Performance Improvement Plan - Chapter 6

“So, are we gonna talk about the fact that Ted got shorter?” Francesca asked, at what was now becoming a regular Friday bar night.

“Can we, please, talk about anything other than Ted?” Laura asked, exasperated.

“Have you seriously not noticed the way he’s been changing?”

“I make it a point to never notice him, ever.” Laura idly swished a stir-stick through her cocktail. “Though he has been more annoying this week. Keeps trying to pop into my office. I don’t even look at him.”

“Okay, but like, you should look at him,” Joyce responded. “He’s changing, and it’s freaky. He’s gotta be a good, what, five inches shorter than he used to be?”

“I don’t think he’s just getting shorter,” Beth mumbled between sips of her drink. She still had a hard time not feeling like a kid at the grown-ups’ table. “Have you seen how bad all of his clothes are fitting him? He doesn’t fill them out as well as he used to.”

“No, Beth, you’re totally right,” Joyce nodded. “He’s getting skinnier too, he’s not as bulky as he used to be.”

“That makes sense,” Francesca said. “I haven’t seen him at the gym in a while.”

“Wait, you go to the same gym as him?”

“Well, yeah, it’s the biggest gym in the area. I avoid him like the plague, I don’t even think he knows I go there.”

“No, really, I’m serious,” Laura pleaded. “Any other topic of conversation.”

“Are you listening to what we’re saying?” Joyce shot back. “He’s shrinking. Like, Ant-Man-style.”

“Good for him,” Laura said, throwing back her drink. “Let me know when he’s small enough to stomp on and I might start caring.”

“I mean, I guess I don’t know how much there is to talk about with it,” Francesca said. “If anything, it’s almost weirder how much nicer he’s gotten. He keeps trying to do everyone favors. That’s probably why he keeps bugging you, Laura.”

Laura just scoffed and crunched a piece of ice.

***

July 20th, 2024 - Dr. Joanna Becker

DR. BECKER: Ted, I have given you a number of instructions so far that run counter to your personality. The result until now has largely been that you have felt stuck, in a sense of stasis, trapped between your natural habits and instincts and the hypnotic imperatives I have issued. Today is the day that stalemate breaks. Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: You are weak, and your impulses are weak. My instructions are much stronger. So from now on, when I tell you to seek to earn the approval of others, you will do exactly that. Do favors for other people. Compliment them when appropriate. Find ways to bring happiness to others, even at your own expense. And, I want you to work extra-hard to apply these instructions to the women in your life.

***

“Oh, hey Beth! What are you still doing here?”

Beth started. Something about the friendly, chipper tone in Ted’s voice still threw her off, even after hearing it for two weeks. There was just something more… authentic about it than the way he usually spoke.

“Uh! Well… Actually, I was just… I’ve got one more MS on my plate that’s like, 80% finished, and I figured I’d rather stay late tonight and get it done then have it sitting here waiting for me Monday morning.”

“Oh, no, c’mon, Beth! It’s Friday! You should get out of here, enjoy your weekend!”

“Uh…” Ted wasn’t making her nervous, exactly, but she still felt a certain anxiety. He didn’t seem angry at her, but what if this whole thing was a trick? Make himself seem sweet and reasonable so that her outbursts against him stood out all the more?

She could feel the urge to indulge in one of those outbursts right now, to chew him out for… for what?

For daring to speak to me. She swallowed and shook the thought out of her head.

“It’s really no big deal, T-uh, Mr. Murphy. It’ll only take a couple hours, that’s nothing compared to the time I’ve been putting in most of the year.”

“No, no, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve done more than enough here already. Go on home; I’ll take care of the manuscript for you.”

“...What?”

“Sure! Why not? It’s been a while since I’ve really rolled my sleeves up and dug into an edit.”

Beth’s eyes darted from left to right. Was this a trick? Would he throw this in her face in 5 months, criticize her for offloading her workload onto him?

An increasingly familiar feeling came over her. A feeling that Ted’s proper place was serving other people. Serving her.

“Um, okay…” she agreed tepidly.

“Great! Get outta here, I’ll see you Monday!”

Beth gathered her things, eyeing Ted suspiciously as he returned to his office.

***

August 4th, 2024 - Dr. Joanna Becker

DR. BECKER: We’ve talked before about how I’ve trained you to give off unconscious signs and signals that let others know that you’re weak. Now that I understand your insecurity is derived from historic difficulties with your love life, why don’t we add a few more elements to your non-verbal, unconscious forms of communication? Your pheromones, your facial expressions, your body language, all of it is going to make you seem more attractive to the opposite sex in subtle, undetectable ways. But Ted, listen very closely. You are not going to attract women through displays of power or confidence. Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: Instead, you will be vulnerable, open, and considerate. Your service—your subservience—is what will make you attractive.

***

“Joyce, that’s disgusting.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that.” Joyce rolled her eyes at Francesca as they sipped their coffee in the breakroom. “I’m not saying I’d go out with him or anything. I’m just saying—”

“It’s Ted.”

“I’m just saying, I think he looks kinda cute now! That shorter, skinnier look suits him.”

Francesca shook her head, taking a long sip to avoid having to offer a response.

“Oh come on. Have you seriously never found a shorter guy cute? You’re a friggin’ beanpole, if you don’t like short guys then how do you ever find a date?”

“It’s. Ted.”

“I knowww. He’s an asshole! All I’m saying is—Beth, back me up here!” Joyce called out to the woman who’d just entered the room. Despite their burgeoning friendship, Beth jumped as though a rabid dog had barked at her. 

“Ted’s better-looking ever since he got shorter, isn’t he?”

“Uh! Um!” The question frazzled Beth even further, and after a moment of stammering, she hunched down and sped toward the coffee machine, face burning bright red as she refused to look at the other two women.

Francesca drew her mouth into a line, staring at Joyce through half-closed eyelids.

“Okay!” Joyce shot back at the silent jab. “But you know full well that that’s Beth-speak for ‘yes.’ She’s just too shy to say it!”

***

August 11th, 2024 - Dr. Joanna Becker

DR. BECKER: Women are attracted to you, Ted. You are soft, polite, and obedient. You signal to women that they are safe around you, because despite your size, you don’t pose any threat to them. By the way: shrink, shrink, shrink.

MR. MURPHY: Shrink, Shrink Shrink. Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: Good. Now, women are attracted to you, but this has done nothing to ease your insecurity around them. If anything, they intimidate you more than they ever have, because you now understand that you hold no power over them. You are at their mercy You are at my mercy, for example.

MR. MURPHY: At… your mer…

DR. BECKER: That’s right, Ted. But I would never hurt you, so you don’t need to worry. What you need to worry about is the women who work for you.

***

Laura and Ted had both started at Marabou around the same time, right at the height of the YA craze in the late 2000s. It was easy to get hired and there were no shortage of opportunities to distinguish yourself, and their team quickly picked up a strong reputation, with impressive sales numbers and authors that couldn’t say enough good things. Their aging manager was also a very obvious sign that there would soon be room to move up in the company. Laura had assumed she had the promotion in the bag; maybe that was a little vain of her, but it’s not like the idea came from nowhere. The rest of the team loved her, she had excellent performance reviews, and she’d built up a great working relationship with Victoria Goldsmith, who was quickly becoming one of the biggest names in fantasy with her Legends of the Dragon Heart series. 

Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought about the political dimension of the job. While she’d been busy doing good work, Ted had been busy schmoozing higher-ups all over the company. Laura outshone him by every metric… but if the boys were out drinking on the golf course and not looking at the metrics, that didn’t matter much.

It was clear before long that the promotion was going to go to either Laura or Ted, and things got pretty fiercely competitive between them for a few weeks… until all of a sudden Ted asked her to have dinner with him. Told her that he wanted to make sure that no matter who won in the end, they were still on good working terms. She agreed, and… well, Ted wasn’t a bad-looking guy, and he certainly knew how to charm people when he wanted to. She’d invited him back to her place and they spent the night together.

And then a few days later, she was being pulled into HR. Ted had claimed that she tried to use sex to make him agree to concede the promotion to her. It was his word against hers, but he had moved first, and it was enough of a blemish on her record that she was dropped from consideration. She was eventually absolved of wrongdoing… long after it was too late to matter.

Laura hadn’t known what betrayal really meant until that day. Ted had been her friend, a colleague that she respected, and, for a brief moment, it seemed like he might be something even more. Then he stabbed her in the back and twisted the knife. And for no good reason! There was a solid chance that he’d’ve gotten the promotion regardless, but apparently that wasn’t enough for him. No, he couldn’t just beat Laura out on a promotion they both knew she deserved more, he had to completely crush her spirit along the way.

Which was why, even five years later, she saw the flowers and ornate greeting card on her desk as nothing more but salt in a wound that would never fully heal. 

“What the fuck is this?!” she bellowed, storming into Ted’s office and throwing the flowers and card on his desk. The man jumped back in his chair so hard that he nearly toppled over.

“Uh! It’s… it’s… an apology…”

“No. No, no, no, no. Fuck you. You don’t fucking apologize for what you did to me. What did you expect me to say? ‘Oh gosh golly, Ted, thanks so much, I forgive you.’ Did you really think that was going to fucking happen?!”

Ted suddenly seemed woozy as he shrank away from her. “I. I… I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Do you know why I still work here, Ted?” Laura pressed her palms against the surface of his desk and leaned forward. Somewhere in the back of her head, she clocked that her coworkers hadn’t been bullshiting her. He really did look smaller.

Good.

“I could’ve quit the day you pulled that shit on me and had a new job before they’d even finished processing my resignation. But I decided to stay, because if you’re gonna fuck someone the way you fucked me, then you should at least have to look at them. You should have to come in here every morning and see me and think about what you fucking did. So if, after all this time, you’re finally feeling ashamed of yourself? Good. That’s the point.” She picked the card up and ripped it into pieces.

“Don’t fucking talk to me again. And don’t even fucking think about writing me up for this or I swear to God you will never know a moment’s peace for the rest of your life.”

Laura turned on her heel and left Ted sitting there, stammering and blubbering. She shot a glare toward the other women, who were doing a terrible job of pretending not to watch.

***

August 28th - Dr. Joanna Becker

DR. BECKER: Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

DR. BECKER: Embrace weakness.

MR. MURPHY: Embrace weakness.

***

“Oh! Uh, hi…” Joyce had entered the copy room to print something, and was startled to see Ted standing there, facing the wall.

“Sorry, I’ll just…” Ted’s voice was cracked and weak, and he tried to turn in a way that didn’t reveal his face. Joyce stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, gasping as he turned around.

Initially, her shock was owing to the fact that he was even shorter now than she realized. In her heels, she actually had a slight edge on him in height. But more than that, his eyes were swollen, red, and wet.

“Ohhh, Ted! What’s wrong?”

“I… It’s nothing…” He tried to head for the door, but Joyce gently maneuvered to block it.

“C’mon, you can tell me.” Seeing him so small and wounded was awakening her nurturing side.

“I just… I just…” A big, heaving sob escaped his throat, and without thinking, Joyce threw her arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace as he wept on her shoulder.

“I just don’t know how to fix what I did to Laura,” he blubbered. “It was so terrible, and I don’t know how I can ever make it up to her.”

“Oh, sweetie…” Joyce rubbed his back. 

What cologne is that? He smells incredible…

“I don’t think you can make it up to her. I think that’s a bridge you burned for good.”

Ted sobbed harder and Joyce continued to hold him, gently shushing him to calm him down.

“The best thing you can do is accept that you can’t fix that one, and focus on what you can fix. It’s too late do make it up to Laura, but not Francesca. Or Beth. Or…”

Joyce could swear the copy room was getting warmer. There was just… something about how nicely Ted fit into her arms. Lowering her voice to just the hint of a whisper, she placed her mouth right next to his ear. “Or me.”

Ted pulled away slightly, opening his mouth to speak, but he was immediately cut off by Joyce.

“Ohhh! Look at you, you poor thing!” Ted had sobbed so hard that he’d burst the blood vessels around his eyes. He looked positively pathetic.

“Pathetic” was kind of cute.

And Joyce loved anything and everything “cute.”

With an unexpected pounding in her chest, she reached up, tenderly wiping the tears from his face with her thumb. He was frozen and stiff.

“Our skin tones are pretty close, I have some concealer that should hide that back at my desk.” She released him, moving toward the door and sliding a banker’s box full of documents in front of it. “It’s good for covering hickies, too.”

“...Huh?”

Joyce responded to the question by pouncing on him.

***

September 12th, 2024 - Dr. Joanna Becker

I am sympathetic to the ethical arguments against using hypnosis to manipulate a subject’s libido. Sexuality is an aspect of our identities that we hold very closely to us, and it does intuitively feel like a severe violation of personhood to invoke it in this context. However, sexual pleasure is one of the most potent sources of positive reinforcement the body is capable of producing, and using it in developing a subject’s Pavlovian responses is critical to ensuring the hypnotic treatment is firmly ingrained in their mind. We do not yet have enough data to determine if the effects of this treatment eventually wear off, but if they do, then it is vital that we build internal reward structures into the subject so that the implanted instructions persist as habits long after the hypnotic instructions were implanted.

[What are you doing, Jody? You don’t even let Kelly read these transcripts anymore, why waste the ink twisting yourself in knots to try and justify why it was okay to make Ted get off on being bossed around?]

***

“I’ll be just down the street, sweetie! Text me when you’re ready for me to pick you up!”

As Francesca exited the front doors of the gym, she started in surprise at the familiar sound of Joyce’s voice. “Surprise” elevated to full-on shock when she saw who she was talking to: a blushing, embarrassed Ted Murphy, nearly a full head shorter than Francesca now, scurrying through the door behind her so fast that he didn’t even notice her.

Francesca ran up to Joyce’s car before she could pull away.

“Oh my god, hi! That’s right, you go here too!”

“Joyce… what the hell are you doing?”

Joyce froze for a moment, an uncertain smile plastered on her face. “Well, uh. Driving makes… it makes Teddy anxious, so…”

“Teddy? Fucking Teddy?”

“It’s not! I, uh… Uh…”

“Laura is going to fucking murder you.”

“Only if she finds out! You can’t tell her. Please.”

“Why would you even want to date him? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Listen! It’s… He’s different. He really, really is. He’s not just blowing smoke, he wants to be better. It’s… it’s like he’s a completely different person.”

Francesca was still galled, but she couldn’t say that Joyce didn’t have a point. The Ted Murphy of the past couple months was nothing like the Ted Murphy of before. Ever since he started getting shorter, he was just… different.

“Plus, let me tell you, not all of him is shrinking.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Look, it’s just… we’re friends, right? Please trust me that I know what I’m doing. And please, please please don’t say anything about this to Laura.”

Francesca wanted to argue more, but a car was honking at Joyce to get out of the spot right in front of the gym.

“...Fine. Whatever.”

Joyce beamed happily, rolling her window up and driving off, which left Francesca alone on the sidewalk.

Ted had changed. A lot. In personality and… physically. No one really knew what to make of the fact that he was shrinking, and it happened so gradually that it was easy enough to put out of your head. It’s not like anyone spent a lot of time standing around him; it was easy to put his reducing stature back of mind.

Maybe it was time Francesca tried to figure out what the deal was. She turned around and headed back into the gym. Luckily, Ted wasn’t hard to find. He was still milling about in the lobby, looking aimless and lost.

“Hey, Ted.” He jumped a little at the sound of his name.

“Oh! Francesca! Uh… Hi!”

“Hey. Hey, I was just wondering… Have you, like, gone to a doctor? About the whole…” as undeniable as it was, Francesca was having a hard time actually saying the word “shrinking” to his face. 

Luckily, he seemed to pick up what she was trying to say. “Oh! Um… I haven’t. Y’know, when I first noticed, I thought about it, but…” he shrugged. “I guess it hasn’t felt that important? I feel, you know, fine. Other than, I don’t know, I’ve been really having a hard time finding the motivation to work out like I used to. But, hey, you know, I’m here trying!”

He smiled at her, but it was obvious that he was nervous. She was making him uncomfortable.

God. Of course Joyce was into him now, he was like a lost puppy. Honestly… Francesca, despite herself, was feeling…

Nope. She refused. She shook her head, embarrassed, and reminded herself that she was here for answers. “Y’know, Ted, you’ve been… changing. A lot, lately.”

He smiled anxiously. “For the better, I hope!”

Francesca shrugged. “Sure, I guess, but. I guess I’m more just curious about what happened. Like…” She was trying to think of how to phrase her question without just saying “why did you stop being a prick to everyone.” “What… prompted this?”

“Oh! Well, uh… gosh. It’s a bit embarrassing, but. Boy, I am not at all proud of that whole thing that happened this past summer with Beth. But… I got referred to a therapist because of it, and… I think they’ve been really helping!”

Right. Right. This did all start right after all that. Francesca hadn’t connected the dots.

“Some therapist.”

Ted laughed nervously. “Yeah! She’s really incredible. Do wish she could help me figure out this… psychological block I’ve got with exercise, now. I mean, I worked hard for these arms! And now…” He lifted his arm and looked at it, an unmistakable sadness cracking through his chipper demeanor. He wasn’t exactly scrawny, but he’d lost about as much muscle mass as you’d expect from someone that stopped lifting altogether for 3 months straight.

“Anyway!” Ted said, snapping back into a friendly, upbeat demeanor. “I’m gonna go see if I can’t brute force my way through that mental block. I’ll see you later, Francesca!”

“Yeah, see you later…” Francesca just stood there as he walked away, brow furrowed and hand over mouth as she thought.

Surely a therapist wouldn’t make him get shorter, right?