Playing an Employee

If Emporium was a machine, employees are the gears keeping it moving. From cleaning up spills of unknown matter, to venturing into the depths of the Warehouse to ensure the most fashionable condiment shelves are full, employees are a vital part of store life. The job of an employee is not always glitz and glamour, but it's full of challenges and rewards, with unique opportunities to go on strange and wonderful adventures in this store and discover impossible things of all shapes and sizes, some of which may be much harder to access as a customer. This isn't the kind of job that just anyone can do. Emporium values you and the hard work you put in to help this store run as well as it does.

Play an employee if:

• You like a bit more structure to your game, in the form of shift assignments.
• You enjoy interacting with corporate nonsense. This will not include active (or passive) corporate oppression.
• You want an in-game salary. Each employee is automatically paid one (1) SoulCoin per season for sufficient work completed.
• You like rules and finding the loopholes in them, or tripping over them and getting stuck with unusual consequences.

While customers may have a mission that’s brought them here, employees have a job to do. The needs of Emporium change depending on the season. As an employee it’s your job to make sure that whatever chaos is happening stays in the background, firmly out of sight of customers. It's not an easy job, but it's one that's full of unexpected adventures, and it's well-compensated - at the end of each season, each employee who has met the minimum requirements is automatically paid the lucrative salary of one (1) SoulCoin.

You will have an assigned shift which will broadly outline the kinds of tasks you might be expected to do during that shift. These are intentionally broad - you are encouraged to creatively interpret exactly how to complete the work on that shift. While your character may not have a choice about where they’re assigned - they can’t choose where the store’s needs are greatest - as a player you will be given choices about where your character’s next shift should be.

Employees may find other tasks on the employee Taskboard that highlights particular areas of concern in the store that employees should address. In other words, the Taskboard flags strange and wonderful (or wonderfully horrible) Excursions that your character could choose to participate in. As with shifts, employees are encouraged to creatively interpret how to resolve issues, and how that may relate to the assigned shift. The best solution is rarely a neat one. Neither the Taskboard itself nor the tasks on it are private to employees: employees are free to mention tasks to customers and invite them to help. Remember: the most important thing is that the issue is solved. The exact methods and finer details on how that was achieved are less important.

Employees aren’t on shift 100% of the time. When employees have a break, they are free to browse the store’s products and be just a regular customer. As long as you’re back on shift after your break ends, there’s no problem!

Of course, you could always bunk off full time. Infinity makes for a big store, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be caught. Just be careful: employees are here to work, and if you’re caught not working when you’re not on break, your misconduct may be addressed with disciplinary procedures, from mandatory training to ominously vague points that store management have chosen not to elaborate on. But as long as you do what you’re here to do without causing too much chaos, what’s the worst that could happen?

Employees are also required to fill in a report describing what they got up to that was relevant to their job. Truthfulness of this report may vary. For more information, see turnsheets.

Being an employee is not a permanent affair. By default, all new employee contracts last for one full cycle of seasons i.e. player character employee contracts will by default end at the end of the game and not continue into Eternity. However, some employees find that the strange, challenging, life of being an employee in a store stocked full of marvels, visited by Entities from across the multiverse, is more fulfilling than what they left. Alternatively, some employees want to climb the corporate ladder after achieving that foothold as a store employee, and may seek to work here to get closer to the different marvels found in the Orbital HQ. For employees who want to stay for whatever reason, employees are able to renegotiate their contract, and are free to explore this in game.

The employee uniform is a cream vest with gold trim. The left part of its collar has a gold-embroidered Emporium logo. All employees are required to wear an employee vest while they are on shift. One size fits all - whether you’re humanoid, a teeming mass of insects, or anything between or beyond, that cream vest will distort to fit you. To best represent the store, employees are required to keep their uniforms clean and neat, and may use the washing facilities to serve this purpose.

All employees are given a nametag. The nametag is also cream, with gold lettering for the employee’s name. Like the uniform, the nametag is mandatory as long as an employee is not on a break. Due to the variety of languages of visitors to Emporium, the nametag will adjust to each reader’s preferred communication style, approximating written communication if reasonable. Rest assured, if you’re a customer who communicates entirely in smells, you will be able to smell the name of the employee you’re talking to from a respectable distance.

At Emporium there are standard practices and expectations for employee behaviour. To create a pleasant workplace and present Emporium’s best side to customers, management asks that all employee abide by the following:

1. Customers come first. Customer needs may be prioritised over the needs of your shift, although if you deem that greater harm will come from you not prioritising your shift requirements, you may redirect a customer request.
2. Present Emporium and its products in a good light. This includes both conducting yourself in a professional manner, and avoiding outright criticisms of Emporium and its products in front of customers. It is a priority to avoid causing reputational damage to Emporium.
   1. This includes ensuring that you are well-presented and your employee vest is neat and clean.
3. No damaging of company property, including products that have yet to be sold. Once the products have been sold, they are no longer Emporium property and can be damaged as much as you like, as long as it doesn’t negatively affect customer experience.
4. No damaging of fellow employees, either physically or through harassment.
5. When not on a pre-allocated break, you must be spending time working, either on your shift tasks, or a higher priority work activity.

Please be aware that employees who are found in violation of any points highlighted in the employee handbook will be subject to disciplinary action.

Whether you’re caught bunking off or doing something a little more drastic, there are consequences to your actions (or inaction). Exactly what form your punishment may take will vary, but consequences are designed to teach neglectful employees knowledge and awareness to prevent repeat misconduct.

For some employees, this is a job. For other employees, this is the start of a fresh new career, and the next natural step is to get cemented in the store ecosystem¹⁾ by climbing up the ranks in the store through one or more promotions.

Employees who exhibit exemplary behaviour may be presented with an opportunity for promotion, including but not limited to section management roles. The job of a regular, un-promoted employee can be full of joy and rewards, and remaining at the same employee rank for an entire employee contract period²⁾ will not disadvantage employees who choose this path. Promotions are a good path for employees who wish to climb the corporate ladder either in Emporium or, in the long term³⁾, in Orbital.

There are unique benefits that can come with a promotion. While employees will need to achieve a promotion to discover precisely which benefits they gain access to, these may include:

• A small and loyal team to manage
• Access to more restricted areas in Emporium
• Added authority among Emporium employees, changing how NPCs interact with you
• Unique and secret shift options
• More responsibility within Emporium
• Increased trust from multiverse conglomerate, The Orbital Conglomerate™

There is an employee hierarchy in Emporium. Every time an employee is promoted and rises further up this hierarchy, they will gain access to more benefits and influence within the store.

Employees who believe they should be in line for a promotion may ask a member of management to confirm, either in a public or private channel. Ensure that you tag a GM so that it is not missed.

Promotions may be rewarded to employees who go above and beyond in their work. Alternatively, there are tests for promotion, often referred to as “trials”. What these involve depend on the season, the celestial alignments, and the whims of senior management.

Note: If you would like to try to undergo a trial for promotion, this will require a turnsheet action. Please @ a GM in either your private channel or a public channel to flag that you want to do this. You are also free to just submit a turnsheet action without confirming you’re trying this beforehand, although try to consider whether it makes sense for your character to be eligible (e.g. if they have been on thin ice and wrecking the store since day 1, it may be questionable for the employee to be promoted).

Characters who begin the game as employees will not be eligible to try for promotion in Turn 1 as all employee characters are new to the store.

A promotion is represented by a new positive Quirk. For each subsequent promotion, your promotion Quirk gains another +1 and grows more powerful.

Each contract is a “full seasonal cycle” i.e. will last for the duration of the game but not into Eternities. If you’re playing an employee and want to leave employment during the main run of the game to become a customer full time, just send a message on your personal channel letting the GMs know this is what you want to do. Be aware, the consequences may be steep and have long-running implications. The “cost” is never as simple as spending a SoulCoin or equivalent. However, consequences are not a given - it all depends on why you as a player want to take this next step.

Let us know whether you’re looking to leave IC employment because of IC reasons, or because of OC reasons. We want people to have fun with the character they’re playing, and if being IC employed just isn’t working for you OC, we don’t want to punish you by giving you a wild IC consequence for choosing that - more likely, we’ll handwave something gentle with an inconsequential cost for your character, and perhaps at most leave some small mention of a specific consequence in your Eternity; but not in any way that will impact your character’s story.

On the other hand, if you’re leaving IC employment because of IC reasons and want to embrace a life of terrible consequences, this is also useful to know. In this case, the cost of leaving employment will have tangible repercussions for you, at the very least during the rest of the game, if not into Eternity too. Exactly what those consequences are, how they manifest, and how long they last for will depend on your character and what we think will be interesting for you. If you want to know what this could mean in more detail, the only way to find out is by trying this in play. Only good things will happen… by some definition of “good”.