Tondemo Fanfiction – 016 – [Net Super] – Mystery Shopper

The Mystery Shopper

 

Hello there, I’m Ando, an employee of AEON.

We’re very happy to be here! This is the best place to work!

Yeah!!

Haha.

Ahem.

To be perfectly honest, there is really nothing particularly glamorous about the job I am doing. I guess you could call me a warehouse stockist. I mean, my job is to move stuff around. Other times I had to count the physical stuff, just to make sure that the numbers on my tablet corresponded with the items on the shelf–

 

“We’re out how many cases of beer?!”

“Um, about 6 cases this time…”

 

… as I was saying, part of my job is to make sure stuff on the various shelves corresponds with the list-

 

“This is the freaking second time in this week! Just who is moving stuff without my freaking authority!!!!??”

“Sir, sir, please breathe, um, your face is turning kind of red…”

 

If you must know, the person shrieking over the end of this aisle is my supervisor. He’s kind of uptight about stuff being moved around without his expressed knowledge and authority. I mean, I think the guy has a photographic memory or something. Like, he could remember where everything was placed down to the last toothpick-

 

“The Dorayaki! Who moved the Dorayaki without my permission!!! Also, who needs two cases of Dorayaki each month!! Curse you! I curse you with diabetes!!”

“Sir…”

“And what the heck is Fujiya doing!!? How did they lose five whole cakes?!! Don’t they only have to look after less than a thousand square feet area?!”

“Actually, it’s not just cakes, there was a lot of ice-cream that went missing…”

 

However, the downside of that kind of controlling behaviour is the, uh, well, what you saw just now. Poor guy. Even though the upper management told him not to worry about it since these ‘missing’ items were always paid for somehow. But I kind of understand. It is the mystery of how things go missing, especially at Fujiya, that’s really mind-boggling. The patisserie is a pretty big place, but not so big that people could waltz off the place with a bunch of whole cakes every month without anyone watching and nothing caught on CCTV.

That’s right, just like every other business, we have our own ‘strange incidents’ in this company. As you may have guessed, we have a chronic case of stock theft. Things would often go missing in bits or, as you’ve heard just now, in fairly large quantities.

What’s even more mysterious is that each time something disappears, the sale value of that product would appear in the income section of the database! It’s like, we’re in some kind of grocery stock game where the gamers exchange stuff for coins or something and our job is to make sure we have enough of the stuff. Since it’s unrealistic for us to SPAM groceries out of thin air.

That’s why, instead of calling this person a thief-

 

“Someone put in an order for more beer! I swear, that freaking Mystery Shopper is having some kind of beer party! Tell Tanaka to recommend the XX wine, I don’t know who put in an order for that, but that shit doesn’t sell well in this area! Make that fool push that shit!!”

 

By the way, Tanaka is the proprietor of Tanaka Liquor Shop. He’s a really nice person who enjoys wine and stuff. I think he’s married to one of the Director’s sisters or something, which is how he got that cushy job writing up nice descriptions for wines and liquors the company pushes. I think he’s some kind of gourmet or something.

It was a pretty cool job and I’ve seen some of the lines he had written. It made me want to try the stuff he recommends online even though I’m a total teetotaler. The Director sure knows how to put the right people on the right job.

 

“Sir! Five cases of the Best Whisky just disappeared!”

“!!!”

“Sir! I just counted them earlier, but now…”

 

That was quite an inarticulated cry. I checked my tablet and… sure enough, according to the data, 5 boxes of the Best Whisky were gone just like that. I looked around and peeked down one of the many aisles in the warehouse.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m in the liquor section. In fact, I was down the end of the aisle that was holding our very extensive whisky section while my Supervisor was having an apoplectic breakdown at the other. The fact that five cases went missing just 2 minutes ago without anyone seeing anything was rather disturbing.

Even more disturbing was… I tapped through my tab and, yup, there it was. Someone just paid for 5 cases of the missing whisky like, two minutes ago.

Scary.

 

“That damned Mystery Shopper just did as they like! Don’t they know they’re supposed to submit a purchase order first!? This isn’t the freaking supermarket or a cash-and-carry!”

“Well, at least they pay us, Sir…”

“That’s beside the point!!”

 

Well… what he said.

Like I told you, I’m just a low-level stock guy. Sure, I graduated high school, but most of the stuff he said went right over my pretty little head. All I want to do is clock in on time, get off work on time and maybe go on a company sponsor trip now and then.

I know that most of my friends moaned and groaned about these trips, but… isn’t having an all-expenses paid trip a great thing? You get to eat all sorts of food for free and do all sorts of fun bonding activities.

 

“You there! Andy, right? Did you see who carried off these whiskies?”

“Uh… no sir,” I said meekly.

“Tch, I should have known. That damned Mystery Shopper. That freak’s messing with my system! How dare they mess with the sacred system!!?”

“Uh, sir? I gotta, you know, count stuff over there…”

My supervisor waved his hand at me. “Sure, sure, go do your job. Let’s go check the Umeshu area, I have a feeling…”

 

After scuttling off to a different aisle, I surreptitiously checked the tab and… sure enough, some of the Umeshu recommended by Tanaka-san had disappeared…

 

“Curse you!!”

 

[Gumihou: If you’re a meticulous kind of person, having your inventory disappear like this must be quite harrowing ]

  

 

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