SPRINGING AHEAD... A Busy Time (Part 127a)

SPRINGING AHEAD... A Busy Time (Part 127a)

March was shaping up to be a hectic one both at work and at home. If there was one thing that I was looking forward to it was what was happening to the house next door. Celia, the owner, had moved to live with her sister and put the house up for sale. The house had been vacant since just before the end of the year and every so often I’d see some indication that someone had been looking at it, usually by a light left on. The first indication that something positive had happened was seeing a couple of trucks over in the driveway. On the way to work I stopped at the realty office to ask Vic, the salesperson, what was happening. I was hoping that he’d been able to sell it for Celia. But, he hadn’t. Celia hadn’t paid the property taxes in a few years and it had been sold at a tax sale. All I could think of was poor Celia and her daughter not getting anything for it. Vic told me that he thought it was being taken over by a developer from up West who was going to modernize it to sell. Selfishly, I was glad that we might soon get a new neighbor.

At work, all the “chatter” was about Cassie, the teller who was getting married on the upcoming weekend. Two of the other tellers were asked to be in the wedding party. The dresses for the bridesmaids had been bought out of a catalog and the ones for the two girls had been delivered to the bank. All the females wanted to see what they looked like so, as soon as the doors were closed to the public all the women clamored to see them. I wasn’t happy about it but let them have some fun before getting them back to work and proving up for the day.

The woman I’d hired to replace Cassie, Donna, had picked up on the duties of a teller very rapidly. She was 40 years old and had no previous experience. In fact she hadn’t worked since her son was born some 15 years earlier. She’d held some sort of low level supervisory position for a big company in the city. Well dressed and well spoken, she won me over right from the start of her interview. It didn’t hurt that she was attractive. Initial feedback on her was that she was very good with the customers. However, I was also getting some “rumblings” that the other tellers found her to be somewhat “haughty” in the dealings with her.  The report was that she thought some of her duties were a bit beneath her. I called her over to discuss it and quickly found that she was, very much, a flirt and adept at diverting the conversation from the topic at hand. I picked up on it right away and told her that she was to follow the job description and direction from Cara, the teller training her. I told her that after she’d proven she could do the job that we’d listen to her “suggestions”. The whole while I was talking she had a somewhat smirky smile on her face and kept batting her eyelashes. She’d been sitting at the side chair along side my desk with her legs crossed. As the conversation went on she’d managed to hike the hem of her skirt up about halfway up her her thigh. Then, when she got up to leave, very slowly uncrossed her legs while spreading her knees. It caused me to swallow hard. There was no way not to see right up to her crotch. She was wearing red panties. That was a first for me. I’d seen them in the stores but never on a living, breathing woman. As she walked away I began to wonder what my facial expression had been. I also wondered if it wasn’t I who was being “schooled”.

I’d started collecting data on dress codes at other banks and found they were pretty much in the same situation as we were. One of the banks I contacted had been taken to court by a female employee who had been sent home because her skirt was too high. It got settled out of court but the bank was still struggling on how to police it. A while back, Trish, representing the “Polish Mafia” and some other females at the bank, approached me about the possibility of wearing pants/trousers to work. I told her I’d work on it and, in making the calls, broached that subject with them. One bank told me they had allowed it and used it as a “carrot” to get the females with short skirts and hemlines to “tone it down”. Hearing that, I pretty much felt had a solution that the Board of Trustees might go for.

The Board of Trustees maintained any number of sub committees to consider various bank related topics. There were three members who seemed to be on most of them because they were always coming and going, usually meeting with Bert, the president. Following one of those meetings I got a call from J J, the mortgage officer. For some reason they had convened right outside his office door and he’d overheard them talking about the possibility of opening a branch office and he though I might like to know about it. I’d not heard anything about it but knew that they (the Board) were concerned about the inroads a new Savings and Loan that had opened West of our town had been making due to an aggressive ad campaign. When I heard J J mention a branch I put the two together. My first thought was that it would mean more work for me and my days were already full. I couldn’t dwell on the subject with only J J’s word to go on but it was something I had to keep in mind..

Another project that I had to have finished by the end of the month was gathering empirical data concerning the bank using and outside service bureau to process our banking transactions. I’d started on it a few times in the past and when I’d provided a guesstimate on the costs of just the new equipment  I was told to stop. Being just a junior officer didn’t give me much standing to protest the shortsightedness of their thinking. I knew we were just one equipment breakdown from a public relations disaster but they were only thinking of the capital expenditure. At least this time the direction had come from the president at the last Board meeting so I felt a little better as I set about gathering up the information on options the bank could take.

Certainly not far from my thoughts was “B’s” racecar. He’d called me about midweek to confirm that I’d be available to work on putting the motor together. It was a lot easier to take one apart than putting one together. Actually, my primary interest was in finding out what happened when “B” told Jon about Jon’s sister, Leigh, using their Summer house for a tryst (or two) but with Elle nearby decided to wait.

At the very end of my priority list was the party Elle and I were to host for the “group”. I truly believed in the “cause”, that of changing the members of the Board of Education who seemed to live in the past. However, Pat (the PTA lady), with her controlling ways, had worn her welcome out with me. I wasn’t looking forward to the gathering as they’d become more of a meeting than a party. I rather enjoyed the way they’d been when Elle and I had been asked to join in. I knew she’d coerced Bob into running for one of the two positions and was now badgering Fritz to run for the other. I wasn’t looking forward to our “party”.

To be continued...