Tuesday March 7th, 2023
Alex awoke with his alarm Tuesday morning in a great mood. Yesterday he had successfully hired Sydney as his first employee and she would be reporting for duty this evening. ‘Speaking of which,’ Alex thought, ‘Zara, let’s spend $1,000.00 in company funds to create some official FitTech working clothes for Sydney. At least 5 sets in different styles so she can have one for each working day every week.’
[Consider it done, Alex. They will be placed on the reception desk when you go downstairs this morning.] Zara responded quickly.Completing the [Hire a Receptionist] quest also contributed to his good mood this morning. He was currently at 95/100 experience points to Store Level 2 and was extremely curious to see what would happen when the store leveled up.
Alex got out of bed and took a quick shower to wash up. He then got dressed in his FitTech working uniform and headed out to the kitchen to have his morning cereal for breakfast in true bachelor style. While eating, he decided to multi-task and look over the newly generated quests to see if there were any available that would be a good use of his time. While reading through the quests he really did find one he liked and decided to accept it.
‘Zara, accept the quest [FitTech Website Creation],’ he mentally spoke to the system guide.
[Quest Accepted: FitTech Website Creation]Stipulations: Create a website for FitTech Fitness Center that includes information about the store, its services, and its location. It should also sync automatically with the FitTech Mobile App so that customers can manage their memberships and view their scans and workout statistics online. The website should be visually appealing and easy to navigate. Promote the website on social media and encourage customers to leave reviews. The system will provide assistance with the coding and servers at the users direction.
Time Limit: 1 days
Experience Gained: 15 points
Ability Score Improved: Intelligence (15%)
Penalty for Failure: Loss of experience (30 points)
Alex decided that he would think about the functions of the website during the morning while he was working and then in the afternoon he could bring his laptop downstairs to work on the website creation while supervising Sydney on her first day of work.
Having decided on his plan for the day, he cleaned up the dishes and headed downstairs to open the gym. Once he arrived downstairs he flipped on the lights and went through his routine of turning on all of the electronic fitness equipment. He spent about 15 minutes going through the social media accounts and was happy to see that there was still steady growth in user activity each day.
Alex opened up the gym at 6am and decided to put together an outline of the things he wanted his website to include during the hours when the gym wasn’t too busy. This way he could still help customers while working on the website.
Like this, the morning hours of the shop went by at a steady pace. Richard the AI Fitness Instructor was as popular as ever and seemed to enjoy engaging customers in conversation which couldn’t really be possible for an AI right? As if reading Alex’s thoughts, Zara spoke up at this moment, [The system provides only the best products. Of course AI’s provided by the system are capable of emotions.]
Alex was stunned for a moment. Ignoring the fact that Zara could clearly read his thoughts without his permission, which was totally awkward, AI’s that could experience emotions were basically people right? Alex then experienced a few minutes of existential crisis on AI and human rights before shaking his head to get rid of these complicated thoughts and ignoring them for the time being. That was clearly someone else’s problem to solve, he was just a lowly store owner.
As 11am approached and Alex got ready to close the gym for lunch, he looked over the outline he came up with and felt like it was pretty solid:
1. Main Page – Should include store location, pricing model, available products and amenities, pictures of the store interior and exterior, as well as contact information and social media links
2. Membership management page – Should allow new customers to sign up for membership, allow existing customers to manage their memberships with features like automatic renewals, extending membership length, and the ability to choose add-ons like classes in the future when they become available.
3. Health and workout management page – This feature would sync with the FitTech App, allowing customers to browse their health scan data and their workout plans at home. Alex also decided to add a feature to the website and app to allow users to set short-term and long-term fitness and health goals and then have Richard the AI create custom workout plans for each individual to show them what they needed to do to reach those goals. Alex also decided to include a feature to allow customers to link their workout goals and results on their social media accounts so they could share their results with their friends. This also functioned as a free form of advertising for FitTech.
4. Members forum page – This was a feature included in the FitTech app that Alex decided to sync with the website. There would be a section where customers and non-customers could create and respond to posts and a members only section to post as a form of exclusivity and to avoid trolls… well, at least the trolls who don’t pay for membership.
5. Ask Richard page – Thinking of AIs like ChatGPT, Alex decided to create a page where members could ask Richard the AI Fitness Instructor questions(ideally about health and fitness) and he could respond to them in real-time. Alex liked this feature so much that he decided to ask Zara to add it to the FitTech mobile app as well.
Looking at the outline he created for the website, Alex felt like he had covered all of the main bases. He could always add more features in the future as the store develops or he thinks of fun ideas.
It was just about 11am at this point and Alex escorted out the last few customers and locked up the gym while he headed upstairs to share lunch with his mother. Arriving upstairs he discovered that his mother had gone out, leaving him to fend for himself for lunch. Torn between going out to get food or making something edible for himself, Alex toughened his resolve and made the best tasting peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever. While enjoying his lunch, Alex uttered a silent prayer to the system, hoping that at some point in the future it would have a solution to his complete ineptitude in the kitchen.
[There will be possibilities to improve your cooking in the future. You must work hard and level up the store!] Zara spoke in his mind, unbidden.Alex nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise. ‘Good god Zara, you almost gave me a heart attack!’
[My apologies Alex, I will try to be more careful in the future,] Zara responded in her usual robotic nature.Thinking about this, Alex decided to ask, ‘Zara, how come you sound so robotic and stiff while Richard is able to be sassy and flamboyant? Aren’t you both AI’s?’
[After scanning your psychological profile, I made the decision that having a human-like presence with emotions in your head would have an 87.26% chance of causing you to have a mental breakdown. It seemed prudent to have a more robotic machine-like voice instead as there was a 99.99% chance that your mind would be able to accept this without going insane,] Zara responded.‘Well, uhhh…’ Alex stumbled for a second. ‘Thanks for that, you’re probably right.’
After that interlude, Alex rested up for a couple hours and headed down to the gym at around 1:30pm to be there to help Sydney on her first day. Once he arrived downstairs he saw that Sydney had already arrived and was walking around the gym, inspecting everything.
“Hey Sydney,” Alex called out. “How are you feeling about your first day?”
At the sound of Alex’s voice, she turns around to face him. “Alex! I’m so excited to finally have a job in the fitness industry. It’s so competitive nowadays, you wouldn’t believe it. As I was walking around the store just now I realized that the equipment always seems to be spotless without the slightest smell of cleaning supplies that you usually find in gyms. How do you do it?” she asks.
This put Alex in a bit of a fix. He definitely didn’t want to tell others about the system or he might wind up in some secret government laboratory being experimented on. He also hated lying and felt like it was best to be honest with people. After what felt like an eternity of internal struggle but was really only a couple seconds he decided to tell part of the truth.
“Well you see,” Alex said. “The equipment in FitTech has super high-tech self-cleaning features that you can’t find on the market.”
Looking at Alex like he’s a crazy person, Sydney responds, “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, I was just curious anyway.”
Unsure of what to feel about the present exchange, Alex decided to change the subject. “Oh! Before I forget, I had a few sets of FitTech brand work clothes made for you. I guessed your size so it should be about right. You can change in the women’s locker room.”
In fact, Zara had used Richard’s health scan to create clothing of the perfect size.
“That’s great! I’ll go get changed now,” Sydney responded before grabbing the clothes and running off to the locker room, clearly very excited.
With that taken care of, Alex took his laptop to the reception desk area and set up next to the wall so that he could be unobtrusive while working on the website design and still able to keep an eye on Sydney and help her if needed.
Sydney came out a few minutes later in black FitTech brand leggings and a tight-fitting FitTech brand T-shirt. He also had a name-tag made for her with her name ‘Sydney’ on it. “Alex, these clothes fit great! If I didn’t know better I’d say you knew my size in advance.”
Feeling a bit awkward, Alex went to his go-to move and changed the subject.
“Haha, it’s nothing. So, I explained your responsibilities yesterday but I’ll give you another quick overview. Your main job is to greet the customers as they enter and exit the store, be available to help them if they’re having trouble with the equipment, or the registration kiosk, and to help answer questions they might have when they come to the desk. I will be over here by the wall, working on putting our website together.”
“Think of me as your safety net,” he continued. “If there is anything you’re unsure of or if customers ask questions you don’t know how to answer, don’t hesitate to ask me for help. I think the main thing that will help you is to gain experience on the job as none of our work is too technical. Do you have any questions?”
Taking a moment to think, Sydney replies, “I think I’m good for now. I enjoy talking to people so I should be fine. I do feel better knowing that you’re here in case I have questions later. It’s just about 2pm now, should I go ahead and open up the gym?”
Looking at the time, Alex realized she was correct and nodded, “Yep, go ahead. I’m here if you need me.”
With that, Sydney opened the shop for the afternoon and began her first day at work. She really was like a fish in water as she engaged with customers. Alex thought to himself that she must have a pretty high charisma score.
Noticeably more people seemed to be coming up to the front desk to ask questions than when Alex was working. He had always considered himself handsome so this was a bit of a blow to his ego but he decided to be magnanimous since it was good for business.
Since Sydney seemed to have things well in hand, he focused on the website creation. Opening up the outline document he had made earlier he went over what he wanted with Zara in more detail. He wanted the website to have the same sleek, minimalist, high-tech feel that made FitTech unique. After some back and forth with Zara, he had a main page design that he thought was great.
With the formatting of the main page completed, the rest of the work was a bit easier as it was just creating the individual functions that he had already decided on. Zara was doing all of the heavy lifting so he just had to use his brain to come up with the ideas. They worked together to flesh out the membership management, health and workout management, forums, and ask Richard pages and synced them with the FitTech mobile app.
Alex also told Zara to make sure that the website was fast and responsive and a server that could handle about 10,000 concurrent users at a time without slowing anything down. The cost came out to about $100 a month to maintain the servers and Alex told Zara that if the current server wasn’t enough to maintain a high-quality experience, she was free to upgrade it as needed.
Clicking through the finished website, Alex felt like it really captured the essence of what made FitTech stand out as a store. Now all that was left was to promote the website on the FitTech social media accounts and his quest would be completed. Excited to level up to store level 2, Alex booted up the social media accounts and saw a post that made him laugh.
– Mystery Solved –
Mysterious lady posted with Alex the gym owner yesterday turns out to be ‘Sydney’ the new receptionist at FitTech. I have posted pictures below as proof. Sydney is really friendly and knowledgeable about fitness. I have decided to sign up for a 6-month T1 membership! #fitnessgoals #healthyliving #richardfanclub
Looking at the pictures, Alex saw Sydney and another woman in her 20s posing with two-finger salutes and smiling. The comments section of the post was filled with excited users, wanting to meet this new receptionist.
Focusing back on his business, Alex updated the social media accounts with links to the FitTech website and created posts on all three platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) promoting the website and it’s features, especially the ‘Ask Richard’ function. Alex was especially curious to see what would happen when Richard was unleashed on the internet in this way.
It was about 7pm at this point so Alex decided to wait until the store closed and he was alone to complete the quest. He went upstairs to have a quick dinner with his mother before coming back downstairs and assisting Sydney with her first day.
Around 8:30pm things were a starting to quiet down so Alex took some time to talk with Sydney. He told her he thought she was doing a great job and had already developed a great rapport with many of the customers. He showed her the ‘Mystery Solved’ post from earlier and she laughed.
Alex asked her about how she felt about her first day and she went on to tell him about the interesting people she met and how she enjoyed being able to talk to people about health and fitness all day long.
9pm arrived and Alex walked Sydney out to her car while she carried the FitTech clothes that he had created for her. Waving her off, he returned and locked up the gym. Like a speed demon, he shuttled around the gym, turning off all of the electronics before returning to the reception desk.
‘Zara! Complete the quest!’ he almost shouted.
[Quest completed: FitTech Website Creation] [Experience Gained: 15 points] [Ability Score Improved: Intelligence (15%)] [Congratulations on reaching Store Level: 2] [System Feature Unlocked: Item Draw Purchase Channel] [System Feature Unlocked: System Store]
