New corporate policy, immediate implementation

[John_Q_Dough]

Kim’s mornings rarely varied. Precision was her ritual, and ritual was her armor. As Director of Human Resources for a Fortune 100 firm in New Jersey, she was expected to be the embodiment of order. Her office clothes were what coworkers half-jokingly called her uniform—dark stockings, black patent leather heels, a fitted A-line skirt, and a crisp white blouse starched to an almost unimaginable stiffness. The polished silver cufflinks at her sleeves caught the soft glow of her desk lamp as she sat, poised, graceful, unyielding.

She glided her chair across the glass floor mat, the whisper of her heels a measured cadence of control. Everything was as it should be—until she clicked open the morning email from London. The subject line read: “For Immediate Implementation.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, scanning the lines. The correspondence from D. Andrews Posiktre, Chairman of the Board, was written in the tone of any ordinary corporate directive—procedural, bureaucratic, stripped of warmth. But its content was anything but ordinary.

The message detailed a sweeping new policy: immediate implementation of “office corporal punishment.” It described proceedings of “trial by peers,” punishment “meted out by the accuser,” witnessed by the entire division, and executed with implements acquired from London’s curiosity shops. Kim reread the paragraph twice, her mind brushing instinctively against disbelief before settling into the trained compliance of a career bureaucrat.

As the words settled, the absurdity turned cold. Anonymous accusations. Punishment administered by managers and subordinates alike. Execution within twenty-four hours. The memo dictated that managers were not exempt. Kim’s name and authority, in black ink near the top, confirmed she was both subject and enforcer.

 

[John_Q_Dough]

A faint tremor passed through the fluorescent silence of her office. In the distant hallway, a printer cycled through a batch of forms—her forms, the company’s heartbeat of compliance and recordkeeping. The irony was not lost on her that she would soon be drafting a new Standard Operating Procedure for “disciplinary implementation involving corporal correction.”

Kim sat perfectly still, hands folded, staring at the date—Thursday, November 7, the deadline. Exactly one week to turn madness into policy. Her training told her to act without question. Her instinct told her to run. But her face betrayed neither. In corporate hierarchies, defiance was a myth; procedure was survival.

She straightened her collar, reopened a new document, and titled it:

“Standard Operating Procedure: Behavioral Accountability and Corrective Actions – Immediate Compliance Draft.”

The cursor blinked, waiting. Somewhere between reason and obedience, Kim began to type.





The confirmation came in less than four hours—a speed that, under other circumstances, might have impressed her. London had approved the SOP in full. The directive was blunt: effective November 14.

An addendum trailed the approval, attached as a plain memo from Logistics. The shipment, it explained, contained the standardized “disciplinary apparatus”—a reinforced bench and accompanying implements—purchased in volume for every branch office. Instructions were explicit: the bench was to be placed in the center of the main floor’s open-plan area, visible to all.

Kim read the email twice, her fingers tightening on the armrest of her chair. The document was stamped with the familiar company crest, its bland corporate serif font lending bureaucratic dignity to what, in any civil context, would be criminal.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Where is the idea? I can read it from the context, but this seems more like the start of a story than an actual idea. And what I can glean from it, it only has the start of the idea. More a world building type. It is now true that there's corporeal punishment in a weeks time.

Maybe it isn't intended, but as you post on Lit I expect that erotism is part of it. Will there be full on rape? Is it just about punishment and some people enjoying it? Where do you want to take the story, and as it might involve breaking the rules of Lit, should you?

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

I agree with @Husky_Embrace. You are already into describing atmosphere, and the style sounds like AI to me.
But the way you characterized Kim seems like a good starting point.

Some questions:

The new rule is of course outrageous which you must have a concept for.
Shall the story be in a world, where this would just be accepted? Solves a lot of problems, but is a bit flat.

Or what if the company operates in todays reality? From a European point of view, almost anything seems possible in the new great USA. Maybe the rule gets enforced but no one dares to make it public.

What triggred the rule? If you establish a disciplinary rule there must be something that required disciplinary action.

Kim is in HR so explaining such a rule to the employess might be her task as well as organizing the details.


Then when the rule is established, we have public spankings in the office. And then? Where does this lead to?

 

[Aviastroitel]

After a management change a company implements a new policy of corporal punishment for "behavioral" issues - coming in late, taking too much time at lunch, not cleaning up after ones self, too many personal calls, leaving early.

But, for 'Outback Boomerangs and Sporting Goods LLC' it backfires. Sales plummet as almost everyone comes in late, takes too much time at lunch, fails to cleaning up after themselves, takes too many personal calls. But, on the bright side, although almost no work gets done, nobody leaves early.

They are too busy spanking each other and doing the nasty on that big table in the conference room. Plus, their butts are all too sore to sit down for the drive home.

 

[Rob_Royale]

You would have to set this in the past. In todays world it's just too implausble and employers could be sued to backrupsy in nothing flat.

Setting it in the past would avoid this connundrum back before there were labor laws.

Or set this in an entirely new world with culture unlike our own.

 

[dirk2024]

Well, we are on a fantasy fiction site. So doing it in the "now" would be fine, in my opinion, with a world that had minimal labor laws. It surely wouldn't be the first time current reality took a backseat.


I find the concept intriguing. The only issue I would see is that people would fake a complaint so their "victim" would be punished for no real reason. So you'd need to work hard to make sure no fake complaints were filed. Perhaps a faker would get caught and punished for crafting the lie.