"If the money wasn't so good..." Thought Mandy to herself for about the tent thousandth time. As a model she was used to being objectified but this was Something else!
"Oh, look at the cute little elf!"
"Check out the jugs on Santa's helper!"
"If I ask Santa real nice, will he deliver you to me for the holidays?"
Mandy had her fill of every father, step-father, uncle, and every other variation of male relative in all Christendom. No, make that all men everywhere, when the Rabbi came by for the menorah lighting ceremony with his congregation every male eye ogled her as guided kids to Santa's lap. Several even got close enough to pinche her butt!
That was the worst part. Mandy was getting pinched and fondled ALL the time, and mall security was doing jack shit about it. "If I was a donut or a cruller, you damn sure would protect me!" she yelled in frustration at one point at the mall security guard when she was on break. In some ways the women were even worse! The men were rude but their verbal assaults and inquiries only ran so far. There was a common denominator to their bravado and boorishness. The women, the mother, the aunts, and the grandmothers seemed to take special delight in cutting her to ribbons, especially those who could stand to lose more than a few pounds. They were clearly envious of Mandy's trim athletic figure, long blonde locks, and angelic countenance. They were the most likely to gossip.
"I wonder who she slept with to get this gig!"
"I see when they shrank her body, they didn't shrink her tits. Those are probably fake anyway!"
"Imagine1 Parading around in public in that get up in front of children!"
"She's nothing special my sister is prettier."
"I see Santa brought his personal slut along!"
The kids, on the other hand, were, for the most part a delight.
"Are you a real elf?"
"Are you Mrs. Claus?"
"What is Rudolph like?"
The only kids that were really obnoxious were the older boys, ones bordering on their teens shepherding younger brothers or sisters. Mandy was usually able to charm them by calling them handsome or with other forms of flattery. No, the job didn't entirely suck. It just mostly sucked.
What Mandy hated the most was being so damn short! Ordinarily she was five foot ten. She had been the starting forwards on her high school basketball team. Her height had always given her an advantage and opened so many doors. OK, so maybe she was too tall to be a ballerina, she was the perfect height for a model's catwalk.
After leaving the Pierce Reducer, she was four feet flat. How did short people cope? It took twice as long to walk anywhere, and the Pierce reducer/enlarger was on the other side of the mall. There were no locker rooms in the mall either, so Mandy had to hike the length of the mall in her elf outfit. Boy, was that degrading! She wanted to ring the neck of whatever psycho perve designed this getup. Green tights, pointed green felt slippers, red micro-miniskirt, and a clinging red bodice that adhered to her every curve and had just enough decolletage to tempt the eye male and female eye in viewing distance. And of course, the pointed hat with bells!
When Mandy objected to the outfit with the mall manager, the woman in charge offered no sympathy at all. "I understand your concern, Ms. Curtis but you are here to draw in customers. With the internet stealing all our retail sales, malls like ours have to be creative to lure in business. You are being well compensated for your work." With that, the woman led Mandy out of her office. That was two weeks ago. Now it was Christmas Eve and everyone wanted to see Father Christmas before his big ride. Mandy posed for pictures, sometimes she took group shots. Sometimes she sat on Santa's lap. At least, Frank, the Store's Santa was a real gentleman. A huge man with natural snow-white hair and long beard, he was born to embody the spirit of Christmas. Usually, he drove a semi-truck during the week and tooled around on a Harley on weekends.
Not once had Mandy caught Frank ogling her and he had regularly interceded in his gentle yet boisterous way when certain determined men gave her unwanted attention.
