Xav shuddered slightly in anticipation as he buttoned the last button on his shirt, his nerves rattled as he looked up into the mirror in front of him. The lithe arctic fox had just finished getting ready for his first day of work, and he couldn’t have been more nervous. Hired on at a grocery store for their ‘Quality Assurance’ department at the last minute, the vulpine was more than a little excited and nervous for his new position. The interview had been easy enough, but he hadn’t expected to get the job in any way. He had it though, and as he ran a paw over his long, aqua-blue tipped ears, he realized just how real it was. He finally had found work, and he needed to keep that job no matter what. Thusly, he was ready nearly a half-hour early, and couldn’t wait to get himself into work and get started on what he hoped would be a fruitful job. The pay was better than he had expected, and he was offered bonuses, time off… It was basically a dream position for Xav, and all he had to do was test food to make sure that it was of quality for the customers before it got sent off to be made. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he did know it involved some amount of eating… He could handle that, of course.
Glancing at himself in the mirror again, the vulpine adjusted his glasses in front of his light blue eyes before giving a nod of approval. Satisfied, he went right on out and into the world to head to work. He knew the brief walk would be uneventful, but even still his heart raced with every single step he took towards his new place of employment. His cold paws padding along the sidewalk, he didn’t even know what to expect fully still, but he knew it was something that he would need to be good at. Each step filled him with more nerves, and it was to the point that when he finally did arrive at the doors to the store, he was shaking lightly. His tail was twitching behind him, the black tip lashing back and forth in nervous excitement as his ears were splayed back with nerves. Reaching a black-mitted paw out to grab onto the door, Xav took a deep breath to steady himself for just a moment before giving the door a light tug.
“You’re early,” Came a call before the vulpine had even stepped inside, making him jump slightly with nervousness. Xav’s manager was standing just off to the side of the door, the portly female bear towering over the arctic fox as she turned to greet him.
“I figured th-“
“Yeah, yeah… First day, you wanted to make a good impression, all that. Well don’t clock in just yet because you’re a little too early for that.” Her tone was one of mild annoyance, further splaying back Xav’s ears as he thought he did something wrong. Mary didn’t really notice, or at least didn’t seem to as she continued on. “Go on to the back, meet up with Larry; he’s your boss now. He’ll explain what needs doing to you, alright?”
“Y-Yes ma’am,” Xav stuttered out, skittering off towards the back before he could get any more ‘words of wisdom’ from his manager. Even more nervous than he had been before, the vulpine didn’t so much as look up from the floor as he went right off to his destination. Not wanting to upset his new boss of sorts, Xav made sure to stop right outside the doors to the back area of the store for a moment to collect himself before continuing on. He took another deep breath and let out a sigh, his whole frame wilting slightly as he let all of the air out of himself. Doing this a couple times to calm his nerves, the vulpine continued on to the back once he was sufficiently calmed down to find Larry, and find out just what he was supposed to be doing…
**********
Xav’s job turned out to be little more than taste testing, and it involved a lot more eating than he had originally thought. Larry was very nice, a downright fat badger who was always jovial and didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. Xav had spent the first few days of his job working out just what product went to which department, what quality he was looking for in tasting things, what to look for in terms of looks, and various other things that Larry had been very careful in teaching him. It turned out that Larry and Xav were the only two anthros in the Quality Assurance department, the whole area having been a new initiative from corporate according to the badger. In fact, Xav had only gotten the job because he had been the applicant that Larry liked the look of the most, and the fact that Larry couldn’t manage an entire store’s worth of food. Xav struggled to help out at first though, his stomach far smaller than the badger’s quite obviously thanks to the arctic fox’s lithe frame and scant eating habits. Larry always made sure that the vulpine left the store stuffed to the brim though, the walk home for Xav often taking twice as long as the walk to the store thanks to how full he would leave work. Long hours, all the free food he could eat, and a boss that was nothing but polite to him though… Xav could take a few stomachaches if that was the only downside of his job.
Of course, eating as he had been was taking a toll on the thin physique in a large way. The first week or two he had been there had seen very little change for Xav, but now that he was nearly done with his first month of employment, the vulpine knew he needed to request another new uniform. The buttons on the just-purchased shirt were already starting to show strain from the amount of arctic fox they were being asked to contain, and that fact alone made Xav blushed as he again stood in front of the mirror in his house. Gone were the rubs and thin, cut lines of his torso, left in their stead were soft curves that made the fox look far more well-fed. He wasn’t necessarily fat yet, sure, but he could definitely pass as chubby now that he had been doing little more than eating, examining food, and more eating for all hours of the day. The length of his shifts and how often he was scheduled was really causing all this, and precluded the fox from even thinking about going to the gym; he never had the time. Sleep, work, take an hour or two to himself at home, then repeat that process for five days a week. The other two days he was trying to take care of his bills, keeping his house maintained, and various other things that kept him too busy to even try and do much else. His social life suffered, and his waistline was also suffering in spades. This wasn’t to say that Xav minded necessarily, but he did definitely notice that he was getting softer thanks to his new employment.
In fact… Xav decided to remove the tight shirt that he had just struggled to put on in order to see just what sort of damage he was doing to himself. Struggling to get his paws around the buttons that he had just done up, Xav pulled in his stomach as much as he could muster in order to at least allow some leeway for his thickened paws to get around those buttons. He managed to get the shirt undone using this method, if only just, and let out his held breath with a heavy groan as soon as the last button was undone. Leaving his shirt on, Xav instead decided to tug up his off-white undershirt to get a look at what had become of his thin, toned abdomen. A deep belly button was the first thing that greeted him, the thick slit running along the center of his fleshy stomach and sagging slightly thanks to all the weight around it. Burgeoning lovehandles could be seen on either side of the vulpine’s torso, rolling faintly over pants that would undoubtedly need to be replaced soon; Xav could barely manage to get them buttoned that morning. Placing his free paw on his stomach, Xav rubbed over the white fur there in slow, lazy arcs just to watch it move. His whole upper frame sloshed slowly back and forth with those rubs, the light hint at moobs the vulpine was getting moving around back and forth beneath the undershirt in which they were still trapped as his stomach swayed to and fro. The fox’s tail gave away just how much he was enjoying himself, wagging furiously behind him as he played with the newly minted pudge on his frame that he had accrued from simply a month at his new job. To think that was just a portion of his new frame too made the arctic fox shiver with delight unconsciously, the very idea of his hips now filling out his pants enough to lightly brush one another, his cheeks now looking full and round, his chin less defined, his arms more pliable and soft… All of that just made Xav giddy, and he didn’t quite know why. He could only imagine what other damage he was going to do to his frame at work that day. He had to get there first though, and that would involve rebuttoning his shirt; if it would hold, that is.
**********
“Employee of the month, huh? Congrats there, foxy.” Larry called out from behind his desk as Xav waddled his way slowly into the badger’s office. Xav had indeed been named employee of the month at the morning meeting, and was just now seeing Larry to confirm that. The vulpine wasn’t entirely sure why he had received such a nomination, but he was glad to take it as it meant a small bump in pay as well as a bonus for the end of the month. He had been working harder than ever too, so some part of him at least could put that to what he had done… But his work had consisted so much of just eating and judging food that he was still somewhat surprised. Indeed, his job hadn’t changed in the slightest as he had been working through the previous months, and in fact it had only gotten to be more demanding as Larry was shifted to less of an on-the-floor role and more into an office role. The badger still came to help out Xav as much as he could, but the arctic fox had proven himself to be just as efficient as Larry, if not moreso. Production was up, the quality of food couldn’t have been higher, and Xav was quite pleased with himself in all of these things. Even as he lumbered into the badger’s office to share lunch with his boss, Xav couldn’t help but let his thick tail wag lazily behind him in satisfied glee for how things were turning out for him. “Well… I can’t really call you foxy anymore, I’d say fatty is more what you are now.”
“H-Hey…” Xav went to retort, getting a laugh out of Larry in response.
“I was just joking foxy, you’re still a swimsuit model compared to me.” Larry replied, and while Xav blushed and gave a faint nod in agreement, Larry was very much so exaggerating. Xav had ballooned over the past couple months, going from being chubby, to fat, and somewhere in obese territory now. His stomach rolled right over the front of his pants, he needed uniforms on a bi-weekly basis, and he was almost always eating even when he wasn’t at work. The vulpine knew something about this was off, and that he shouldn’t have been eating as much as he was, but he was just too content with a full stomach now to even think about slowing down. This left him eating himself into a stupor even on his days off, much moreso when he was working. More than once in fact over the past few weeks, he had needed to use the employee breakroom instead of waddling himself home thanks to eating himself too full for the half-mile trudge back to his home. He’d needed to buy a wider mirror at home to fit himself into it even, just to look at the new pounds he was piling onto his frame on a nigh daily basis. He hadn’t stopped enjoying that poundage though in any way, instead just reveling in every new curve that found its way onto his body as he just continued to expand. A few remarks from his fellow employees had stemmed some of his eating habits for a day or two, but Xav was so entrenched in the need to eat and feed and judge food thanks to the work schedule that he now had that it was a moot point. The arctic fox all but lived to eat at this point, and he knew it as he lowered himself down into a chair opposite Larry to start in on his second lunch of the day.
“So, foxy, how goes work?”
“Fine, just fine… That new line of cookies is still in testing, and they’re actually turning out to be really good.”
“Oh? Bring some by at the end of the day will ya? I won’t be able to make it over there thanks to a conference call with corporate.”
“Sure thing boss,” Xav replied, his mouth half-full of sandwich as he spoke. Already tucking in, the fox just blushed inwardly at his inability to restrain himself anymore when it came to food. He was full, he knew he was… And yet, there was food in front of him that needed to be eaten and analyzed to its fullest, and he was there to do so. Larry seemed to notice something about this too, a light chuckle coming from the badger.
“You’ve sure changed since you started Xav. You were thin as a rail when you came here, and could barely even stomach to test half a department before calling uncle.” Larry gave his stomach a light slap before continuing, drawing a blush from Xav that peeked right through the white fur on his food-filled cheeks. “Now you test the whole store like it was nothing… Good on you for stepping up to the plate.” Larry seemed sincere, going so far as to raise his glass in cheers to the fox. Xav almost choked on his sandwich as he struggled to find his own mug, gulping the barely-chewed bite down before raising his own glass and smiling as best he could muster through the pain of his food foul-up.
“Thanks b-“, Xav started, but was stopped by a raised paw from Larry.
“As of today, I’m not your boss. You’re getting promoted to your own department Xav. We found a replacement for you, so you get to move up. What you’re going to be doing…”
**********
Xav was floored when he found out his new job, and even more pleased with what he had to do because of it. Responsible now just for the leftovers and bad products in the store, he was tasked with just making sure that they were gotten rid of. This often left him with huge quantities of food with little place to put them, so he would just eat them more often than not. Corporate hated throwing away food, and giving it away would make taxes for them more complicated, so it was handled as best it could be in-house. Xav’s job was to peruse the store for older items, talk to department heads to see if any employees in those departments wanted those products, and then distribute them accordingly. More often than not though no one would want the food, and that left it all to Xav for him to eat or handle accordingly. Eating even more than he had been while he was testing food for the store, the vulpine’s waistline practically exploded with pounds as he was forced to basically be the waste bin for the store. Food near expiration, day-old baked goods, mis-orders from the deli… All of it went to Xav, and all of it went into Xav over the course of his work day. He was still working long hours, but now that he was all but eating for free thanks to the fact that he often had more food than he knew what to do with, he was all but rolling in both money and food. He could spend an entire weekend just on his sofa eating, and that reality had prompted him to move just a block from the store in order to make his trek far easier to and from work. This wasn’t to say that he made this trek all the time, as the newfound relationship with food that he had was making getting up and moving around more and more difficult. There were days where he wouldn’t leave his office now, instead just opting to stay seated in place and have the food brought to him, allowing him to stuff his face until he passed out in his double-wide office chair in a food-addled stupor.
This amount of eating had left him well beyond obese, and all it took was one fateful look in the mirror for the vulpine to realize this. Having been special-ordering his ever-expanding uniforms for over a month at that point, the arctic fox was just shocked to see himself when he finally bothered to move the boxes of old food from in front of his mirror during one of the rare moments he wasn’t eating at home. He filled that mirror and then some, the widest points of his hips and lovehandles flaring their way off the reflective surface. Dressed in just boxers that were barely visible beyond the lower curve of his belly and the rolling, sagging expanse of his lovehandles, all of the fox was out to see as he just stared at the reflection of himself. His fur looked to almost be thinning at the front of his stomach, the flesh below peeking out very slightly thanks to how much it had grown in such a short amount of time. His legs were almost shaking just standing there, splayed out wide thanks to the outrageously large circumference of the vulpine’s hips. His calves were all that could be seen in the mirror, and they looked to be deflated medicine balls of lard, each one hanging low on his leg to the point that they rolled over onto the tops of his toes. Unable to see his hips, Xav just turned his attention to his stomach, which rolled down past the knees of his digigrade legs and made walking a laborious struggle for the vulpine. His bellybutton was now a deep crevice in the surface of his stomach, occupying the lowest roll in a stack of two that made up his frame. Constantly aslosh even when he wasn’t moving, the gravid mass that dominated his figure just looked to have a life of its own even as Xav stood still and panted softly at the sheer effort of standing. Experimentally moving a paw and pressing it into the side of his stomach, Xav just felt how far in his arm could sink before meeting resistance. The resistance was undoubtedly his stomach, as the arctic fox had just finished his third lunch of the day. Xav just blushed at this, noting how his arms looked to be more like deflated beachballs than appendages at this point. Propped up by moobs that were nearly the size of his belly when he first noticed his fat gain, they just hung uselessly by his sides more often than not thanks to the effort needed to move them. Xav had developed more than one technique to eating, often just placing food between the immensity of his cleavage and sucking it down like the true glutton that he was. Moving up past those moobs too, even the fox’s face was absurdly fat… Cheeks that impeded his vision, a muzzle that was sunken into those cheeks and the collar of fat that had become one when his chins and neck had merged into one large roll of fat to keep up his head. Even Xav’s ears felt fatter as he looked on at himself, his gaged long ears looking almost small atop his head now. Simply put, Xav was enormous, and only getting bigger. He could barely waddle around, it took more food than a family ate in a week to sate him for a day, and he was loving every little bit of what he was doing to himself.
A phone call snapped Xav out of his newfound revelry for his frame, bringing him back to reality and making him laboriously waddle over to his phone. Fumbling with the device for a moment in his sausage-like paws, the vulpine eventually managed to wheeze out a “Hello” into the receiver.
“Hey, Xav? Think you can come in today? We got a new shipment of snack cakes in that we weren’t supposed to, and co-“
“More food for me to… To take care of, right?”
“You got it, Disposal Manager.”
“I’ll be right in.”