The Peter Principle

The Summoning

Dr. Catherine D'Great finally opened the door.

"Sorry to make you wait, Mr. Crachit. I'm running a little late today."

Robbie took in the elaborate furnishings of her office: A desk made of pure petrified wood, a wide consulting couch that appeared to be sleep number adjustable, and two lava lamps mounted on opposite walls. Above him loomed a chandelier made of glass tubing that rose like a flower before plummeting downward on all sides, like a fountain of liquid light overflowing its containment. This last marvel of modern photoelectronics resembled nothing so much as a giant luminiferous jellyfish that would sting and slay all trespassers. Such a fountain should be surrounded by the marbleized statues of those foolish enough to peek at such Medusan beauty, Robbie thought.

He was shamed when he compared this grand office to the squalor of the main floor cubicle which served as his own humble abode and prison.

"Please do come in and sit down, Mr. Crachit," said the distinguished Dr. D'Great. Robbie obediently, but with considerable trepidation, entered her realm and sat down in one of the chairs facing her magnificent desk.

"Do you know who I am?" asked the great Dr. D'Great, as she plopped down on the soft leather of her Eames Executive Chair, which came complete with hydraulic lift, automatic tushie and lumbar massagers, and tricked out with a specially-installed state-of-the-art random-interval clit squeezer, manufactured by HydroTweak, your leader in electronic erotic office furniture.

"Some people call you the terminator," Robbie said. "They say that lots of people who walk through the door to your office are never seen again. Or at least they quit after a few weeks."

"Do you think that your work is sufficiently poor to merit termination?"

"Nnnn-no, Dr. Great," Robbie muttered, shaking his head from side to side.

"There are no formalities here, Mr. Crachit. Just call me Catherine or Tina if you prefer. And may I call you Bob?"

"No please don't, Dr. D'Great. You don't know how many Dickensian jokes I have suffered through all my life ever since the movie 'Scrooged' was released."

Catherine smiled beatifically at her frequently-lampooned underling, "OK, 'Robbie' it is then. Do you know why you are here, Robbie?"

He shook his head in sorrow and fear.

"Do you remember telling Sophia Linguini that you liked her new dress? Let see, this occurred at precisely 9:43 AM on September third in the copy room."

"No, nnnn-not really," he whispered, his head bowed in fear.

"While let me refresh your memory, Robbie," she snapped and punched one of the buttons on the clicker for her 65-inch plasma TV.

The Redundant Taping of Nasal Malfeasance

"You need to remember that you're living in the 21st century, Robbie. There are cameras and monitors tracking your every move and key stroke, including your cell phone and your computer. None of us is free from this. To illustrate, let me call up a video shot by your own computer camera last Friday."

The 65-inch plasma screen now displayed a high definition close-up of Robbie's face. God, he should have been more ruthless with that zit.

The camera now zoomed in on Robbie's nose. Maybe he should pick up a nose-hair clipper on the way home, Robbie thought.

But what was this? Arise, fair index finger, and kill the devious snot. The giant plasma screen was now filled with Robbie's proboscis and daring digit. The fate of the latter was already sealed as it ascended into Robbie's nostril. It wriggled around like a hapless eel being hauled in by a sniggler's hook. No detail went unrevealed as said pointer finger withdrew its quarry from Robbie's nostril, a nine-inch goober festively colored in green and crimson. Robbie watched helplessly as his former self attempted to shake the dastardly wanna-be hawker directly into the wastebasket. But a tenacious booger will cleave to thy digit more tightly than velcro and cling wrap (someone really should patent this adhesion property of nasal secretions, Robbie thought). It was as if Robbie's fingers were trapped in a Chinese finger trap.

There was only one solution, Robbie's former self knew. He had to get to the men's room, without anybody catching a glimpse of the offending would-be loogie dangling from his finger. The cameras picked him up as he arose from his cubicle chair and hightailed it to the plumbing facilities, looking like a Harlem Globetrotter dribbling a basketball of pure mucus. Only about 10% of the drudging drones looked up from their digital instruments of torture to see Robbie's faux cager performance as he maneuvered his way past their cubicles, but 10% was a lot. Future Robbie's face now matched the crimson shade of past Robbie's countenance.

Nefarious Activity in the Restroom

The cameras tracked him all the way into the men's room. "Hey, Crachit, what's up with the ten pound hawker dangling from your hand," the always observant Jake Marley asked with a leering smile.

"Fucking new office product. Computer screen cleaning fluid. It sucks, don't try it." Robbie went into one of the shitter stalls for privacy. He could hear the massive farts of Jimmy Breezemaker in the other stall, which exuded a sulfur stench even the Devil would balk as inhaling. These gaseous eruptions were followed by an explosion that would make even the Enola Gay envious. The resulting high-speed shrapnel of fecal matter was audible even on this surveillance tape.

The plasma screen switched to an overhead of Robbie's stall. It displayed a high-definition picture of the bowel carnage left behind by one of the previous occupants, which included a catastrophically soiled extra-large pair of Haynes underwear. Probably an earlier deposit by the still-defecating Breezemaker, Robbie thought. He hastily wiped the offending booger off his own hand with toilet paper, which he then threw on top of the excremental Jackson Pollock presumably left by Jimmy Breezemaker.

Robbie's mother had always taught him to flush a toilet after doing his business. The earlier Robbie had mulled over this advice. The thought occurred to him that Breezemaker may have already tried this maneuver with unfavorable results. But even so, Robbie felt compelled to flush. His family honor was at stake here. He reached down and pushed the flush button.

Two hundred milliseconds later, Robbie Crachit's face, shirt, trousers and hair were festooned with so many brown polka dots that he looked like Lucy Ricardo at the chocolate factory. The spraying water seemly had concentrated its effort on his crotch. This was not good, the earlier Robbie had thought, and he pondered his options. He figured he could ambush the next cleaner or maybe ask the next unfamiliar person to enter the restroom for help. He knew he could always depend on the kindness of strangers.

The Recounting of Humiliations Past

After a few moments of silence to allow Robbie to regain his composure, Dr. D'Great said, "So you need to come into the 21st century, Robbie. Every movement you make, including the explosive one we have just witnessed as well as every booger you pick is captured on camera. None of us is exempt from this. We are all under constant video and computerized surveillance. That is why we all must take measures to maintain our dignity and privacy.

"I'm here to help you, Robbie. We can't just fire every nostril-raping file clerk we run across. It is much cheaper, and much more humane, to offer such employees counseling and neurological reprogramming and realignment. "

She smiled sympathetically and whispered, "I am not the terminator, Robbie. I'm only a humble human relationships counselor, almost as far down the hierarchy as you are, if such a thing is even possible."

Robbie looked around at the desk made of petrified wood and the cascading hair of the fiber optic chandelier, and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, all this?" Catherine said. "This is the office of the VP of Human Resources. We've had to share facilities, as everything is under construction now to make way for the new Human Rendition Center, in which the most advanced non-Western therapeutic techniques will be made available to all OrwellCorp employees."

She picked up Robbie's hand and examined his fingernails. They looked like they would be a bitch to pull off, even using Grade 5 fine tweezers. "But these techniques don't really apply in your case, Robbie, so I am afraid you're stuck with us. Sorry."

Crimes of the Tongue

"Now let's get to the reason you're here," Catherine said. "Roll tape Crachit 22!" she barked to some unseen underling. The giant plasma screen was suddenly filled with an overhead view of the copy room time, time-stamped September 3, 2014 9:43 AM. Robbie had just picked up his print job, and Sophia Linguini entered with a couple of reports to be photocopied.

"Oh hhh-hi, Sophia!" Robbie shyly stammered. "I lll-like your new dress," he said in a low voice as he exited the copy room.

"Now do you know why you were called into my office?" Catherine asked the bashful Assistant Senior Clerk for the Re-Collation of Fumbled Files.

"Nnnn-no," said the abashed master of paper shuffling.

"Have you not read the OrwellCorp Employee Handbook, Robbie?"

"I tried, but it was very long and they kept me busy 80 hours a week with other stuff."

"If you had read it, as you were supposed to, you would know that you are never to comment on the appearance or apparel of your fellow Associates. Do you remember that directive? No? Well, it's right here in Paragraph 173.500.2HH3, which appears on page 1874 of the very first volume of the Handbook. You have no excuse for not memorizing it.

"Did you know that Sophia is most probably suffering from a genetic disease called mammary hypertrophy, which affects 40% of Italian women, 70% if you just consider Southern Italy? In Sophia's case, she is forced to wear an H cup brassiere. Do you know what an H cup bra means, Robbie?"

"I never learned my alphabet that far, Dr. D'Great."

"Yes, that shows in your file-collating performance, Robbie. Big time."

The Peter Principle

"Wwww-why don't they just reassign me then?"

"Because we adhere to scientific management techniques, Robbie. Have you never heard of the Peter Principle?"

"Yeah, I think they maybe went over that at orientation a couple of years ago."

"Well, to refresh your memory, in 1969 Dr. Laurence J. Peter discovered a phenomenon that later became known as the 'Peter Principle,' which states that employees will be promoted so long as are they are competent in their present jobs. When employees are finally promoted to jobs in which they are incompetent, they will no longer be promoted and will remain in those jobs forever. This explains why in any organization, the vast majority of employees are incompetent in the jobs they hold."

"Wow, that must mean that I was competent at my job as Assistant Junior Clerk for the Gathering Up of Fumbled Files!" A wide grin spread over Robbie's face. "But why don't they just put all of us back in our old jobs?"

"No can do, Robbie. The Peter Principle is like a law of physics, you could no more violate it than a politician could part the Red Sea."

Robbie began to raise an objection, but then remembered that he was prohibited from speaking about religion in the workplace.

"Also, it makes all our employees thank their lucky stars that they even have a job. So you see Robbie, it's much better that way, it eliminates the turmoil and complaints and establishes a workplace of peace and harmony, as nothing ever gets done.

"To get back to the matter at hand, by complementing Sophia Linguini for her new dress, you are essentially saying to her that you want to liberate her Godzilla-sized hooters from their flimsy H-cup prisons, bury your head in her cleavage, give them a hummer, rip that much-beloved new dress from her body and rape her in ways that you cannot even imagine at your tender age. Do you now see why we have rules about commenting on our fellow associates' physical appearances and, in Sophia Linguini's case, her medical condition?"

Robbie solemnly nodded.

"We don't blame you entirely, Robbie. We have used computerized boob recognition algorithms to estimate Ms. Linguini's exposed cleavage in that new dress to be six inches long. Under paragraph 546.300.5GG7 of the second volume of the previous OrwellCorp Employee Handbook (which I don't imagine you've read either), this would not be allowed and you, Robbie, would have been entirely blameless in this matter.

"However, in the face of protests by outside agitators from the National Mega-Honkers Liberation Front, this dress code regulation was changed to 33% of potential total cleavage for this year. Our computerized titty recognition and estimation algorithms indicate that Ms. Linguini's potential total cleavage is well over two feet. Thus, her exposed cleavage is less than 25% of maximum. So she is well within dress code regulations, not that I wouldn't mind doing her myself you understand. I am only human, just as you are. But we must control our impulses."

"We also have a tape of you complementing Lisa Wong on her new haircut last Thursday. Do I need to run it?"

"No," Robbie whispered, tears streaming down his face. He was going to lose his job. Who would take care of tiny Tim? It would take more than his morbidly obese wife Jackie managed to pull down at the strip club. She kept claiming that her tips were getting lost in her rolls of fat. But he knew she was holding out on him.

"There, there" Catherine said, dabbing the tears from his eyes. "We're not going to fire you. We want to help you. Will you accept our help, Robbie?"

Robbie nodded, choking down a last sob.

The Examination

"OK, let's get started. I'll tell you what, why don't you stand up so that I can examine you?" Robbie reluctantly stood up, not knowing what was going to happen next. Elizabeth walked over him and immediately took his balls in her hands, running her palms over them and rhythmically squeezing them as she looked up at Robbie's eyes, searching them for any sign of pain, discomfort, or embarrassment. He simply stood at attention, unflinching.

"You've got some mighty big cojones there, Robert Crachit! And you can take a squeeze, I'll give you that. But can you take a vise?" she asked him, as she brutally squeezed his man orbs.

Tears ran down Robbie' cheeks, due to both his pain and his embarrassment. His penis however had a different take on the situation and immediately shot up to near-maximum height. After all, Dr. Catherine D'Great had a certain je ne sais quoi, or should he say va-va-voom? Having no knowledge of French, he really didn't know. Robbie's corpulent stripper wife Jackie had at most voom, or should he say "boom," in view of the pain and suffering of those desperately horny bastards in the front row who had absorbed her 750 pounds of flesh when she fell off the stage during her finale at the old strip club. They had almost lost their home because of that carnage, and poor tiny Tim had come within a hair of being homeless. At least that lying bastard Fred Hendrickson had failed to convince the jury that the impact of one-fifth of a human body could cause a man's chest to become concave (although Robbie himself had no doubts on that score).

The Diagnosis

"Oh boys, oh boys, I think we're going to need a bigger cunt," Dan August, OrwellCorp's Director of Computerized Phallometrics, cried out in panic. "This is no Viagra-induced priapismic boner. This is the Great White Cock, as prophesied long ago by the sages Flynt and Guccione, may pieces of ass be upon them. Look at the thing. It has to be at least twelve inches long."

Catherine, scratched her nails down a slate chalkboard that was part of the OrwellCorps history display. "Thirteen, with a two-inch radius," she said in a raspy voice. It was in fact the largest nonequine cock she had ever seen, save for the mummified shaft of Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, which now lay in repose in the Ripley's Believe it of Not Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, or was it the NBA Hall of Fame?

Her hands went to Robbie's collar and waist, and then suddenly yanked the secret pull tabs that were sewn into all OrwellCorp uniforms. Robbie now found himself buck-naked in front of the assembled multitude.

"I knew it. Infrared camera don't lie. Well folks, you all know me. You know what I do for a living. I know one cunt that can handle it, that's for damn sure, and that belongs to yours truly. Any of you girls and sissies who want to come along for the ride are free to join in. Just don't forget that I am the Director of this mission."

She gave Robbie's balls a wakeup squeeze. "Well, Robbie, I see that you are in even deeper trouble now."

"What do you mean, I ain't done nuthin' wrong."

"Well Robbie, you walked up to me and placed your naked balls in my hands, in front of all these witness, Isn't that right?" All the potential witnesses nodded in fear.

With her free hand, she grabbed Robbie's shaft hard and gave it a couple of pumps. "Now, look what you've done. You placed your cock in my curled hand and started ramming it up and down my poor virgin palm. Isn't that right?"

The witnesses nodded in unison.

"The tape will confirm this," Catherine said, pointing at the camera mounted in the corner of the room.

Robbie didn't see how that was possible, but he gulped anyway.

The Treatment

"Do you know why I have grabbed your balls and am sliding my hand up and down this magnificent cock of yours?" Catherine asked.

Robbie shook his head.

"It is to teach you control. So that you will be the master of your cravings, rather than their slave. Have you ever wondered why our corridors are jam-packed with fornicating naked associates?"

Robbie shook his head, although he had wondered at times.

"Many of these are associates that have yet to complete the sensitivity training you are about to receive. They have not yet mastered their base urges and instincts. Some associates are slower to see the inner light than others. It takes great discipline to master these aphrodisiacally-enhanced urges. Alas, only some succeed."

"Wouldn't it be simpler not to give them aphrodisiacs in the first place? Then they wouldn't have to control them."

"Robbie, I am afraid you have a limited grasp of our business model here at OrwellCorp, which is only to be expected for a collation clerk. It will all become clear to you in time. All too clear, I am afraid."

"Well, that's a relief. One load off my mind. When can we get started?"

Casting Call

"How about right now?"

"Gee, that would be neat, Beaver, I mean Dr. D'Great."

"You see that tab on the lapel of my shirt, Robbie?"

Robbie nodded.

"Pull it with all your might."

Robbie did so, and suddenly Dr. D'Great was topless. She had the largest hooters he had ever seen, even bigger than Jackie's when they occasionally popped out of her rolls of fat and were briefly visible to the naked eye.

Robbie had often thought that it would be nicer to have a wife that looked more like the other strippers at the club or like Dr. D'Great, rather than a spherical blob of adipose tissue that appealed primarily to highly-specialized, psychologically-twisted fetishists.

"Grab the zipper on my pants."

Robbie immediately complied.

"Now yank it down hard."

Robbie did so, and now Dr. D'Great was bottomless as well. The muscles of her tawny legs were well-developed but soft at the same time. Robbie's shaft made it to fourteen inches and counting.

She kicked off her shoes, and indicated with her eyes that he should do the same. He did.

"Is this not a violation of the dress code?" Robbie asked.

Catherine patted his cheek. "Don't sweat it, cutie," she said. "It's all in the interest of therapy."