them.

The day consisted of aptitude tests (basically to find out if the lads could read), a tour of the plant, and a personal interview. Three days later Gerry was overjoyed to receive a letter saying he should start work on the following Monday.

On the first day Gerry received his uniform. Mailroom boys wore bright blue shorts with elasticated waists. They were cut really short so they were no bigger than running shorts really. They had bright yellow golf shirts, with ‘Tilotson’s’ embroidered on the pocket. At first he felt a complete fool in his new outfit, but all the other guys had to wear the same so he soon got used to it.

The mailroom was huge and broken down into sections. His supervisor was Mr Van Winckle. Of course, everyone called him Rip, but never to his face. He didn’t seem to have a sense of humour. Gerry had to report to Mr Van Winckle and take his instructions. Gerry had no problem with that, he knew someone had to be his boss. What he didn’t yet realise was that Rip owned his ass.

Gerry was on late shift one day, when he saw the guy in the suit. He never knew his name and didn’t recognise him from any of the offices. He just turned up at the mail room and, ignoring Gerry, he walked straight into Rip’s office.

Instinctively, Gerry knew something interesting was about to happen, so he abandoned the mail and crossed the room to get a better view of proceedings.

The guy in the suit must have been in his mid-twenties, Gerry thought, but he knew he was a bad judge of other people’s ages: he wouldn’t be a very good police witness.

Rip and the guy exchanged a few words, but it didn’t look like they were pleasantries. Then without any fuss the guy bent across Rip’s desk.

Rip went to a filing cabinet and took out a paddle. It looked like any paddle you would see in school. It wasn’t very different from the paddle his dad had used on him, Gerry thought.

The suit-covered ass made a perfect target for Rip and he whacked the paddle home with much enthusiasm.

The guy gasped a little and by Whack!! number ten he was in agony.

Rip put the paddle down and said something to the suit who then stood up and left the office. As he hobbled by, clearly in agony, Gerry could see the guy’s face was ashen and his eyes were full of tears.

Gerry returned to his work and not a word was ever said about the incident.

Gerry settled in well to his job. It was straightforward and he liked it that way. With the other boys in the mailroom he would collect, sort and deliver mail. There were lots other guys and work was not difficult.

One morning, Gerry was on his rounds delivering mail when he looked into one of the offices in Accounts. He saw the workers, all women, standing looking towards their boss’s office.

Curious, Gerry peered over to see what the attraction was. Oh, so, it wasn’t only the mailroom boys who got their asses blistered.

In the boss’s office was a tiny guy, he looked a bit Italian, draped over his boss’s knee getting a bare bottomed spanking. The slaps crashed into the poor boy’s behind and the boss, who was quite tubby, was sweating buckets as he slap, slap, slapped! away. He called out to one of the women to fetch him her hairbrush. She did and the fat man slashed it into the boy’s buttocks demanding that he apologise to all his co-workers for arriving late.

Gerry felt for the boy: not only was he getting his buns toasted, he was being further humiliated by his boss in front of his co-workers.

Then, another guy came in said the spanking must stop. Gerry hi-tailed it out of the office and continued on his rounds.

Every two months the mailroom boys had their performance appraisal. Gerry hadn’t been at the plant long enough to get his yet, but he sure learnt what they entailed. There was a system of rewards at Tilotson’s and if you worked well you were given ‘credits.’ When you earned enough credits you received a cash bonus.

But, if your work was poor, you went over the ‘spanking stool’ for a butt blistering.

The spanking stool was just an ordinary stool really, except it stood a little taller than the ones the boys sat on when they sorted the mail. That meant an average eighteen-year-old boy could fit across the seat face down, legs to one side, arms to the other, to present his buttocks at exactly the right angle to receive a lashing from Rip’s leather strap, or swats from his wooden paddle.

Performance appraisal spankings were always carried out on a Friday and in public: to encourage the others. A boy might not have deserved a whacking of his own, but he still learnt the consequences of not working up to expectations.

That day two of the boys, Kenny and Danny, were the main entertainment. There was a very simple procedure for these events. The boy to be punished had already had a private session with Rip and knew what it was he had done wrong and how he needed to improve. By the time it went public, all that was left were the beatings.

Both boys had been in the mailroom for about six months and like Gerry they both wanted to progress in the company. They knew the importance of getting a good appraisal from Rip. He was a just and fair man, all the boys agreed on that, and if he ruled they had under-performed, they acknowledged his verdict and they accepted the punishment that inevitably followed.

The procedure was simple. One at a time, each boy jerked at the elasticated waist of the bright blue shorts and yanked them down to his ankles. Then, down came their underpants.

Kenny knew matters had to take their course and went first. Once his buttocks were suitably bared he took a deep breath and dived over the stool, rather as if he were going into a pool. Rip let rip with ten swats of his razor strop, one after the other with no let up. Kenny stifled the yells he desperately wanted to make and when instructed, stood up rubbing his flaming cheeks in a desperate, but fruitless, attempt to stop the throbbing pain.

Denny was next. He was stoical for the first five or six lashes, but after that he couldn’t contain himself and howled and howled. He gripped at the rungs of the stool until his knuckles went white; Rip took no notice and continued to whip him as hard as he had done Kenny. Yes, Rip was indeed a just and fair man.

The punishment over, Kenny and Denny were allowed a ‘time out’ to go to the restroom to compose themselves before resuming work.

Away from their co-workers the two boys examined the damage. Their buttocks were scarlet, with the distinctive impression of a razor strop that left angry marks all over their butt cheeks.

Denny thought his buttocks were on fire. He had no idea how long it would be before he could sit or walk comfortably. He clenched and unclenched his cheeks, feeling pain every time that he did.

Kenny was no better; his marks were big and red and starting to go black. He would wear these for the best part of a week, and his entire weekend would be spent with a sore backside.

The following week Gerry was sent on an errand by Rip to take a parcel across town to one of Tilotson’s customers. Naturally, Gerry took the opportunity to waste some time at the mall while he was away from the mailroom.

At first he felt very conspicuous in his tight blue shorts and yellow shirt. He had never worn his uniform in public before: like all the mailroom boys he came to work in his ‘civilian’ clothes. Then, he saw one or two girls giving him the eye and giggling at him, but in a nice way, and he cheered up. He was too naïve to also notice the surreptitious glances from the middle-aged men who admired his cute butt.

Gerry was scolded when he eventually delivered his parcel. Nobody had told him it was urgent, he reasoned as he returned to base. It was an unhappy and reflectful Gerry who returned to Tilotson’s. He knew Rip would be waiting for him with the paddle.

In fact, he was wrong: Rip was waiting with some freshly-cut switches.

They were so freshly cut that Rip was still whittling away the rough edges, when Gerry walked into the mailroom. The other boys had cottoned-on what had been happening and were looking forward to the diversion. None of the boys had hard feelings towards Gerry, all of them knew that any one of them could be in his place, but boys can be cruel creatures, so they would get maximum enjoyment out of this.

Rip and Gerry exchanged words in the privacy of the office. Gerry had no excuses and he didn’t dare complain that Rip had not told him the delivery was urgent.

Minutes later, Gerry carried the spanking stool into the mailroom and prepared himself for his whipping. He had never been switched before: he had examined the rods in Rip’s office, they were about two-feet long and very thin; they couldn’t hurt much, he reckoned.

How wrong he was. Rip took the young man’s ass away. There was a stunned moment of silence, followed by a long, loud, and anguished wail from Gerry as the first cut bit into his naked globes.

After six strokes, the switch broke and Rip replaced it. After twelve, the punishment was over. Gerry’s butt was red raw and criss-crossed with thin lines.

Wincing in agony, the boy stood up, his hands gently touched his burning backside, the stripes seemed enormous to the touch and welts were beginning to rise. He gently pulled his underpants over his scorched ass and then his tight shorts.

His bottom was still unbelievably sore with every step he took to the restroom. Once inside, Gerry wanted to soak his scorched buttocks in water, but it was impossible to manoeuvre himself up onto one of the hand basins, so he sat on the lavatory, with his buttocks as close to the water as he could get, and flushed, so that water poured across his singed cheeks, but it did not relieve the agony.

In the mirror he saw his cheeks were covered in livid red, almost mauve ridges, which criss-crossed each other all over his bottom. It would take several days before he could sit down with comfort.

Other workplace stories you might like.

The expenses fiddle

The junior salesman

 Hotel duty manager

 

More stories from Charles Hamilton II are on the MMSA website

Charles Hamilton the Second

charleshamiltonthesecond@gmail.com