At twenty five I, Jubal Prentice, started my second job after college working in digital marketing. I had a combined BSc and BA degree in business and computer science from a five year program at the university I attended and this job seemed perfect for me, much better than the first job I got out of college. I had been a competitive fencer in college but always put my studies first, so I never won any individual championships although my team once finished third in the NCAA national fencing competition.
My new job was at Winsome Scientific, Inc., a medium sized corporation that not only manufactured and sold a number of pieces of equipment for the scientific community but also marketed laboratory equipment for a number of foreign corporations in the United States. Winsome had its own six-story building in a suburban office park of a large city and occupied the top five floors. The first floor had retail shops including a large fitness facility that was a franchise of a national corporation. A large warehouse was in an adjacent complex less than a kilometer away.
My department had ten employees when I started, and was on the same floor as a much larger department of Winsome, the sales department. One thing that I liked about Winsome is that everyone seemed to get along — the only exception (at least from the scuttlebutt of the male employees on our floor) of the department head of sales (she was also a vice president) Melanie Brooks.
I had few interactions with Melanie since she was in a different department and much higher up on the corporate ladder than I was, but I was introduced to her my first day at work and said “Hi” to her whenever I saw her, and exchanged innocuous chit-chat if we, for example, rode up the elevator together to the sixth floor where our offices were.
After working a few months at Winsome I came to the conclusion that the male employees were often critical of Melanie and called her The Ice Queen because she was no nonsense in making everyone do their job, and because she wasn’t even the slight bit flirtatious. I think that this was particularly bothersome to a number of male employees because Melanie was likely the hottest woman I had ever seen. In the case of the female employees who had critical things to say about her I think that it was jealousy.
Melanie is five feet eleven inches tall (180 cm) with shoulder length lustrous brunette hair with auburn highlights, a large chest, a beautiful even if normally stoic face, a slim waist, sculptured legs long even for a tall woman, and a tight bubble butt to die for. Although there was no completely reliable information about her age, given when she got her undergraduate and MBA degrees I surmised that she is probably twelve years older than I am — making her 37 when I started at Winsome very young for someone in her position of authority. It was clear to everyone, however, even her detractors, that she got her position because she is highly intelligent — maybe the smartest person I personally met.