“Have you ever worked as a shop clerk?” Irene asked. She was sitting on the upper steps of a Londontown stairwell, chewing on the rib of a badger. She bought the rib from a woman with too many children cooking out of an apartment. Irene sold the woman the badger yesterday.
The rib came with a small green salad and baked tubers on a wooden plate. The cook told her to bring the plate back. Yesterday the cook didn’t offer a plate, instead Irene experienced a much messier time eating off a scrap of leather she used to hold her food when she traveled. Today after negotiating the sale of another badger for a hot meal and a couple coins, the woman asked, “You’re Irene aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Irene admitted.
“Here,” the cook said, “take it, just bring the plate back.” She handed Irene a plate loaded with twice as much food as yesterday.
“No,” came the terse reply returning Irene’s attention to the present moment. Since the upper level of Londontown was mostly empty, Irene could sit on the steps and enjoy her meal without blocking traffic. When she climbed to the top of this particular stair, she found it already occupied by a woman alone.
Lone women were rare. Not just in the square but anywhere in the structure. Irene thought this woman was probably escaping from another apartment too full of children, for a little me time.
“I recently decided to set up a shop,” Irene explained. “I can’t make heads or tails of the shop interface.”
Irene’s dinner mate was using a vent pin to spear the green salad. Only after her salad was gone did she speak again.
“You have this shop here? In Londontown?” The woman asked.
“Yeah,” Irene responded. “It’s in the corner by the blacksmith.”
“I don’t remember an empty there,” the woman responded. Irene just shrugged her shoulders. It was there and she bought it. “My brother rented a shop once, in the early days before he got hooked. You can secure a shop from thieves, but not from the owner,” Irene’s dinner mate went on to comment.
“Do you know anything about the interface?” Irene asked.
“Some,” the woman replied.
“I’ll pay you ten iron if you show me what you know,” Irene said.
“A silver,” the woman countered boldly.
“Nope,” Irene replied. “You’d have to be the square’s expert to get a silver out of me. I’ll go pay one of the shop clerks first.” Ten iron was enough for a two day stay in the inn. Irene thought that was plenty. She only asked the woman because she was thinking about giving it another try tonight. This was the third day since Irene’s arrival at Londontown and Anthony’s day off. Irene already checked the back door and there was a different set of guards tonight. She was going to spend the evening assembling pieces for sale instead of gathering. Maybe she would even get the bed frame together. She thought she was getting close.
The woman finished her meal and rose to her feet. She tossed her rib bone into a corner of the landing and left without comment. Since everything left in the halls of a square disappeared in the night, this was a common occurrence. Irene usually took her trash out to one of the rooms in wildspace. Since she wasn’t heading out there tonight, she tossed her own bone in the corner. When she finished her meal she took the wooden plate back down to the cook.
A knock sounded on the shop door about an hour later. Irene turned to find the woman from the stairs standing in the courtyard. The lights in the structure were in the half light phase of evening. Irene was working on weaving a chair seat with cord. She was working on a diagonal pattern, she saw it once someplace but never really paid attention to it. She made a quick half hitch to hold the cord in place.
The woman was alone. She was looking a little impatient. Irene saw her looking over at the inn. Irene pushed the door open.
“Hello,” she said in greeting.
“Ten iron,” the woman responded, “is the offer still open?”
“Maybe,” Irene said. “You weren’t interested before. What is your name?”
“I’m Anna,” the woman responded. “Margot told me who you are.” Irene wondered who Margot was. “She told me you really do have a shop.” Now Irene really wondered who Margot was and how she knew about the shop.
“Yes,” Irene said. It was pretty obvious she did have a shop, since she was standing in the doorway. Irene wondered what Anna was afraid of and decided she didn’t really want to know. “Ten iron,” Irene confirmed, holding the door open for her.
Anna stepped inside. Her eyes went over the shop contents. The showroom was scattered with piles of components. The chair she was working on and a small bookcase were the only completed, or almost completed items, in sight. The mattress that started this whole adventure was against the back wall with Irene’s personal possessions scattered around it. She slept on it the last few nights and it looked like a pallet. There were component shelves up against the walls, but since they were loaded with more components they didn’t look like items for sale. Anna went directly over to the pay counter.
“Touch the surface with the flat of your hand and wait till you see the interface. When you do, there is an icon in the lower left that looks like a K. Select it,” Anna instructed tersely
Irene went around the counter to the seller’s side and set her hand on the surface of the counter. Anna was studying the surface of the counter so Irene looked down at it herself. An interface appeared on the surface of the counter. It looked like icons or buttons were carved out of the stone. There were a dozen of them at least. Irene studied each one of them earlier and didn’t have a single guess for any of them.
She studied the images on her lower left. There was one that looked a little like a K on its side. It also might be a man kneeling, or two arms crossed. Irene touched it. From her point of view, nothing happened except the icon now looked like an upside down T.
“Good,” Anna said. “Now I can see it too. That is how you share the interface with a customer. It appears on the corner of every screen. So the icons down the right side are roughly, rent, accounting, personnel, inventory, purchases, sales, open/closed. On the left from the bottom is visibility, hours, layout, default and I don’t think anyone has any idea what the last two do.”
“What's this big one in the center?” Irene asked.
“It’s the default behavior that happens if you just tap the control surface. Yours is set to inventory,” Anna said. Irene studied the large icon. It did sort of resemble the smaller icon along the edge. The larger version was clearly a grid with round dots in the bottom half.
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“You called this one default,” Irene said pointing at the icon on the left. “Do I use that to change the default behavior?” she asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Anna responded. She seemed relieved. “Let's start with inventory. I know the most about that.”
“Ok,” Irene said. She reached out and touched the inventory icon. A new set of icons appeared on the right with a blank area on the left. Anna started pointing out the icons.
“Add, remove, update, list, reports and I call that one ‘settings’,” Anna said. “You can set up separate inventories.”
“What is that for?” Irene asked, “Splitting the shop between two businesses?”
“My brother used it to keep track of which suppliers' products sold best.” Anna thought about it for a moment. “I think it would work for your two businesses in one idea too. If you set up multiple inventories, all the other choices get more complex, because you have to pick which inventory first.” Anna walked over to a nearby pile and picked up one of the iron tubing sections. She brought it back and set it on the counter. “Select the add icon,” she instructed.
Anna walked Irene through how to add items to the inventory. The easiest method was to just set the item on the counter. The system defaulted to believe you wanted that item added. The price defaulted to one iron coin. A quick tap on the price and another iron coin was added. A long touch on the iron coin and a silver coin was added. A long touch on the silver and a green coin was added. A swipe across the entire price, like you were crossing it out, and it reset to one iron coin.
After the price was set, the system reported how many of that item was currently in the shop, in structure script. A tap on that number and they were all added for that price.
“That part only worked because your item is integrated. If you try to sell something unique like butchered meat, you have to issue an id number for the object and it is individually priced,” Anna said. “The id number is how it appears in the accounting.”
“How do I identify integrated items in the accounting?” Irene asked.
“Oh they have an id number too, it’s just already set. That is what this is here and that there in the corner is the icon it will show for this thing.” Irene looked at the number insured for the iron component. It was actually a string of numbers. Anna went over and picked up the bookcase and set it in front of the counter. “This might be unique,” she said.
Anna explained that the second easiest way to put something into inventory was to put it in front of the counter. If the top was empty the interface would look there next. This was convenient for items that were too large to easily fit on the counter. The bookcase was not unique, but the string of numbers identifying it was longer. When they tried the chair, with its almost finished seat, it came up unique. When they tried to enter it, a warning came up.
“That’s odd,” Anna said. “You don’t usually see that warning unless you're putting together bundles. Did you add anything to the inventory before I got here?”
“No,” Irene responded. “It’s the first item you added.”
“The bar?” Anna asked.
“Yeah,” Irene responded. That’s this piece here,” she said pointing at the leg-backrest piece. Irene picked up the bar and flipped it around so she held the loose piece up next to the chair. “See?” Anna frowned. She looked around the room again, at all the stacks of bars and sheets, then back at the chair and bookcase.
“Why are you making them in pieces?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m not making them. I’m assembling them. I’ve gathered all the pieces from wildspace,” Irene responded. “Except for the seat, of course. I’ve seen people weave seats and backrests so I am trying to reproduce it.”
“So you're going to sell chairs and bookcases?” Anna asked.
“Among other things,” Irene said. “It’s a salvage store. I plan to sell salvage items that aren’t scrap.” Irene could see that Anna thought that was an odd idea. She physically shook off the thought and returned to her instruction. From the warning they could abort adding the new item into inventory or if they continued the old item would be rolled into this item. They could set a new price for the rolled in item, or accept that the existing price.
“It's set up that way so you can track the profits per sub item in an assembly if you want. You should put every item in here in inventory. Inventory items in a shop are protected from theft. If someone does manage to steal something, which is hard, it automatically returns in three days,” Anna explained.
“How does that work?” Irene asked.
“I have no idea,” Anna said. “But I’ve seen it happen. The missing item will be waiting for you in the shop. The thieves can’t sell the item either, not using a pay surface. If the item is near a pay surface it just won’t work.” Irene thought that was an important thing to know for even people who didn’t own shops. It was a real reason to use the pay surfaces in the market and not just exchange physical coins.
“Is this what you meant by securing a shop from thieves, but not from the owner?” Irene asked.
“Yeah,” Anna replied. “Once something is in inventory the only way it can be removed from the shop is by removing it from inventory first. A sale is how a clerk removes an item from inventory. When you hire someone you grant them access to each of the top level icons. If you don’t grant them access to inventory, they can’t add things to inventory, but they can’t take them out either. You also don’t want to give a worker the ability to make purchases. That’s another way a shop bleeds coins.”
Anna went on to explain how to add anything anywhere in the shop into inventory. It was possible to pull up a map of the shop and target an item on the floor plan. When she targeted one of the piles of components, a long list of items appeared. Irene added them all into inventory for one silver each.
After inventory Anna walked Irene through how to hire a clerk. Irene hired Anna as a clerk for the example, giving her only access to the sales icon.
“What is the difference between the hours and the open/closed icons?” Irene asked.
“If you set the hours then your personnel can only enter during those times. The shop won’t actually be open to the public unless there is personnel inside. The open/close icon is an override. It is open the shop now, close the shop now. Personnel with access to the open/close icon can enter the shop at any time,” Anna explained. “That is what I was told about the hours icon, I’ve never used it myself, so I don’t know how you define hours.” Anna didn’t know that much about sales, purchases, rent or layout. Accounting was a log of every transaction. Anna described how to sort, filter and get totals, but without any data it was hard to demonstrate.
“That’s it,” Anna said. “That’s all I know.”
“Ok,” Irene said. She reached down into her pocket looking for physical coins to pay Anna with. She didn’t think she could use the pay surface to pay her yet, since without sales there was no money in the account. She pulled out a handful of coins and sorted through them. There was only eight iron in physical coins in her hand. She shoved the coins back into her pocket. “You’re still entered as personnel. I’ll buy that component from the shop and give it to you. Then I’ll buy it back from you to pay you.”
Wanting the money, Anna agreed. The interface vanished as soon as Irene stepped out from behind the counter. Anna took her place and reactivated it. She switched it to the visible configuration. Irene sat the component on the counter. The interface automatically recognized it. Irene could see the same icon on the side that Anna used to add items anywhere in the shop to inventory, so there was a method to add more items. An icon above that one looked like a coin, Irene wondered if that was a way to manually set a price for an item not in inventory, like delivery charges. Near Anna, in the clerk position was a coin tally. Anna tapped the coin tally and the normal pile of shadow coins appeared on the counter. Or in this case a single shadow coin appeared since the price of the component was set to one silver.
Irene made the payment motion and the coins vanished. Irene took the component off the counter and handed it to Anna. They switched positions. Anna sat the component on the counter. Irene selected the purchase icon. The same ‘select from someplace in store’ and coin icons were on the purchase interface. Irene selected the coin icon. She played with the interface and found that she could not increase the amount past the one silver in the account. She tapped the coin tally.
“That is a silver,” Anna said. “I agreed to ten iron.”
“I changed my mind,” Irene responded. “You under sold your knowledge.” Anna took the coin. “Before you go,” Irene said. “I’ll be ready to open in a few more days, but I am going to concentrate on salvaging wildspace and trade with other squares. I want to hire someone to run the shop. I’ll pay a sixth of everything sold.” Anna showed Irene how she could do that.
“I’ll think about it,” Anna replied. Irene noticed that Anna carefully checked that the area outside the shop was empty before she exited.