Chapter 12 -- A lecture from Ruth Burnside
The morning exercise session came and went, followed by cooling off in the pool, showers, and breakfast. Afterwards the sorority members grabbed backpacks and headed out the front door to go on a two-day hiking trip with the Tri-Alphas.
The only people remaining in the sorority house were Heather and the pledges. The Sergeant-at-Arms ordered the pledges into the sitting room to issue some announcements. The first order of business was the activity that weekend, a top-to-bottom cleaning of the sorority house, which would be done for inspection. The pledges had between 9:00 a.m. Saturday and 12:00 noon on Sunday to complete the task. How they organized and what breaks they chose to take were completely up to them, but they had to be finished by no later than noon on Sunday. On Sunday, following lunch and cleanup, they would be transported to receive a seminar and practical exercise on the erotic disciplining of males.
"The house cleanup and tomorrow's seminar are important for what's happening next week. Don't forget that Tuesday the Tri-Alphas are swearing in their summer pledges, and later in the week those guys will start coming over here. They will be responsible for cleaning up this place and you'll be helping with their supervision. In other words, those guys will be working under you and you'll be bossing them around."
The four kneeling women looked at each other. Bossing around male pledges? Awesome!
"Anyhow, it won't do anyone any good if you don't know exactly what's expected from the cleaning manual. You'll need to learn what's in there by heart because you'll be using it to justify punishments and giving out rewards to the Triple-A pledges doing the cleanup. The best way to learn is for you to do the cleanup yourselves first, and find out what mistakes will get your butt whipped. Keep that in mind. Tomorrow night Pledge Mistress Tracy and I will be doing the walk-through inspection. Your butts will pay dearly for any deficiencies or violations of the manual. We'll be fair about it, but expect to be punished for anything that's not up to inspection standards. We're giving you 27 hours, so that's plenty of time to get it right. Work together and pay attention to detail, because if you don't, you'll be sleeping on your stomachs tomorrow night. Everyone understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Tomorrow's seminar will deal with the other part of your responsibility with the male pledges, disciplining them and how to go about it. For that part we got a special instructor for you, and I'll tell you that we're very lucky to have her. Getting a class from her will be a real honor for you, because it's not normal to have someone of that caliber willing to spend time with freshman pledges."
Lisa heart skipped a beat and she began to sweat. It sounded very likely that tomorrow's "special instructor" would be Dr. Ruth Burnside.
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Heather planned to be in and out of the house throughout the day, but told Lisa that she would be available if there were any problems or questions about the cleanup. With that an idea occurred to Lisa, to ask Heather to do a preliminary inspection in the evening to give the pledges a chance to correct deficiencies Sunday morning. The thought of consulting Heather ahead of time would not have occurred to any of Lisa's companions.
Everyone, both Heather and the other pledges, took it for granted that Lisa was in charge. Lisa decided to tackle the yard work first before the temperature outside got much hotter. Because they were not allowed to wear any clothing apart from their work shoes, the pledges were only responsible for the back yard, not the front. Nevertheless, there was plenty to do, not the least of which was washing down the side of the house and cleaning dozens of windows. Fortunately the hedges already had been trimmed, but the grass had to be mowed and edged and weeding taken care of. Weeding was particularly arduous, because the sorority did not allow the use of any herbicides. All weeds had to be removed by hand.
There was the pool, which had to be cleaned and re-chlorinated. The manual stated that not a single dead leaf could be present in the yard, so for nearly an hour there was a scavenger hunt for dead leaves. The sorority's mosquito trap had to be cleaned out, mold cleaned off the outdoor tables and chairs, and finally the patio had to be swept. Lisa looked at the clock with dismay with they finished, because it already was 3:00 p.m. and the pledges had not touched anything indoors.
There had to be a break for lunch. Lisa decided the pledges could save themselves some time by combining lunch and dinner and preparing only a single large late-afternoon meal. In the morning they would eat cold leftovers to avoid having to wash any more cooking utensils and re-clean the stove.
"Eat up, 'cause we're not gonna dirty up the kitchen again after we're done."
Once the pledges finished eating, the kitchen took up most of the rest of the afternoon. Unlike in the fraternity the previous week, the Four-Betas did not intentionally leave all the dirty dishes for the pledges, but still, there was a lot they needed to do. As always, Lisa took the worst jobs for herself. For example, she was the one who cleaned the ovens and scrubbed out the trashcans.
The next phase was the bathrooms. The pledges used Lisa's system of cleaning two bathrooms at a time. Once a bathroom was finished Lisa put a piece of tape over the door. She flatly told her companions that the only bathroom any of them could use was the pledge toilet downstairs. After a bathroom was clean and taped, re-entry was strictly prohibited.
There was a final task for the night before Lisa let the pledges get some sleep, and that was linens and towels. Lisa instructed her companions to wash, dry, and fold linens, figuring it would be hard for her companions to screw up linens. Meanwhile she swept and dusted upstairs, with the intention of forbidding anyone to go back up once the linen closets were restocked.
As the pledges were wrapping up in the linen room, Heather returned from the campus library. As she went upstairs she was confronted by the sight of a thoroughly vacuumed carpet and tape on the bathroom doors. She used one of the bathrooms, but was careful to leave it the same way she found it and to put the tape back on the door. Obviously Pledge Lisa was leaving as little to chance as she could.
The pledges returned upstairs to restock the linen closets. As they did so Lisa knelt at Heather's door and asked permission to speak with her. She handed Heather the manual and asked her opinion about how well the upstairs part of the house had been cleaned.
Heather told Lisa to get up. The other pledges nervously clustered at the top of the stairs, but Lisa told them to go to the basement and get ready for bed. Her tone clearly was, "I'll handle this. You guys get out of here." Heather was impressed when they immediately filed down the stairs without saying another word.
Lisa relayed to Heather what was and was not finished. She thought the entire upstairs was done, along with the kitchen and linen room. The downstairs would be finished in the morning. Heather took up Lisa's request to get a preliminary walk-through to fix problems. It seemed there were plenty, mostly minor things but still violations that would have resulted in swats to the pledges' bottoms had they not been corrected. Heather caught a total of 53 violations, which Lisa wrote down. Lisa's foresight to seek Heather's advice saved the pledges a total of 53 swats the following afternoon.
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After six hours of sleep, the pledges were up again to finish the downstairs and basement. They ate a very late cold breakfast, washed what remained of the dishes, and spent the final hour following Lisa's instructions to look for and correct deficiencies. Following what she had learned from Heather's walk-through the night before, Lisa was able to fix many problems herself.
By the time the pledges finished, none of them questioned anything Lisa was commanding them to do. She told them what to do, and they did it. They worked as a team, with Lisa clearly their leader.
As the pledges showered and got ready for their afternoon training seminar, Heather wandered through the house, very impressed with its condition. She and Tracy would be hard-pressed to find anything not in compliance with the inspection manual. She noticed the tape still left on the bathroom doors. No sooner had she noticed that violation, Pledge Cherine came running upstairs to pull it off. At the last moment Lisa had remembered the tape, and sent Cherine to take care of it.
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At noon the pledges were kneeling in the sitting room waiting for Heather's next instructions. She handed Lisa the keys to their lockers and told them to get their notebooks and put on their shower shoes.