The third winner of my weekly contest is an ex-car salesman and a woman. Weird combination, eh? Her name’s Sarah Slabaugh and this story is from when she used to sell cars. From the way her co-workers described her in her story, she must have sold them well. Phenomenally well.

I don’t have a fear of heights, I simply have a problem with my personal space being invaded.

For two days we are having one of those godawful little teamwork building seminars. You know, when you sit around and talk about how to improve the company. You congratulate each other on your various strong points. You reinvent the wheel. And you also have those fun little exercises where you are supposed to learn to trust and love your co-workers. Stuff, The Office, was based on.

The first clever execise was jumping off a ladder into the outstretched arms of our co-workers. Mind you, most people were scared at the jumping off the ladder bit. Personally, I have no problem with heights, it was the touching and groping of my ass that I had a problem with. I am SO not a touchy-feely person. Handshakes are the extent of it. Occasionally, a super happy customer decides to hug me as a sign of their extreme gratefulness. Well. That’s what I think it is. (Another co-worker posed the possibility they are simply trying to cop a feel.) In any event, I am not terribly comfortable with touching of any kind. This could be because I work in the car business which is a cesspool of germs, STD’s and creeps. So, I think my fears are rather justified.

However. This exercise was for me/us to fall ass-first into the outstretched hands of co-workers. Not to mention, you had to stand on a ladder with you ass facing them so they could stare at it until you gathered the courage to fling yourself into their outstretched and rather eager palms.

For those of you who might like to argue that it was better than falling on the concrete. Don’t. Because I’m not to sure about that. I managed to get through it with minimal ass-gropage, but was horrified to realize, as someone told me later, apparently the top of my thong was peeking out above my pants. I SO did not want to go there.

I was trembling in the terror of what the next’s day’s exercises held. Snuggling? Group spooning?

It went bad to worse. I don’t know if you’re paticularly familiar with the activity where you have wire stretched across a frame forming impossibly small holes that you are supposed to hoist impossibly fat people through–without touching the wire. (It basically looks like a spiderweb, made out of rope.)

Our fearless leader did a very careful job of painting a rather vivid picture of the spider web we were passing our team members through. We were in the Amazon. If we touched the web, the giant spider would come down and eat us. (Er, excuse me, is this kindergarten all over again?! Are we truly supposed to be terrified by imaginary animals?) In any event, we were to work as a team. They refused to face the fact most of us would have rather picked a team member to sacrifice to the “spider” so we could kill it and thereby skip the exercise entirely. (Realism wasn’t too high on the list of priorities, apparently.)

Since we had plenty of strong/fat/huge guys willing to prove their strength, all this particular challenge required for me to do was stiffen my body and allow eight men to grab various parts of my body and pass me through the “web”. As soon as the exercise was announced I shrank to the back of the group and began furiously praying we would run out of time before it would be my turn. Ah. No such luck.

One other fellow I work with also has the same negative feelings about being touched. We were trying to give each other moral support, but kept imagining even worse scenarios for one another. He won hands down when he began pointing out that he was sure there would be no shortage of volunteers to try and tuck by perky boobs through. You know, just to be sure they didn’t touch the wire. Thanks, man. THANKS FOR MAKING ME WANT TO RUN TO THE BACK OF THE ROOM AND VOMIT.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, it was my turn. I leaned back into the arms of eight sweaty men and stiffened my body. Part of being able to fit through this narrow space was the raising of my hands above my head. Do you realize just how prominently perky 34D boobs are when your body is perfectly straight AND your hands are above your head? Of course this was the day my jeans were slightly too big and this revealed the edge of my lacy underwear. There I am. Arms above my head. Defenseless. Boobs pointing skyward. Toes pointed. Body stiff. Eyes narrowed into slits of death. Mouth bitten into a firm, hateful line.

I lay in their arms dying on the inside. Absolutely dying. Envisioning the hot, hot shower I would be taking as soon as I got home. They passed me through, s-l-o-w-l-y. Let me assure you, I was liberally manhandled. Wait! NO! SOMETHING TOUCHED THE WIRE AT THE VERY END. I had to go again. This time, I must be stiff and perky, but twist and writhe to get through correctly. By the time I was properly passed through without touching, I was shaking with the sheer desire for it to be over. Once my feet were on solid ground, I slunk to the back and whimpered like a dog that had just been violated by the neighbor kid.

You think this would be plenty of touching for everyone. Lots of touching. Touch, touch, touch. Apparently not. APPARENTLY OUR COMPANY ENCOURAGES SLEEPING TOGETHER. At the end of our exercise we had to form a tight shoulder to shoulder circle whereby we all turned to the right and gave that person a backrub. A BACKRUB! Thankfully, on my one side was my cohort in personal space advocation, my friend who was hiding with me earlier. We gingerly tapped each others backs. But to my other side?

Hah.

Luck doesn’t always favor me.

The new guy who is the very personification of sketchy. Overly gummy smile. Slight receding hairline. Oily sheen on his too tan skin. Very, very sketchy. I was trying to give him a very vague sort of back rub. But we were having quality control inspections by leadership. Dammit! And then, when he had to rub my back, I could feel his fingers creeping downwards, past the back. Someone please, shoot me now.

Once it was all over and I ripped myself away from all this creepiness, he sidles up to me and tells me that the back rub I gave him was. pause, wait for it–phenomenal.

phenomenal.

Not just phenomenal, but said in the tone solely reserved for bad sitcoms after the couple has enjoyed some cheesy and experimental sex. You know, when the guy rolls over and breathlessly says, “That was phenomenal”. Yeah. That tone. Not particularly the tone I enjoy hearing from my coworkers.

I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if they then proposed a group orgy–togetherness, right boys? But they ended it simply with a group sing of Kumbaya.

I shit you not. I wish I was.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 8:46 and is filed under Contest Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.