This story was originally written for the
On The Job Challenge 2025
in April 2025.
=========
Alyssa fished from her purse a nondescript plastic badge. She swiped it against the black scanner by the door, feeling that little twinge of irrational tension before the light on it turned green. The door unlocked and she pushed it away to walk inside, just like she had done every day for the past several weeks.
This was her office, after all, even if the work she did there was unorthodox to say the least.
"Six bookings today," she said, a trace of smile curling her rouge lips. "Should be alright, I guess..."
She was standing over her desk, looking at the computer screen that showed a spreadsheet of today's appointments. It wasn't packed very tightly; certainly nothing she hadn't handled before. She could deal with all these customers without issue, she thought, especially given how considerate they had been so far.
Though Alyssa had been doing this for some time, she still felt like she was very new to this line of work. She told herself that this was perfectly normal. For one, it was a totally different job than the one she'd been aiming for when she showed up for the interview. This alternative offer really came out of the left field, and the young woman was understandably quite shocked when she heard what it entailed.
As she took off her overcoat and hanged it on the rack, her mind went back a few months and replayed the memories of that bizarre interview.
"I'm rather impressed," she remembered the older businesswoman say. "You definitely know your way around the web frontend and all those modern frameworks, including the one our engineers are using. It also seems like you've got a decent amount of knowledge and experience with privacy and security issues. Overall, pretty darn good..." She looked to the side. "So, what do you think, Jesse? Would Alyssa here be a worthwhile addition to the team?"
Jesse had introduced himself as the CEO, and tech was probably the only industry where he could actually look like one. The guy didn't even break into his thirties; a button-down checkered shirt was still the height of his fashion sense, and the bloodshot eyes plus a frizzy mane of brown hair on his head gave off an appearance of someone who'd just spent all night either partying or coding.
He was flanked on the left by a much more elegant woman, somewhere in her late thirties to early forties. A maroon tweed jacket was slung over her slim figure, touched by the strands of wavy, blond, shoulder-length hair. She was sitting across the table. looking at Alyssa with a polite but perfunctory smile. The corners of her lips dug deeper and deeper creases into her cheeks, which were already more wrinkly than you'd expect given her relatively young age.
"I don't know, Heather," said Jesse. "Frontend is one thing, but so far the whole team has been very much on the full-stack side. I'm not confident we can specialize just yet, in terms of distinct skillsets of our engineers. Yes, I know that Alyssa has worked closely with the backend guys at her current company but that's not same as, say, tweaking a deployment pipeline, running a complex database migration, or diagnosing issues with our cloud provider's API."
"Isn't it something she could learn on the job pretty quickly?"
He looked at Alyssa and flashed her an apologetic smile. "I'm sure that she could," he said, turning back to Heather, "but if we want to get out of the closed beta ASAP, then there is very little leeway we have when it comes to additional overhead such as onboarding new engineers. I mean, I really don't want Rick to have to pick up the sl--"
"The investors won't be happy, Jesse," she interrupted him, her voice gaining an audibly shrill edge. "You should know how important diversity is, especially these days... You've got an all-male team right now, and here's a great female candidate that is eminently qualified, even if not perfectly in the way you'd like her to be. Are you sure there is no way to, you know -- fit her in?"
Alyssa had to stifle a gasp. She was surprised they'd discuss such things openly, with her sitting right there. She always suspected that being a woman in this industry was giving her a slight advantage over her male peers, but never before had it been spelled out so explicitly. There was a not-so-small part of her youthful idealism that died right there, the illusion of pure meritocracy dissipating in a puff of ugly gray smoke.
"Sorry, Heather, can't do," the young CEO said with surprisingly firm conviction. "Getting to market is the most important thing for me right now. Quite frankly, it should be for you and your VCs as well, assuming you're still looking forward to the expected returns on your admittedly very generous investment..."
And yet, this somberly illuminating exchange was nothing compared to where the conversation had gone next.
"Fair enough," said the older woman. "Miss Brewster --"
"That's okay," Alyssa said. "I understand. I wouldn't want to be a drag on the team's productivity."
She was just about ready to get up and leave. This interview wasn't a crucial lifeline, because she had a decently paying job at a much larger corporation. What she had been looking for was career advancement in a more exciting environment, however cliche that may sound. Now, though, she was mostly just waiting for Jesse and Heather to officially say no, and then follow it with a quick and polite goodbye.
But instead, Alyssa had heard something rather different.
"Well, I'm glad that you understand," Heather said, her eyes giving a little twitch as a quiet sigh escaped her thin lips. "Let's just leave it at that then. However, now that the question of an engineering role is firmly out of the picture... Jesse? What do you think? Would you say Alyssa might be suitable for that
other
role we've been talking about? You know, the one we're not advertising publicly..."
The man's face rapidly lost some of its beige color in favor of a pale shade of pink.
"Heather, are-are you sure about this...?"
"Of course. Didn't you just say we need every leverage we can find, so that we can get to market as quickly as possible? I agree wholeheartedly."
He was visibly flustered now. "Okay, well, if that's the case," he began, audibly taking a deep and nervous breath, "I'd say that she looks, ahem...
very
promising."
Alyssa's brow furrowed. "Excuse me but -- what is this about, really?"
The older woman smiled at her. "Miss Brewster, I believe that we might have an even more attractive offer for you," she spoke in a curiously smooth voice. "In terms of compensation, for example, this alternative position would far exceed the salary brackets we have posted for the original engineering role. It would be the upper bound, in fact, except
doubled."
Alyssa couldn't hold the loud gasp that managed to escape her throat. "I... I'm listening..."
"Excellent. And I must say I appreciate what you said earlier, too, about not wanting to be a drag on Jesse's team productivity, because in this role, you would become essentially the exact opposite."
She blinked in confusion. "Huh?"
Heather's wrinkly smile grew even wider. "Well, let me explain then..."
And boy, explain she did.
Thinking back to it now, as Alyssa looked at her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in her office, she could totally understand why Jesse said she was a very promising candidate. Her qualifications were obvious and plain to everyone around, precisely because she was anything
but
plain.
The perky young woman was strikingly beautiful -- which, next to open-mindedness and a friendly personality, was one of the key requirements for success in her new role.
She stood at average height and had a slim but full figure. The curves of her wide hips and heavy breasts narrowed down to an impressively cinched waist.
Her face was exceedingly pleasant, corralled by falling locks of auburn hair that would playfully brush against her high cheeks. They complemented her deep amber eyes that sat above a cute button nose, and a puffy oval of her lips that she liked to touch with just a smidge of red lip gloss.
"Hmm... I wonder if I should change?" she mused, looking at her outfit of thin woolen sweater and blue denim pants. "But Connor's first today, and he usually doesn't ask for much, so..."
Officially, Alyssa's title was that of an Employee Satisfaction Specialist. Whenever she heard it, she found it hard not to burst into a fit of sardonic laughter. It matched her role perfectly, if only in a perverse manner, because
satisfaction
was precisely what the girl's job was about.
Heather had explained it to her back then, in a very no-nonsense kind of way.
In many tech startups that the woman's venture fund invested in, she had noticed all the same problems with demographic makeup of early employees. You didn't have to subscribe to fashionable opinions on diversity to see it, and Heather's concerns about the issue stemmed from rather more practical motives than the desire to appear righteous on professional social media.
Simply speaking, those fledgling companies were almost always full of young single men. Overworked and under-socialized, these men had neither the time nor -- let's be honest --
ability
to attract women and form any kind of satisfying relationship. Nature being what it was, however, these guys still had very real physical needs. Failing to meet them would inevitably lead to detrimental effects on their well-being and, in turn, their morale and productivity at work.
Enter Alyssa. Her job duties, how that she had accepted the offer, revolved precisely around satisfying those unmet needs.
She was given a dedicated office that had been furnished with all the necessary amenities. It included a comfortable bathroom with a spacious shower cabin; large wardrobe and several closets where she could keep clothes and personal items; a king-size bed along with a dozen sets of sheets and linen; as well as a bean bag, an exercise ball, two chairs, a mirror, and an agave plant in a clay pot. It was all very pleasant and cozy.
She also had a desk with a computer that she'd use manage her appointments. They were done through a system similar to what her previous company used for onsite massage bookings. Other employees were free to schedule individual sessions with Alyssa, up to a certain limit per week, for either half an hour or a full hour.
Just like a massage therapist, the service she'd provide during her sessions was physical and tactile in nature. Difference was, hers was also of a much more
intimate
kind.
"Ahh, yes," Connor said with a breathy sigh. He was a thin, bespectacled man in a creased T-shirt, not exactly a heartthrob but not particularly unappealing either. "This feels... really great..."
