Community Service Ch. 01

"From now on, David," the Liaison Officer went on, "until you find gainful employment, you will be working for your eighty pounds per week Unemployment Benefit payments, as a community servant. Your hours of duty, will be from eight a.m. to five p.m., Monday to Friday. You will be entitled to two fifteen-minute breaks: one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. And half an hour for your lunch break.

"This means that, working a standard forty-hour week, you will be earning two pounds per hour, by way of earning your eighty pounds.

"Now, David, I am assigning you to your work duties: in the Sock Room."

Indicating to C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda, the Liaison Officer continued, "Community Service Officers Karen and Linda, here, have been detailed to supervise you. C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda will monitor you. They will inspect your work regularly, to ensure that you perform your assigned duties diligently, and that you consistently achieve the high standard of results that will be expected of you.

"And, I am giving you due warning now, community servant David: as and when they consider the results of your labours to be less than satisfactory, C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda are fully authorised to chastise you. They will chastise you, by administering to your bare bottom, as many strokes of their canes as they might deem the occasion to warrant."

I was absolutely speechless. This was totally outrageous! I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. What I'd just been told, by the Community Service Liaison Officer, Harriet Harmman -- a senior figure in local government.

C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda were fully authorised to cane me -- to 'chastise' me! As many strokes of their canes, as they deemed fit! To my bare bottom!

The Liaison Officer then said, "Now, C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda, please get community servant David double-oh-seven into his uniform, and ready to begin his assigned duties ... He has been idle, for quite long enough."

"Yes, Ma'am, right away!" replied C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda simultaneously, and with great zeal.

"Your clothes, community servant David double-oh-seven -- take them off. All of them!" snapped C.S.O. Karen authoritatively.

I couldn't believe my ears. This was incredible! An absolute nightmare!

"Are you hard of hearing, community servant David double-oh-seven?" asked C.S.O. Linda sarcastically. "Miss Karen just gave you an order: Your clothes! Get them off! Now!! Strip naked!" barked C.S.O. Linda, now flexing her cane meaningfully, as was C.S.O. Karen.

This just could not be happening! No! No! I refused to believe it! I was going to wake up any second; this would all just be a horrible, diabolical nightmare.

The Liaison Officer smirked, as she handed me a large white plastic carrier-bag and said, "I have put your other four sets of uniform in this bag. Put your clothes in here, with them, and someone will bring the carrier-bag to you later, at the Sock Room."

I was red-faced from acute embarrassment, at having to fully undress in front of the Liaison Officer and C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda. It was incredibly ... belittling.

The three of them smirked at me, as I covered myself with my hands, the best that I could.

Now that I was fully unclothed, C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda presented me with my community servant's uniform. And, as if I was a small child, still clumsy at putting on his own clothes, C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda dressed me: "Pull your arms through," said C.S.O. Karen, as she pulled the white, short-sleeved T-shirt over my head. And: "Put your feet though," said C.S.O. Linda, instructing me to step into my white, elasticated-waist shorts, when she then pulled them up to my waist.

"Oh, I do like a man in uniform," said the Community Service Liaison Officer, Harriet Harmman, sarcastically. Facetiously fluttering her fingers goodbye at me, she said, "Well, toodle pip. Off you go then, double-oh-seven ... Go and save the world."

Oh, she was a right barrel of laughs, the Liaison Officer. She was a laugh a minute.

C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda then escorted me out of the Community Service Operations Centre.

As they frogmarched me across Canford town square, C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda enjoyed watching the smiling, waving, approving reactions of female members of the general public, upon their seeing us. That is, upon their seeing a community servant being so roughly manhandled, by two no-nonsense, assertive -- dominant -- C.S.O.'s.

C.S.O.'s Karen and Linda nonchalantly chewed gum, and they blew bubbles with it, till they burst: Pop! Pop! Pop! as they escorted me, community servant David 007 (as my white uniform T-shirt announced, front and back, to the world), across the town square, to my workplace.

To where I had been duly assigned, by the Community Service Liaison Officer, Harriet Harmman, to earn my weekly Unemployment Benefit payments, until I found gainful employment.

The Sock Room.

Community Service continues, in Ch. 2.