Rape is such a harsh word. I prefer to say that it was an incident of involuntary agreement to a sexual relationship. What happened was this.
I have a secretary. She's a damn good secretary. As efficient as you please, knows her work, anticipates my requirements and makes sure things run with the smooth efficiency that is conducive to a good work environment. And I pay her accordingly.
Unfortunately, she is entitled to holidays. I normally try to tailor mine to the same schedule that she uses, with another manager being tapped to take over my duties while I'm away.
Occasionally our breaks don't coincide, and when that happens I'm given a temp to fill in. It's never really a satisfactory solution, but generally it's workable.
This time the break that came up unexpectedly was hers. Her right leg broke, to be precise. Simone was going to be away on sick leave until she was mobile again, several weeks at least. So I was given a temp.
The temp from hell, it turned out.
She fronted up to my office, wearing a short tight dress and a top that seemed to have been painted on. She was in her early twenties, had a good figure and seemed quite happy to show it off to all and sundry.
I explained her general duties, referred her to Simone's cheat sheet and left her to it.
It turned out she had questions about her duties and naturally she turned to me for the answers. I politely explained that most of the questions that she brought to me could be resolved by looking up Simone's cheat sheet, but she seemed incapable of doing so. After an hour of her services I figured out I was in for the week from hell while Simone was away.
Brittany was a stickler for what is right and what her duties were. On that first day I asked her to arrange for a bunch of flowers to be delivered to Simone with a sympathy note, taking some money from petty cash to pay for it. Brittany politely explained that accounting guidelines didn't cover these circumstances and she wouldn't be able to do that. I said, that's fine, I'll pay for the flowers myself. Brittany promptly explained that that made it a personal errand and she was not required to run those.
I rang up and arranged the damn flowers myself.
The next day Brittany came in late, only five minutes, but that sort of thing can disrupt the office. She was looking very nice so I passed a casual complement on her appearance, to be promptly told that that sort of comment was sexual harassment and she didn't have to put up with it.
Telling someone they're looking good is sexual harassment? Commenting on the boobs that she was carrying around on a tray for everyone to admire might have been harassment, but an honest complement is not. However I took a mental note not to make any sort of personal remark to Brittany.
I'm not saying the woman was computer illiterate. Let's just say she was computer challenged. After she'd stuffed up her own computer for the third time I flatly told her she was not to touch mine for any reason whatsoever.
Fortunately, a couple of my staff are quite computer smart and I told her to speak to them when her computer screwed up. You will note that her computer screws up her work, it's not her screwing up the computer.
By the end of the second day I was asking to have her replaced, but it was a no go. Apparently it was her turn for fill-in work so she could get the experience. I was stuck with her.
From then on things seemed to get worse. It wasn't just that she was doing things slowly, but she was doing them wrong and I'd have to point out the errors and have her redo. I don't think she once bothered to proofread her work, although I pointed out that most errors could be picked up by doing this.
The killer came at the end of the week. I'd been out in the field all Friday, and I'd already put in a solid day's work when I fronted up back at the office. It was after knockoff time and so I assumed that the place would be deserted, but when I walked into my office there was Brittany, on my PC.
I could tell from the look on her face that I was in trouble. I didn't know what sort of trouble, but it wouldn't be anything little.
I gently asked Brittany why she was using my PC when she had strict instructions never to touch it. It appears that hers had broken down again just as she was about to do some letters, and she knew that I'd wanted them that day so she thought that she'd use my PC instead of waiting until the next work day when Mike could fix her PC.
Digging deeper, it turned out that the letters that she was supposed to do first thing in the morning had been shelved, because I wasn't there to nag her. She only remembered them at knock off time when everyone else was on the way out, so she stayed back to finish them.
Very conscientious of her, I'm sure, but if she done them first thing she wouldn't have had to stay back. Trying to do the letters her PC broke down, Mike had left and therefore my PC was her only option.
I felt like pointing out that there were a dozen PC's in the outer office she could have used, but as the suspected catastrophe was just a few letters not done I didn't bother.
I politely asked if she had completed the letters now, and she turned evasive. Pushing for answers I just wished I had some pentothal. One shot and let the answers come babbling out. Instead I was just getting babbling.
What she was trying to say was that it wasn't her fault. She thought she was opening Word but she got this weird spreadsheet. So she deleted it and put the proper word icon in its place and then called it up and typed her letters.
Then when she had finished, it occurred to her that I might need that weird spreadsheet so she went to restore it, but accidently pressed 'clear the wastebasket' instead of 'restore these items'. But that wasn't her fault. They shouldn't put those two items next to each other. Anyone could make that mistake.
I checked my PC. My master template was gone, and the wastebasket was empty.
You're probably wondering what my master template is. It's an excel spreadsheet that I'd put together with the help of my brother. He's a computer wizard. With that template I could enter what I wanted done and it would produce a full costing and work plan. Ten minutes of data entry for results that used to take three or four hours. It had taken my brother and me six weeks to put the damn thing together, and Brittany had deleted it.
This wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. This was a bloody great bale of hay dropped on the poor camel from a great height.
I turned and looked at Brittany and she knew just by looking at me that it had all hit the fan with a loud splat and that I wasn't going to listen to excuses.
Brittany has two main defences. First was to babble until the person trying to find out what had gone wrong goes away, frustrated. Second is to assume a sexy posture so any move her accuser makes can be assumed to be some sort of sexual harassment, putting the ball firmly in her court.
True to form, Brittany leant slight back against my desk, shoulders back to emphasise her breasts with their enticing cleavage and legs parting slightly to make her short tight skirt ride up so that a hint of panties could be seen below it. God forbid that you should look though. That was sexual harassment, that was, and she'd let you know.
I didn't care. As far as I was concerned her position was involuntary agreement to a sexual relationship, and I was accepting.
I calmly took hold of her skirt and jerked it higher so that Brittany's panties were on display. Before she could scream or protest I took them and calmly lowered them, bending down so that they went clear down to her ankles, leaving her exposed from her ankles to just above her mons.
