Sizing up the Competition by Kris P. Kreme
Lily may be small, but she has big ambitions and even bigger ideas for how to succeed in a summer job that may pave the way to her future.
Working as an undercover competition evaluator, Lily’s job is to go into a Trance-tory Tech-n-Toys store and find out why or how their revenues have increased three-thousand percent in just five years.
But when despite her elaborate ruse of using her mom, her mom’s new boyfriend, and that boyfriend’s son, as a fake family to pull off the assignment, Lily gets caught… will the tactics they use to make a sale have the skinny goth girl sizing herself up in ways she never knew possible?
Just because Lily looks like a skinny little goth girl doesn’t mean she isn’t tough enough to pull off the sneaky skills her new summer employment will take. It’s a job that will quite possibly pay her college future as Lily takes on being an undercover competition evaluator to find out why one company’s revenues have seen a three-thousand percent increase in just the past five years. But Lily may be in over her head going undercover to evaluate this company… because it happens to be Trance-tory.
Working for a leading global electronics chain, Lily is supposed to gain access and interact with the sales associates at a Trance-tory Tech-n-Toys store, a place where all things tech, all things electronic, and quite possibly all things twisted are sold. And Lily despite her small stature has big ambitions and even bigger scheming plans to make this assignment go off without a hitch. She has recruited her mother, as well as the guy her mother started dating recently, and his annoying son, to go along with her on this reconnaissance mission. Although as Dylan, the son her same age points out, she isn’t a spy, she’s a glorified secret shopper.
But Lily has a plan, all of them going in pretending to be a happy family new to the area, no one suspicious of a family shopping in a Tech-n-Toys store. That way she can sneak around and find out if there are some marketing manipulations at work, if something underhanded is leading to the massive increase in sales Tech-n-Toys has seen in recent years at the expense of her employers’ sales.
So with her mom, her pretend Daddy, and annoying pretend older brother, Lily plays the innocent and they all head into a Tech-n-Toys store early enough in the day where there aren’t too many others there. And as her pretend family goes off to otherwise distract and divert attention from her, Lily happens to find a home theater display, with giant television, a perfect place to look and see if there are underhanded tactics at work.
But as Lily is alone in the home theater display room, she doesn’t get much chance to snoop around before Cooper, a Tech-n-Toys employee walks in and starts giving her the sales pitch. Is Cooper really just showing off the many products Tech-n-Toys deals in, or are his true motives hidden behind that salesman smile?
Trance-tory may be well aware of efforts to snoop on their success, even if that success may genuinely be using underhanded tactics like subliminal messaging or influences… but what will happen to skinny goth girl Lily when Cooper gives the girl a jolt and has her experiencing the subliminal inspiration most customers are given, that bigger is always better? Will she soon be doing downright indecent and one might have thought impossible things to truly SIZE herself up?
Find out in the very first of a new monthly series that will explore some of the best covers of the past decade. Each month a Coverswap Shorty will feature a great cover image of the past, applied to an entirely new story. The cover for SIZING UP the Competition was originally used on SINtendo Super Slut Sunday. Read ’em both, and decide for yourself which story did the cover better?
Koming next Readers… It’s good to do some planning
Recent Comments