A Severe Case of Secretary's Spread

    It had started out innocently enough.  A few extra donuts in the break room here, an extra can of soda at lunch… Alison never expected it to have that much effect on her.  She’d always had a good metabolism, but now…  Well, obviously it had slowed down some.

    When she’d started working at Wide Margins Inc, Alison had been skinny.  Not quite petite, but not quite anything out of the ordinary, either.  Her crisp business outfit had fit perfectly, pencil skirt emphasising her curvy hips, white button-down blouse showing a bit of roundness from her breasts… she didn’t really stand out from the other secretaries at the firm.

    And it stayed like that, at least for the first month.  She still went for runs in the evenings, and took the stairs down after work (no time in the mornings, elevators were the only choice!).  But as time wore on, she had less and less energy at the end of the day.  Hour-long nightly runs turned into forty five minutes, then half an hour, then… well, at that point, why bother?  And while twenty flights of stairs was a pretty decent trip, at the end of the day, she just wanted to get home.

    Even after she stopped exercising, she probably could have staved off her gain for a while had she not counted on her metabolism.  She’d found herself blessed with a high one throughout her life, especially considering the amount of pizza she ate during college.  Now, a few years out of school, it was starting to wind down.

    Change didn’t happen overnight.  When she started working, she still ate healthy at home, maybe even enough to balance out the half-dozen donuts she happily polished off throughout the workday.  Over time, slowly but surely, home-cooked meals turned into microwave dinners, and eventually she gave in, living mostly like she did in college.

    And so, the weight started piling on.  Unhealthy eating, lack of exercise, and the fact that she spent all day sitting at her desk had started to add up.

    It started with her blouse tightening gradually around the middle, the barest beginnings of a potbelly starting to form.  Nobody really commented, and Alison herself never really noticed.  She wasn’t having problems buttoning it or anything, after all.  Tight?  Yeah… but it still fit!  If it fits, there’s obviously no problem, right?

    ...Right?

    The bottle of soda under her desk wasn’t helping matters, nor was the fact that the office’s most well-stocked vending machine was only a few steps down the way.  Within three months, it had gotten to the point where her buttons started to visibly part when she sat down, her ripening belly nestled softly in her lap.  Even then, it was easy enough to ignore.  She spent all day behind a desk, after all, and making a quick dash to the elevator after the other secretaries had left meant that nobody noticed!  It was brilliant!  She wasn’t fat, after all, just… a bit squishy.  Right?  Right.

    So the belly was easily ignored.  So were the smirks her coworkers sent her way whenever she disappeared from the break room with a box of donuts cradled lovingly in her arms.  Much to her chagrin, her bra size hadn’t changed at all, although she had to admit they were starting to spill out the tiniest bit.  Her belly and chest were easy to ignore.

    Her hips, on the other hand...

    They’d been curvy when she started work.  Not particularly, mind, not enough to draw attention, but enough that she’d always been rather happy with them.  Curvy hips, slender thighs, and a petite bottom; she rather liked what she saw in the mirror every day.

    And for the first couple of months, it stayed like that.  Her belly swelled gently outwards, softening as it went, but from the waist down, she remained the same.  But as time went on, she started to notice things; small things, barely enough for anybody not in her body to notice.  Her skirt got a tiny bit tighter, her underwear stretching out a bit.  Sometimes, she could swear her chair was more comfortable than it was when she started at the company.

    Slowly, eventually, days full of donuts and soda, and nights full of pizza and pasta took their toll eventually.  Her blouses started to tighten in the back, her whole body softening.  She wasn’t sure when her thighs started to meet, but within three months, they were rubbing together so often she had to put on moisturizer every night.  Her pencil skirts, always clinging, now blossomed outwards, widening dramatically from her jiggly potbelly.  Her posterior was equally bouncy, constantly testing the limits of her skirts’ seams.  One day, she bent over to pick up her box of donuts, and… they gave way.  Not enough to be noticeable, but she knew what had happened.

    Losing weight is hard, when you get down to it, and rather than putting her mind to that, she simply went out and replaced all her clothes with a few sizes up.  Even her new skirts, skirts that had been loose but flattering when she bought them, were clinging to her, showing off every pound she’d put on over the last five months.  On the bright side, her skin wasn’t visible through the gaps between the buttons on her blouses.

    Maybe it was her decision to buy new clothes instead of losing weight, but from that point on, her bottom only spread out faster.  She looked in the mirror one morning, struggling to pull a loudly protesting skirt over her expansive rump, and realised that her calves had grown too!  She touched them, almost absent-mindedly, fingers digging into their plentiful squish.

    When she arrived at work, her chair seemed… snug, as though she was running out of room.  Had someone pushed the arms in as a prank?  No, they couldn’t be moved.  It was undeniable, now.  She was big.  Much bigger than she had been several months before.  Now, her hips and thighs spread out, pushing against the sides of her chair, filling it completely.

    But, she still fit.  She really didn’t need to worry.  It wasn’t like she was going to get any bigger!

    Of course, she did.  The once svelte secretary was now chubby at best, and downright fat at worst.  A skin-tight blouse did little to hid her slightly plumped breasts, and nothing to hide the double roll of her cushy tummy.  Even her back was chubby, filling out the rest of her blouse to the point where seams were visibly starting to strain.  Her hips flared out widely, their girth and her expansive ass spilling out of her chair, pushing even the largest skirts she could find to their absolute limits.  They clung to her tree-trunk thighs, which in turn clung to each other as she walked (well, okay, waddled).  She found that they ached after any amount of walking, and getting from her car to her undersized chair had become a struggle.

    And then, one day, the unthinkable happened.  She went to stand up at lunch, to fetch her daily dozen donuts and… she couldn’t.  She was stuck.  As much as she struggled, she simple couldn’t remove herself.  She sat there, hungry and sipping cola for the rest of the workday, trying to ignore the rumbles from her empty belly, before she managed to free herself, tearing her too-small skirt in the process.

    With that, skirt and dignity in tatters, she made her way to maintenance.  She needed a bigger chair.