A perpetually overlooked retail employee climbs a corporate ladder he’ll never actually reach
— at a boot company whose executives divine corporate strategy through its cryogenically
frozen founder.

SYNOPSIS:

At HouseDown Boot Co’s flagship store, a sale on the company’s new hero product kicks off the day FELIX, the store manager, will finally climb the Corporate Ladder to District. AXEL, the enthusiastic full-timer who’s never been promoted, opens alongside ISABEL, the part-timer who sees the machinery clearly, and JAMES, who treats Felix’s promotion as his own inheritance.

Across town, acting CEO ACHILLES HEEL defends his sale strategy in a boardroom lit by the cryo-tube preserving his 170-year-old great-great-grandfather, founder Solomon Heel. CFO VANESSA pushes back. Board veteran RICHARD watches. Executive assistant ELIZABETH — whom Achilles calls “Bitty” — absorbs his abuse in silence. Solomon’s tube hisses and spins, and the room reads it as judgment.

The District Managers arrive at the flagship in robes and torches for the Corporate Ladder ceremony — an actual ladder descending from the ceiling, which Felix must climb to claim his title. The rungs have been greased. He falls, breaks his arm, and is fired on the spot for the workplace injury. Workers’ comp threats die laughing.

In the boardroom, Richard executes a quiet coup, revealing he’s accumulated thirty-seven percent of the company by buying shares from Vanessa and finally Elizabeth. Achilles fights back literally, in a brawl that ends with him yielding everything but his parking space. The sale is canceled.

At the store, Axel is offered Felix’s responsibilities — overtime, the tablet, a digital gift card — but no raise and no title. His first task as not-quite-manager: take down the sale signage Richard never approved. Axel looks at the founder’s portrait, looks at his Struts, and kicks his heel up. He’s been promoted into the same trap Felix climbed toward. He just hasn’t fallen yet.

By the Bootstraps is a workplace satire about the gap between how power presents itself and how it actually functions — a closed loop where the retail floor and the corporate suite enforce the same logic from opposite ends, and the ladder is always rigged

BY THE BOOTSTRAPS