Martha's Day (standard:drama, 1274 words)
Author: BENTLINK	Added: Oct 27 2005	Views/Reads: 3543/2338	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Martha works her way to the fifth floor.

MARTHA'S DAY 

After working nearly a year Martha could still clearly recall every word
of  Mr. Doe's recital of “The Speech” that all employees got before 
they begin their first days work at the world famous Marts Brothers 
Stores. 

“Working for a major department store chain has lots of perks. 
Advantages like advance notice of sales and large employee discounts, a 
benefits package that will blow your socks off.  That's all on the plus 
side, offset by having to be here every weekend and busting your butt 
working like a dog before, during, and after every holiday.  If you 
work hard and follow the Mart brothers formula you will have unlimited 
opportunity for personal and financial growth.  We want each and every 
one of you to feel you are part of a family.  We want each and every 
customer to feel a special bond with Mart Brothers.  A bond that we 
start building the moment they enter our clean well stocked stores.  A 
bond of trust for the brands we sell and confidence that our floor 
staff will never lead them to make a wrong purchasing decision.  Marts 
Brothers is intrusting each of you with a tiny part of our reputation 
for honest value and trustworthiness.  You must uphold your end or you 
will be out of here on your ass so fast it will make you head swim.  
Now get to your stations and sell something!” 

All the stores senior staff referred to the chain of stores as
“Brothers” and frequently made off color jokes about the linage and 
true parentage of the family of immigrants that had established the 
very successful company some hundred years before. 

Martha began working for “Brothers” just after graduating from a
college.  During her job interview, she had been lead to believe she 
would only have to work for a short time as a member of the stores 
floor staff in order to gain real world experience before being placed 
in a position more in keeping with her level of intelligence and 
education. 

Martha got a great deal of real world experience and then some in the
following months.  Until starting work for “Brothers”, she had no 
concept of how many official and unofficial holidays could be crammed 
into a year's calendar. 

Over the last experience filled eleven months, the beautiful Martha had
been required to walk the floors of the huge store dressed as first an 
Indian and then a Pilgrim for Thanksgiving. 

She was hand picked to appear as first a jolly simple minded gray haired
but very shapely Mrs. Clause and then after only one day made to change 
into a scantly clad Santa's helper for the whole of the interminably 
long Christmas season.  When Santa's hands began wandering up under her 
short skirted red helpers costume as she tried to knee balanced the 
wiggling kids on his lap four times each day she understood why the 
other helper had stopping coming in to work. 

The job of standing alongside Father Time at the New Years eve
celebration party as Baby New Year wearing only a big smile and bed 
sheet diaper fell to one of the more full bodied girls because 
thankfully Martha was thought far too skinny to be a new born. 

With the coming of President's day, she was required to walk around the
store in a powered wig and knee breeches carrying a hatchet and plastic 
cherry tree branch. 

She bunny hopped from department to department in a gray outfit that
smelled of mothballs and other far less polite scents left behind by 
last years Easter Bunny impersonator. 

She willed herself into becoming Aunt America as she did her patriotic
duty by steadying the tall wobbling, drunk, unstable Uncle Sam for 
Independence Day. 

She had a long but not very fruitful conversation with management about
getting the promised supervisors position before being told to dress in 
bib overalls and put on a hard hat that ruined her freshly done hair 
for Labor Day. 



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