I had a totally different story outlined and ready for this year’s Super Bowl, but the game ended up being a very low scoring, almost boring game. My story idea wasn’t going to work, but I was intent on keeping with a Losing story every other year, so I started over and made the game itself a rather minor part of the story. Actually, that is almost the way it has become for the game. The hoopla and commercials and everything else surrounding the game has become larger than the game itself.

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WARNING! This warning is possibly not needed for this particular story, but I am including it because it is needed for most of my stories. If you decide to read other of my stories make sure that you read the disclosures and warnings at the beginning of each story.

All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2019 by The Technician.

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This didn’t start with the Super Bowl. Charlotte and I have been in each other’s faces since we were hired together six years ago. It’s just that this football season seems to have brought things to a head. We are both section heads for Pearson Consulting, and our names are almost the same– she is Charlotte and I am Charlene– but other than that we don’t seem to have anything in common.

I’m from the west coast, LA born and bred– well actually a northern suburb, but once you get out of California, all anyone knows is LA. She’s a New England snob from some high class family that probably came over on the Mayflower. We were hired almost right out of college together as part of a new, specialized consulting company, but we’ve always gotten along like oil and water. And this year’s football season has really made that worse.

She is all for the players kneeling in protest of social conditions and I have told her many times that doing protests like that during the national anthem is wrong. I agree with their concerns, it is just the wrong time. Kneel after making a touchdown or something. That would really send a message.

According to her, I think the cheerleaders should be paid almost the same as the players, and– as she has told me many times– “any bleach-blonde beach bimbo can do that job.” She knows I’m a natural blonde and I think she knows I was a cheerleader in college. More likely, it is her stupid stereotype of someone from California and she’s just saying that to get under my skin.

We couldn’t even agree on the proposed halftime program for this year. I guess she wanted all singers to refuse to sing. I’m more of a “The show must go on” type of person.

To make matter’s worse, she is originally from Boston and is a rabid Patriots fan. I’m a Ram’s fan through and through and have been since I was old enough to look at a TV screen. My parent’s stayed loyal to the Rams when they moved to Saint Louis back in ‘94 and rejoiced when the team saw the light and finally came back to LA three years ago.

Rooting for opposing teams and being from such different backgrounds, we definitely hadn’t planned to watch the Super Bowl together. Then Ms Pearson decided that our entire office should have a week-long “bonding experience” together way out west at a retreat center in Colorado. She chose the first weekend in February to begin our experience because “Nobody wants any of our consulting activity the week leading up to the Super Bowl because they are too wrapped up in the game.” She then laughed and added, “And nobody wants anything the week after because they are too hung over.”

We all laughed at her joke when she told us about the retreat, but we grumbled later when we were alone. We continued to grumble even after she assured us that it wasn’t going to cost us anything out of pocket because Pearson Enterprises was chartering a jet both ways and the retreat center was actually her ranchhouse with hundreds of acres of ranchland surrounding it. She said, “I consider it to be my personal retreat center. It’s where I go when I need to get away from people and just be me.”

A personal retreat center consisting of a private ranch on the edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest sounds almost impossible, but the Pearsons are rich with a capital R. Our company isn’t the only one she owns. Ours is, however, the only company she manages personally. When asked why her corporate office for Pearson Enterprises is located with Pearson Consulting’s business office, she always answers, “I need to be near a national and international air hub, and I prefer to work in an area free of testosterone.”

Our offices are located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and all people who work for the consulting company are female. It’s not that Ms. Pearson discriminates against men. There are lots of men in her other companies, but this particular company specializes in consulting with and for female-run businesses. We work with many of the top female executives in the world, helping them in their daily battles to get a level playing field in what is– for now– a male dominated world. We are also the go-to company for training middle and upper management– male and female– to understand the systemic biases against women in most businesses. Men will usually listen to a female consultant, but because of past bad experiences, high-level women don’t want anything that even accidentally sounds like mansplaining. So, an all female staff is necessary for the company.

No men doesn’t mean that there are no alpha personalities. Let’s just say that, if we were men, the testosterone would be overflowing out the windows. All twenty-two women in our office are very hard-driven and dedicated. We can also all be somewhat bitches in our own right, and as section heads, Charlotte and I are the baddest bitches in the room. That makes us a rather difficult group to manage and keep focused on our task… which is making money for Pearson Enterprises.

Ms Pearson– nobody EVER calls her Joyce and no one had better EVER call her Mrs. Pearson– Ms Pearson had noticed that there was tension building in our office. “What authority do I have,” she said, sounding upset, “to tell others how to create harmony– or at least order– in their businesses when I have such strife in my own office.”

That led to two or three big meetings to talk about interpersonal tensions and relationships. But when every single one of us is a specialist in resolving such problems… and a bitch… and everyone already knows all the methods and tricks for bringing about unwilling compromise, both meetings devolved into barely restrained chaos as we growled at each other, “Don’t you dare try that shit on me.” or “No, I wouldn’t like to say more about that!”

The manure really hit the ventilator, so to speak, when the Rams and the Patriots ended up facing each other in the Super Bowl… and it was going to be played in Atlanta! With our trash talking all season, everyone knew that the Rams were my team and the Patriots were Charlotte’s. Our constant bantering, and all the local hoopla for the game, helped the rest of the office coalesce behind one or the other of us. Surprisingly, some of the women in my section sided with Charlotte and some of the women in her section sided with me. The turncoats were about balanced out, though, so it still ended up a perfect 50-50 split with ten women siding with her and ten women siding with me.

Things were starting to get nastier and nastier in the office as February 3 approached. It was obvious that if that’s how we were at work, there was no way we could all be together in one place for the game. Two Super Bowl parties was the plan of the day. Charlotte was going to party with “her girls” at a local hotel. I was going to be a little more public about it and put down a deposit on a party room at a sports bar downtown. Evidently Ms. Pearson found out about our plans because that’s when she called the whole office together and said that we were all going out west with her for two weeks.

I had never heard of Clark, Colorado before. I had to run my map program almost all the way in before it showed up, let alone any of the roads around it. Her ranch is almost straight east of there right along the border with the national forest. She has a special permit to keep Bison so there is an unbelievably high and strong double fence surrounding most of the property. On the plane out, she told us that there are only a dozen or so Bison and they are actually just an excuse for the strong, high, electrified fence.

“I like my privacy,” she said with a sly smile, “and I know how to get it and keep it.” She also evidently liked to stay in touch because when we got to the ranch, there were seven large communications dishes on top of the hill pointed to various parts of the sky. Several ranchhands helped carry our suitcases into the house. I noticed that they were all women… very strong and hard-looking women, but women none-the-less.

“You will be two to a room,” Ms. Pearson said cheerily as we got off the bus she had chartered to bring us from the Denver International Airport. Not surprisingly, Charlotte and I were assigned to the same room, and the other twenty women were also assigned so that there was one from each side in each room.

“There are two queen beds in each room,” Ms Deliah added as we filed into the huge ranchhouse.