Mailgirl Number Thirteen: Day 01

"Mrs. Lowrie," Sarah repeated, doing her best to fake a smile. Sarah extended her hand. "Sarah Scott."

"Hm," was all Mrs. Lowrie allowed in response, declining to shake her hand. Instead, she shifted her attention back to Gillian; Sarah might as well have been luggage. "I'll show you down to Mr. Barrow's office. Please forgive the décor -- it takes some getting used to."

They rounded the reception desk, crossed an open pathway flanked on either side by rows of cubicles, took a left, and arrived at a glass door with a card reader on the wall nearby. Mrs. Lowrie ran her USF badge over the black square and the indicator light went red to green. The three of them stepped through the door and into a long, mostly barren corridor. At first, Sarah wondered if the bare walls were what Mrs. Lowrie had felt the need to apologize for, that the décor she'd asked to be forgiven was simply a lack thereof. But, as they got closer to the end of the hall, Sarah gasped; she was face-to-face with a pair of women's underwear, framed, and hanging on the wall.

A red lace tanga was mounted in the center of the frame. Below, a prominent "#7" announced to whom this particular set of panties belonged. Or to whom they had once belonged, apparently. And, if that weren't enough, there was a small, inset photograph of Mailgirl Number Seven herself, naked and on her knees, in the bottom right-hand corner. The blonde girl, the very one whom Sarah had witnessed undergoing her morning "inspection" just a few minutes prior, wore a smile that stretched from ear to ear. Her eyes smiled, too -- bright blue and full of life. This girl wanted you to see her underwear. This girl wanted you to see her naked body. This girl was happy with her new role here at USF.

This display was repeated again and again down the corridor. Number Twelve's contained a coral pair of seamless, French-cut briefs. Number Eleven's contribution was an off-white string bikini. Number Ten's was pink and lace. And on and on. Were it not for presence of the stark naked girls in the bottom, right-hand corners, this might have been an advertisement for a line of high-end lingerie.

Despite herself, and as horrified as she might have been, Sarah found the exhibit fascinating from a sociological standpoint. She knew these girls, on paper at least. She'd read their profiles. She'd read their contracts. She knew their names. But the scene down in the locker room had homogenized them, in a way. Hair-color and facial features might have distinguished them. But, aside from maybe Mailgirl Number Six's cartoonishly-large chest size, they were all mostly cut from the same cloth, all roughly the same build. Naked tits and exposed twats were, after all, just naked tits and exposed twats -- that they'd been stripped even of their names demonstrated that USF viewed them as nothing more than the aforementioned naked tits and exposed twats.

Here, though, in the hallway leading to Human Capital, they were individuals. Individuals with individual tastes, individuals who'd made different individual choices. What did the red lace say about Mailgirl Number Seven? What did the seamless briefs suggest about Mailgirl Number Twelve? What did the black g-string reveal about Mailgirl Number One? And, was this a representative sample of the women of Wall Street, overall? It was like peeking beneath the skirts of the young and hungry women who worked downtown, and getting a glimpse of who they were beneath their power suits and designer apparel.

Sarah didn't know the story of how these girls' underwear had wound up here on the wall -- whether the girls had chosen these particular panties to bequeath to Human Capital, or if Mistress Zero had simply lifted them from the girls' lockers one morning while they were out in the building and on duty. She suspected it was probably the latter; the high-waisted cotton briefs exhibited in (confusingly) one of the two frames marked as Mailgirl Number Four had to have been embarrassing to the baby blonde who'd once worn them. But even the panties of Mailgirl Number Eight, skin-tone and otherwise nondescript, shimmered in the overhead light, suggesting silk or satin or some similar synthetic blend.

Sarah was thankful she'd gone out a bought a pair of underwear specifically for today. She didn't know if the pearl-white thong she had on that morning would be the pair Human Capital chose to mount, and she certainly hadn't chosen to wear it thinking it might be taken from her. Rather, she knew she'd likely be undressing in front of an audience, and didn't want to be wearing something cheap or old or embarrassing. She shuddered to herself, imagining a pair of her worn-out old cotton briefs -- the girly ones with the strawberries printed on them, maybe - hanging over her picture here on the 18th Floor in perpetuity.

"Our trophies," Mrs. Lowrie announced with a heavy-hearted sigh.

Sarah passed a second "Mailgirl Number Seven," with a different girl's photograph set inside, one that she hadn't seen in that morning's line-up. As she did, it dawned on her now why there were two Fours, two Sevens, and two Twos. The original numbers Two, Four, and Seven were longer with the company, and had been replaced. But, though these girls may not have been mailgirls here at USF any longer, they'd left something behind. No matter how long they'd actually been naked couriers at the Plaza, their time had been memorialized here in this corridor on the 18th Floor.

Mrs. Lowrie ran her badge over the card reader at the far end of the hall, opened the door, and the three of them stepped into Human Capital proper. Though the term "Human Capital" was often used interchangeably with "Human Resources" out in the larger world, here at USF it referred very specifically to the department charged with setting up and recruiting for the mailgirl program. This particular function within HR hadn't existed a year ago, when Senior Management first decided to explore the concept. Whether Will Barrow had been whispering in one of the Managing Directors' ears, or if he'd simply been roped after they'd made the decision -- that much wasn't clear to Sarah. But it was here on the 18th Floor that the company housed Barrow himself, along with Mrs. Lowrie and a small team of technicians and analysts, who made the mailgirl program a reality. Mistress Zero may have been charged with overseeing the girls on a day-to-day basis, but it was from these offices that she took her orders.

Sleek and modern in layout and design, Human Capital featured a handful of offices along one of the Plaza's exterior walls, with windows that looked out into the city beyond. Looking inwards, they had glass walls that allowed a view both in and out, and Sarah was greeted by smiles and polite chin nods as she followed Mrs. Lowrie past them. It was still this side of seven o'clock, so Sarah was a little surprised to find so many staff members already here at work. Perhaps it was because today they'd be onboarding a new class of six mailgirls. Or, perhaps, these were men -- and they were all men, of course -- who simply loved their jobs.

She wondered who they were and what they did; unlike with the mailgirls, Sarah hadn't been given background information on the men who made USF's mailgirl program run. Some of them were likely charged with the technology -- the smartphones that the girls wore on their arms, the sensors that had been installed throughout the building to pinpoint a mailgirl's exact location at all times. The term "Mailgirl Monitoring Unit" was used at a handful of West Coast companies, and only underlined the idea the mailgirls themselves were on some sort of "electronic leash" throughout the day.

There were data analysts, too. These were men tasked with making sense of the digital information the smartphones and sensors collected. They were responsible for establishing the deadlines to which the mailgirls were to adhere when getting from Point A to Point B, for flagging any irregularities in time required or routes taken to accomplish a task, for managing the "chit" system used to summon a mailgirl for delivery or to "hold" her for a more specialized assignment. Every moment of Sarah's day at the Plaza would be tracked and recorded, and she'd be issued automated "demerits" each time she took a little too long in making a delivery, or violated any other of a myriad of tightly-defined parameters.

Lording over them all -- the techs, the analysts, the mailgirls, and the mailgirls' mistress -- was Will Barrow. Despite everything that Sarah Scott would be subjecting herself to, she hadn't actually met the Director of Human Capital face-to-face. She hadn't even spoken to him over the phone; Gillian had served as a go-between. She'd seen pictures of him posted on the various mailgirl sites online, and even watched a panel discussion he'd participated in with the leaders of a handful of more established programs, as well as representatives from the Actioneers. She knew his bio: he had an MBA from Yale, and had done his undergraduate work in New Haven, too. In fact, it was at Yale that he'd first crossed paths with Gillian Schang, and it was that relationship -- among other reasons -- that had steered Sarah in the direction of US Financial in the first place.

It was Barrow's office at the far corner of Human Capital to which Gillian and Sarah were led. They passed by what Sarah assumed was Mrs. Lowrie's desk, and after a gentle rapping at his door, were summoned in.

The first time she'd seen Barrow's picture online, she'd been surprised. Among the mailgirl programs she'd looked into as part of her research, there hadn't been much consistency around how those programs were governed. In some cases, the girls were truly just mailroom employees, overseen by whatever sad-sack happened to be running the mailroom at the time. In others, the roles played by Barrow and Mistress Zero at USF were done by a single individual -- sometimes by women, but more often by men. One of her first interactions within the world of mailgirls was an interview she'd conducted with a slovenly, middle-aged man, balding and bespectacled, who seemed to working out his failings with the opposite sex by abusing the mailgirls under his charge. It had colored Sarah's expectations, and she'd falsely anticipated that she'd be running into more of the same, the deeper she went.

Will Barrow was not that man. He was still young, still on the right side of forty. He'd reportedly been a "whiz kid" when it had come to operations and logistics early in his career, and he'd made a name for himself overseeing large-scale projects, herding cats, and getting executives decades older than him to fall into line. At some point after his MBA he'd transitioned into Human Resources, touching upon talent management and employee engagement as levers to be pulled in driving USF's corporate vision and performance goals. He was smart and driven, an up-and-comer, and even looked the part; he was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Though there might have been a danger of putting a charmer like him out there amid all the controversy and bad publicity that surrounded USF's decision to launch a mailgirl program - a danger in the public seeing him as some sort of predator - Barrow carried himself with an air of professionalism and "put-togetheredness." He'd owned the panel Sarah had watched the moment he'd opened his mouth, presenting USF's adoption of the concept as modern, respectful, and interested only in performance gains that the entire company benefited from.

He stood as they entered, stepped away from his desk, and greeted Gillian with a warm embrace. "The big day!"

Gillian chuckled. "Here we are!"

"I'm happy this all worked out," he told his former professor. "I'm looking forward to working with you again. You look good!"

"Please," Gillian chuckled. "And you! You're all grown up."

"A few greys starting to creep in," Barrow responded. "This job is not without its headaches. I've got a day in front me, I'll tell you that..."

"Yes," Gillian answered sarcastically. "I'm sure you're dreading it."

Barrow laughed. "At least this one will be straightforward enough. I can't tell you how nice it is to go into this meeting with the i's all dotted and the contract signed."

"Well, I'm sorry for all the back and forth to get us to this point. I know that this is not how you've been doing this here, so thank you for that. We both appreciate the accommodations you've made for us and our study."

Sarah had signed a contract, yes. But hers had only been for three months, in contrast to the two years required in the more standard mailgirl contract. She'd be a mailgirl, sure, but she'd be returning to New Haven in the Fall to wrap up her PhD; the light at the end of her particular tunnel was only thirteen weeks away.

The sticking point, though, had been the Power of Attorney. Sarah had done enough homework to know that mailgirl contracts were infamously one-sided, and that companies regularly altered the terms and played with the dates, with the mailgirls themselves always on the losing end. There were performance kickers and special clauses hidden throughout; even the contract Sarah had eventually signed had dozens of little loopholes that had kept her up at night. She'd drawn the line at Power of Attorney; by signing that away, she might as well have not even signed a contract in the first place, as it would have allowed USF to alter the terms at any time. After a tense, two-week standoff (during which time Sarah increasingly hoped the whole thing would fall apart), Gillian found a solution everyone could live with. Instead of signing away her Power of Attorney to US Financial, Sarah gave it over to the Department of Anthropology at Yale; Will Barrow and his lawyers wouldn't be able to tack on any amendments or make changes unilaterally on Sarah's behalf.

Barrow shrugged. "We're here now. Again, I'm glad we got it done. I think this is going to be a good opportunity for everyone involved."

"Me, too," Gillian agreed.

Barrow clapped his hands together, and turned his attention to Sarah. "Well done," he said, still addressing Sarah's professor. He didn't bother to pretend he wasn't checking her out. He showed no shame in the way his eyes raked her up and down. He lingered upon her hips, and again upon her chest, before finally coming up to meet her gaze. He didn't bother to shake her hand or introduce himself. He didn't even really say hello, or treat her as if she had any agency of her own -- beyond that of the unnamed graduate student Gillian had brought along with her. Without any further hesitation, and in just as casual a manner as it might have asked her to take a seat, he told her to undress.

"Let's see what we've got," he added.

Sarah had known this moment was coming, but she hadn't expected to it come so soon. She'd played this scene out in her own head going back months now, when Gillian had first proposed a more experiential dip in the mailgirl pool. Sarah hadn't been sure where it would happen or how it would happen or who would be there when it did, but the first and most important step in becoming a naked mailgirl was (of course) getting naked. Before Barrow had set the time and location of their meeting, Sarah had imagined any number of possibilities -- from undressing in the locker room to undressing in the mail room, from undressing in the lobby before being allowed past Security to undressing in the parking garage beneath the building. Once she'd been instructed to meet him in his office, first thing on Monday morning, she'd been reasonably sure she'd be walking out of that meeting in nothing but her birthday suit.

She hadn't, however, expected to strip the moment she walked through the door. Barrow's secretary hadn't even yet returned to her desk, let alone shut the door. Gillian hadn't even been offered a seat. Maybe Sarah had been naïve, but she'd presumed they'd sit and chat first, talk about how the day was going to play out, discuss some out-standing aspect of Sarah's arrangement with USF. To Barrow's point, however, the i's had all been dotted some weeks earlier; there simply wasn't anything left for them to deliberate over. It was time to get down to business.

Barrow's office, unlike the others in Human Capital that Sarah had passed on the way, had real, honest-to-goodness walls - not the floor-to-ceiling windows that had allowed the rest of his staff to watch her being paraded in a few moments earlier. Once Mrs. Lowrie had excused herself, and shut the door behind her, Sarah was standing in front of an audience of only two -- both of whom had already seen her naked.

Gillian, in an effort to get Sarah comfortable with being naked in front of other people, had begun having Sarah take off her clothes during their weekly one-on-ones. The first time, Gillian had even undressed with her. She had assured Sarah that she wasn't asking her to do anything that she herself wasn't willing to do. If there had been a mailgirl program out there looking for a woman in her late fifties, she promised, she'd have been the one doing this in Sarah's place. Sarah's wasn't convinced; the following week, it was Sarah and Sarah alone in the nude, as it would be for the next couple of weeks before the semester had come to an end.

Barrow, meanwhile, had been given a series of naked photos. Gillian explained to Sarah that he wasn't willing to accept her into his program sight unseen. Gillian's assurances of her grad student's exceptional beauty notwithstanding, Barrow needed to make sure that Sarah was USF material. Sarah submitted a single naked selfie at first, but was asked for more. She'd been forced to ask her roommate Audrey to play photographer in an awkward and deeply embarrassing photo shoot.

Still, it wasn't as if Sarah was fully prepared for this moment, and none of it made what she had to do next any easier. She glanced back over her shoulder, double-checking that Mrs. Lowrie had, in fact, closed the door, and began by kicking off her shoes.

Sarah was on the precipice of major, character-defining moment in her life, compromising her dignity and modesty to get ahead in her chosen field; neither Barrow nor Gillian paid her much mind. Instead, the Director of Human Capital was inviting his former college professor to sit down in one of the two open chairs across from his desk. He asked her if he could send Mrs. Lowrie to fetch her a coffee, and she declined. He asked her if she was going to spend the rest of the morning in Manhattan, or if she'd be on a train back to New Haven. Small talk. Chit-chat. Passing the time.

Shoes now off, and gently kicked aside, Sarah shed the blazer she'd borrowed from Audrey at some point in the preceding weeks. She wasn't sure why she'd borrowed it initially, or how it had wound up with the things she'd brought with her from New Haven for the summer. She wasn't sure that Audrey would have pleased to know she'd worn here today; though supportive and understanding -- eventually - Audrey had done her damnedest to talk Sarah out of going through with all this. But Sarah had needed something to wear over her sleeveless blouse, and Audrey's jacket happened to be the same shade of navy as the skirt Sarah had picked out. Or, at least close enough that someone could be forgiven in believing they actually went together.

"I try to have Mistress Zero here with me, at this stage, as much as possible," Barrow was explaining to Gillian. "But she's likely still wrapping up downstairs, and I figured she could sit this one out."

"Less contentious than most?" Gillian asked.

"Most of our candidates aren't usually this eager."

Sarah's stomach turned. Apparently, she was more "eager" than other girls to take off her clothes and join the mailgirl ranks.