Progress.

Derek came home Tuesday afternoon and made smart milk for Yevgenya,

and taught her to walk,

and to talk.

Yulia, working out back in the bowling alley, got the new home venue to Rank 1,

and chose the “Assess Desire” perk (another one she didn’t care about).

She told Derek she planned to stop by her community lot, Yulia’s Emporium, for the night, but that she wasn’t going to call in any employees. Her plan was to price everything astronomically so that she could make some money and get the store out of the red. Derek, who’d already achieved his own LTW, understood that Yulia had given up a lot of the energy she’d wanted to expend on her LTW in order to have their daughter, so sent her off for the night with his blessing.

Yulia opened her store,

sold a couple of flamingos at $9,999 each,

and got the store to Rank 4.

For her latest Business Perk, she picked “Look for Mark” (though she figured she’d never use it).

She went to sleep for several hours in one of her tents, leaving her merchandise priced high so that no one would buy it during the time that there was no one to run the register or restock.

Yulia figured that the potential customers who visited the store while she was sleeping could at least enjoy the TV, the radio, and the snapdragons, and that she might get another star or two for that reason.

When she awoke, she was pleasantly surprised to find that all 4 of her employees had autonomously shown up for work, without her having to call them in!

She quickly reset the price of the flamingos back to “Ridiculously Cheap,” sent Bruce on break,

and put Shelby on register.

(Shelby already had a Gold restocking badge, but only a Bronze register badge, and Yulia wanted to improve Shelby’s skills, and increase her badges, so that Yulia could promote the young woman.) Troy, who had only a Bronze restocking badge, stayed on restocking. (Yulia hoped he was steadily working his way to a Silver.)

Yulia decided to change the price of one flamingo to $9,999. She wanted to continue to improve her bottom line,

so she energetically marketed the expensive flamingo to customers she thought would buy it.

The store got up to Rank 5,

and Yulia picked “Convincing Personality,” which would increase the effectiveness of her Sales interactions (including Dazzle).

Then to her delight, she received a Good Review--

followed quickly by a Best of the Best award!!

Together, the two gave Yulia 16,000 aspiration points!!!

By the time she closed up for the night,

the store was solidly profitable.

When she got home, her husband and young daughter were both asleep. Yulia crawled into bed next to Derek.

When the couple awoke Wednesday morning, Derek yawned and stretched, and said, “Wow—you really burned the midnight oil last night!”

Yulia felt a moment of alarm,

then told her husband, “Well, I made a lot of progress at the store, and that’s a good thing, because I suspect you’re going to make me take it easy for the next couple of days.”

_______________________________________

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR: I found no fewer than 3 nasty bad Snapdragons in the employee break room while Yulia was sleeping in the tent,

so remember to watch out for these!

Scandal! (okay, not really!): Yulia apparently got into a tent in which Abhijeet—with whom she has a very low relationship—was already sleeping, and spent the whole night with him!

So, sharing a tent apparently doesn’t require the same relationship quality that sharing a bed does. Good to know for 5TLB purposes!

It was a VERY pleasant surprise that Yulia’s employees autonomously showed up for work in the morning—remember, she hadn’t called them in the night before, because she wanted to sell her merchandise at $9,999, and doesn’t need any employees to support her while she does that.

Bruce remains a difficult employee, in the weirdest way. Now he works TOO hard, but he’s like an overgrown puppy who has no idea he’s being inappropriate. Yulia sent him on break so that Shelby could gain more register experience. Bruce kept voluntarily coming off break and replacing Shelby, so Yulia instead assigned him to Sales. Then, he kept interfering with Yulia’s high-priced sales—whenever she was showing one of the $9,999-priced items to someone and Dazzling that customer, Bruce would bound over and do a useless “Basic Sell” on that person. Yulia finally out of exasperation sent him home for the day. (I suppose she could have instead assigned him to Tidy Up.)