While I was in the sixth form I had a part time job working mainly Saturdays, sometimes with extra hours during holidays, at a large store in my local town, which sadly closed a couple of years ago.
When I first started working there, I was on the menswear floor but asked to be moved soon afterwards after a couple of men acted very inappropriately towards me. I think they thought I would be flattered. To be fair, I was pretty hot-looking and played hockey, so was firm in all the right places, but I wasn’t standing for it, and so I was moved to fashion accessories. Heaven! Playing with bling all day was bliss.
Shortly after my 18th birthday, the store was having a 20% off sale in February to boost post-Christmas trade, which attracted a good level of footfall. The down side of my department was that theft was quite common as the small pretty items fitted nicely into anyone’s pocket, so you had to be on your toes. About 30 minutes before the store was closing, a group of three girls were obviously up to no good, so I was serving and keeping an eye on them through a well-positioned mirror. When I was free, I followed them to the door where I confronted them.
“Excuse me girls, I think you have something about your persons that you have not paid for,” I said with as much authority someone two years older than them could muster.
“No we haven’t,” came the three replies as though rehearsed, which it probably had been, time and time again.
The three made for the door but a member of staff intervened. The girls jostled and pushed, throwing various items over a partition by the door, and then they legged it. Julie, the supervisor, checked I was OK and we got back to work and I tried to forget all about it; stuff happens.
Twenty minutes later, the closing bell sounded and we started to close the store for the evening. Once that was done, we went to the staff room, collected our coats and filed out. Periodically, security would do a pocket and bag search which everyone was relaxed about; it was just procedure. I was at the back of the queue as I had nipped to the loo before my 15 minute bus ride home and my friend Julie was five or six in front of me.
“See you tomorrow, Julie,” I said as Julie cleared the search area.
Finally it was my turn.
“Hi Jo, can you open your hand bag, please,” she asked for the 50th time that afternoon. After a quick rummage through my tissues, make-up, and emergency tampon store, she was satisfied all was clear.
“Can I just check your pockets as well, please?”
“Sure, Mrs Simmons, do your worst!” I joked, but security don’t have a sense of humour it would appear as she just scowled back at me.
I held my arms out wide and she went through my coat pockets.
“Can you open your coat, please?” she asked, before checking my cardigan. “What are these, Jo?” asked Mrs Simmons, though I had no idea what the heck she was talking about.
Then she held out three necklaces still with the price tags attached and two pretty fake jewel rings.
“I have absolutely no idea where they have come from. Honestly!” I added in haste at the end of the sentence.
By now, we were the only ones left in the building as she was the person responsible for securing the building at the end of the day. My mind was in a panic. What was happening? Then the penny dropped.
“Mrs Simmons, Julie Gaskell and I stopped some girls leaving with items in their possession about 45 minutes ago. They threw the items away and ran, but some must have accidentally managed to end up in my pocket,” I explained, but as I was saying this I could see how lame it sounded, especially with no one to back me up. How can you prove a negative? “Ring Mrs Gaskell, she’ll confirm everything,” I suggested.
“I am aware of the altercation. I was on the next floor when it happened dealing with a drunken man. However, staff are fully responsible for any items on their person,” she lectured, pointing to the notice on the wall in the staff entrance corridor. “So, if you have no good excuse then I must take action, Jo,” she stated firmly.
“But that is the god’s honest truth, Mrs Simmons. Truly it is,” I pleaded, tears starting to well up in my eyes.
“Then I am sorry, Jo. I will need to call Mrs Jenkinson (the store manager) on her mobile and then the police as we have a zero tolerance to theft within our workforce, as you well know,” said Mrs Simmons calmly but very firmly.
“Please Mrs Simmons, I’ll do anything, anything, but don’t call the police. I can’t prove anything but I have university ahead and I can’t have a record, even a caution, if I want to go to my first choice university. Can’t we forget about this misunderstanding, please?” I begged her.
Mrs Simmons pondered. I knew she wasn’t a totally heartless woman. I knew Kirsty, her daughter, who was in my year but who left after year 11. She had said her mum was very firm, but generally very fair as well, and it was the mum side I was hoping might win out here.
“Well, I really should report this,” she said, looking again at the five items which she still held in her hands. It was now 6.20 on Saturday evening and Mrs Simmons was supposed to be meeting friends in town at 8.00. She was weighing up the possibilities. Was it really worth ruining her night out? She would be here until at least 8.00 pm if the police were called for what amounted to £8.50 in items. Perhaps common sense and a more mum’s hands-on approach might save the day yet.
“The rules state quite clearly that the procedure is to call the police, young lady. However, under the circumstances, perhaps we can find a way to keep this more in-house,” added Mrs Simmons.
I knew immediately what she had in mind. Kirsty had often told me of how her mum was a strong believer in corporal punishment, and on more than one occasion she had arrived at school with red eyes and a sore bum after being spanked before school for something that had happened at home. If that was what she was going to suggest, I was OK with that. I had been spanked quite a few times at home.
“What do you mean? What do you have in mind, Mrs Simmons?” I enquired, hoping she might say some unpaid work or such like.
“You are friends with my Kirsty. I am sure she has told you that I am a believer in the old-fashioned methods of punishment at home. If you were my Kirsty, I would not hesitate to spank that bottom of yours. It may only be a small amount of value that you had in your possession, but if we do not keep on top of these infractions where will we all end up?” Mrs Simmons lectured. “If you are willing to take a spanking, I think we can draw a line under this whole sorry affair, don’t you Jo?”
I jumped at the chance. A spanking would wear off in a few minutes, or maybe a few hours if it was a good licking, as our American cousins would say, but compared to the alternative it seemed a good option even though I had not really done anything wrong.
“If that is an end to it, and this stays between the two of us, then yes, I would be willing to be spanked by you, Mrs Simmons.”
“Very well, Jo,” said Mrs Simmons with an air of relief as she looked again at her watch. “Shall we get this over with? Follow me, please.”
Mrs Simmons turned and walked a few yards back up the corridor to a blue door on the right with the sign ‘Security Office’ which she unlocked, opened and went through in the blink of an eye. Harsh strip lights flickered into life inside and I followed her in. This was somewhere I had never been before. A small desk covered in files, CCTV monitors, 3 chairs and two large grey filing cabinets made the room feel quite small, even though it must have been 20ft square. The walls were painted in a horrible blue-grey colour that just felt cold. The floor was thinly carpeted in a dull grey carpet that looked older than I was.
Once I was inside, I automatically closed the door. I suspected the spanking might be quite noisy and, with the concrete walls, the sound would echo. I knew there was no one else in the building, but modesty prevailed.
In a way, it was almost like my mum building up to a spanking. Stern lecture, which was thankfully behind us, taken to the place of execution of the sentence.
Mrs Simmons then pulled one of the chairs out from under the desk and placed it facing me in the middle of the floor. I was not sure at this point what form my punishment would take. She had not mentioned this during the ‘negotiations’ but with the chair placed as it was I figured I would be either told to bed over the back and put my hands on the seat, or she would sit down for a traditional over-the-knee spanking, which would be my preferred option.
Mum had spanked me a couple of times over the chair, but that was always a slipper spanking over my panties and I found it hurt my tummy almost as much as my bottom because it dug in so much.
Thankfully, she moved around the front and sat herself down. That was something, at least.
“Take off your coat and your cardigan, please Jo, and then come here.” She indicated by pointing with her finger to her right hand side. I took off my coat and undid the 5 buttons on the front of my dark blue cardigan, which I also removed before walking the 5 or 6 steps to stand by her side. I now stood in my regulation black, flat shoes, dark blue top and black trousers which were already fairly tight across my bottom.
“Ok Jo, please bend over my knee and put your hands on the floor. I am sure you have been in this position before.”
Had Kirsty been telling stories out of school, I wondered. In any case, I obeyed and slowly lowered myself into the familiar position over Mrs Simmons’ lap and put my hands flat on the floor. The seat of my trousers pulled ever tighter across my bottom and must have made it stand out as an unmissable target for Mrs Simmons to spank in the moments to come. Her legs were quite chubby, so at least the position was fairly comfortable, for the time being at least. Moreover, unlike mum and my aunty (mum’s elder sister) who always spank only over my panties, I wasn’t to suffer the humiliation of having to lower my trousers in front of a near stranger.
I felt her left hand on the small of my back, ready to hold me down, and her right hand rubbing my bottom for a brief moment before its touch disappeared, only to be replaced by a sharp firm smack! The sound did indeed echo badly from the walls and I was so, so pleased that I knew the building was deserted. The spanking continued at a brisk pace, exactly how Kirsty had described her over-the-knee experiences with her mum. She had a hand which felt more like I would expect a paddle to feel and she kept varying the speed, rhythm and target area, which kept the intensity of the spanking at a very high level indeed. My poor bottom was getting more and more sore and was literally on fire, or so it felt. Finally, with six really hard smacks, the spanking came to an end.
“OK Jo, you can get up now,” said Mrs Simmons.
I jumped up and hopped about rubbing my backside vigorously all over to try and quell the intense pain and to try and stop the tears bursting from my eyes like they surely were going to do at any moment.
“Let that be a lesson to you. If I catch you with anything, anything again, it will be the police. Do I make myself 100% clear, young lady?”
I fought back the tears and said, “Yes, Mrs Simmons, but I genuinely did not know anything was in my pockets. Maybe the CCTV would have proved that!”
“Unlikely,” she responded. “The system has been out of order since Thursday. Now come on, coat on, I want to get home.”
We walked to the exit in silence, and I did so quite gingerly as my bum was throbbing like crazy.
“Good night,” was all that was said at the door as we went our separate ways and I walked to the bus stop around the corner from the shop. Luckily, my bus came within seconds and, being packed, I stood, which was a relief as I didn’t really want to sit down right now.
Once home, mum shouted to me, “You’re late! I thought something was wrong.”
“Oh the first bus was full and I had to wait for the next one, and I had to stand all the way on that one as it was. Mmm, something smells nice. What’s for dinner?”
“Stew and dumplings with cheesy mash. Remember, I always used to make it when you were younger when I had spanked you because it cheered you up. But don’t worry, you don’t have to go over my knee tonight before you have dinner, unless you really need to,” she said laughing and sipping on a small glass of red wine.
“Very funny, mum. I’ll love dinner but pass on the spanking, if that is all the same to you,” I said, sounding as though I was joining in the joke, but that was uncanny!
“OK Jo, it will be ready in 20 minutes. Pop off and get changed.”
With that, she got back to cooking and I went to my room, peeled off my trousers which I regretted being so tight as I pulled them over my sore buttocks, and standing before my mirror I turned and gently pulled my black lace panties down to my knees and examined the damage. My whole bottom was bright red, but the initial severe pain was drifting into the sort of soreness that soon gave way to the warm tingling after-glow.
I changed into a tight halter neck top and mid-length skirt as I was meeting James, my then boyfriend, after dinner.
(Names have been changed)
JoG