[Patreon Exclusive] GETTING THE JOB: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Jared has been working for Herman Prosthetics for years, but that promotion he’s always wanted (and deserved) has just never come his way. The reason: they say he’s just too valuable down in the workshop, building artificial body parts. But Jared gets an idea after eavesdropping on two of his managers, who apparently blackmailed their way into their well-paid positions. Jared knows one thing about his boss, Michael Herman: he loves women.

Jared’s got the skills to turn himself into a beautiful, convincing woman. But does he have the skills he needs to seduce his boss and get something he can use to blackmail his way into a corner office?

Chapter 1

You wouldn’t think so, but being too good at your job can be a real problem. How backwards is that? I worked my ass off for years at Herman Prosthetics, hoping to work my way up to one of the coveted, well-paid management positions in one of those upstairs corner offices. But no matter how hard I worked, I never got the promotion I wanted. Sure, I got a few raises, and I eventually became the ‘team leader’ downstairs, in the shop, but I never got an office, I never got a desk, I never got that manager title I wanted so badly. And what about the guys who came in late and did a half-ass job? Of course they eventually worked their way up the ranks. One of the guys I trained during my first year had managed to become the director of the entire company.

So why not me? “You’re too valuable to us down in the shop,” they told me when, after years of building up confidence I finally asked. “How’s about a dollar an hour raise?” was their counter-proposal. It wasn’t about the money. I made decent money, more than I needed to live within my comfort zone. I wanted the recognition. I wanted the title. Unfortunately, it was starting to seem like that was never going to happen.

My job was fairly simple—at least I thought it was. No one seemed to be able to do it half as good as I could. The designers upstairs would create some hand-drawn mock-ups of different prosthetic pieces and I would build the prototypes down in the shop. Sometimes I had to create a few different versions before the guys upstairs were happy and they sent my prototype off to another shop to be produced on a larger scale. We mostly made fake arms and legs for amputees, and occasionally we got to make more interesting pieces for big movie sets, though with computer graphics quickly taking over the film market, that was becoming less and less common.

The highlight of my job was seeing the guys upstairs looking at my pieces in awe, watching them touch the pieces, hearing them say, “It looks and feels so real.” The worst part of my job was watching them turn to the engineers with big smiles on their faces. “You’ve really done it this time. Good job!” The praise was never for me, even though all those lazy engineers ever did was send me some rough doodles and some vague dimensions. I was the one who did all the work. I was the one who worked evenings and weekends and hardly ever got to spend time at home. It was totally unfair.

Every September, the bosses of Herman Prosthetics, including Michael Herman himself, would hold their third quarter progress meeting downtown, in a private booth at the local Oktoberfest festival. It was less of a meeting and more of an excuse to hang around scantily clad ladies, drink lots of beer, and get away from work for a bit (not that they spent much time at the office anyway). I know this because I was there at the Oktoberfest festival, eating dinner with some friends of mine, when I saw them from across the establishment. I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but I decided that enough was enough. I was going to go up to them and demand my promotion, demand my office upstairs. Maybe it was the effects of the beer seeping into my brain, or maybe I really was just finally fed up (probably a combination of the two things).

I marched over to their table. “Mr. Herman,” I said, standing tall and confident.

He looked up at me with narrowed eyes for a moment before tilting his head slightly. “You look familiar,” he said, slurring his words slightly. He took a big sip from his beer, spilling a bit onto his lap. Under his arm was a Bavarian beauty, dressed in the traditional dirndl—a beer maiden goddess. The men with him had Bavarian beauties of their own. Unfit, older men with some of the most beautiful women on the planet… And they say money can’t buy happiness. “I know!” Herman finally shouted. “You work in the shop. You’re name is…” He scratched his balding head.

“Jared, sir,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Another time, Jared. We’re busy here.”

“It’s very important,” I said, though Mr. Herman was probably right, it probably was a topic more appropriate for another day. Still, I went on. “I think I deserve a promotion. I think I should be a manager and I should get an office upstairs.”

Everyone at the table stared at me for a moment and then they all started to laugh. “Get out of here,” he said, shooing me away with his hand. “You should be ashamed of yourself, interrupting a business meeting like this.” Maybe I should have stood my ground, but my confidence was rattled and my ego was destroyed. I backed away and made my way back home. Luckily I didn’t lose my job. Luckily, no one even seemed to remember my proposition. Maybe the booze had my back and erased their memories. But I learned my lesson. After that, I stayed away from Mr. Herman and I began to lose sight of my dreams of making my way upstairs.

Until I learned a little secret about Mr. Herman.

The annual Oktoberfest festivities were approaching once again and I found myself alone in a bar one night after work. I’d just spent fifteen hours in the shop trying to figure out how to make the fake skin on a prosthetic arm more realistic. “It’s too rubbery,” the engineers told me, giving me no suggestions on how to improve it. Their goal was to make “the world’s most realistic prosthetics.” It was more like their goal for me, rather than their own goal. It was part of Mr. Herman’s new company mission, which was a response to dwindling profits in a terrible second quarter (and a worse third quarter).

As I was sitting at that bar, I heard a familiar voice. A few seats down from me were two of the managers from Herman Prosthetics. They were discussing the reasons behind the company’s recent failings. “What do you mean you don’t know why profits are slipping?” one of the managers said. “The reason’s obvious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. How did you get your job? How did I get my job? How did Erin get her job?”

I carefully turned my face away from the men, so I wouldn’t be noticed or recognized. I wanted to hear what they had to say. Herman had just laid off a dozen employees. Everyone knew things were rough, but no one knew why. No one was piping up. Did I have to worry about my own job? Was Herman Prosthetics going to go out of business?

“What are you saying?” one of the managers asked.

“I’m saying, this is what happens when no one is actually qualified to do their job. This is what happens when your CEO is corrupt.” I listened to the two men chat for the rest of the evening. From what I was able to piece together, they both got their jobs thanks to ‘gifts’ from their very rich parents. Erin, the company’s hiring manager, apparently got her job by sleeping with someone in a high up position (who, I should point out, was married). By the sounds of it, there were very few people working upstairs who actually earned their place.

And by the sounds of it, Mr. Herman was a man for sale. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to get my own promotion, which was too bad, because after listening to the two men talk all night, I knew I could fix things. After years of working for the company, getting to know everyone and all corners of every operation, I knew exactly who needed to go, who needed to be promoted. I knew which materials the company could cut back on. For instance, the engineers insisted on using a product called Meleonite for the artificial bones, but there was a plastic product called Gyrex-III that was a tenth of the price, and just as good (they were under the assumption that anything plastic was cheap, a silly assumption).

Everyone who worked upstairs got stock in the company. If I could just get upstairs and lift the place back up, everyone would love me. I could be the hero. I could make everyone rich—if they would just give me a chance.

The next day, the fellow I trained who had managed to become president of the company, was arrested for laundering money. There was an opening. “Who’s going to be the new president?” everyone downstairs was asking.

“Mr. Herman won’t be making any final decisions until after the third quarter progress meeting,” it was announced. As you would expect, everyone downstairs was excited. If one of the managers gets upgraded to president, that meant there would be an open management position. It was all anyone could talk about. “Who’s it going to be? Who’s going to get the spot?”

Unlike my co-workers, I wasn’t excited. I knew it wasn’t going to be me, because I knew that I was “too valuable downstairs”. And after listening to those managers in the bar, I had a good feeling it wasn’t going to be any of my co-workers either.

That afternoon, we got a private order for a film—a full female body. Apparently there was a scene in the movie where the bad guy throws a naked prostitute out of the window and needed to have a realistic dummy to fall down to the ground. “As realistic as you can possibly make her,” the client said, so naturally I was given the job.

And that evening, as I began to form my moulds, I had an idea.