Point of Sale (Patreon)

There are all sorts of way this might be expanded. But, I think I prefer this one just be as is. Enjoy.

“Barbara, I know you just started a couple weeks ago but do you think you can you work the register? Janet called out sick.” Her boss was holding the keys to the front door of the store.

“No problem, Yvette.” Barbara took the keys. She put the stock she was about to tag back into the shipping box and walked out to the store proper. Usually, she worked in the back of the store. She had register experience from prior jobs. How hard could it be?

She went out onto the show floor and looked around. Everything seemed in order. She unlocked the door to the mall and swung the doors open until the magnets caught them and held them in place. No customers were waiting to get in. It was a typical Tuesday morning in the mall.

She went over to the check out counter and swiped her lanyard.

“Welcome Barbara. Will you be working here all day?” appeared on screen.

She hadn’t expected the sales computer to have prompts. Must be expensive software. She pressed the box containing the word “Yes”.

“Please stand next to the counter where the silhouette of feet on the floor indicate.” After she moved, it printed, “Thank you, Barbara.”

She wasn’t sure how it happened but a moment later her legs went numb. She felt stable but she couldn’t move her legs. She looked down and her legs looked normal in her blue hosiery and below-the-knee length pencil skirt.

She reached down and touched her thigh. It felt solid, like hard plastic. She tapped her leg. A soft, hollow tone rang through her lower body that she felt more than heard. She could twist at the waist and move her arms and head normally. Below that, she was solid, locked in place behind the counter. Before she could panic someone appeared in front of her and said, “Miss? Can I pay for this here?”

The woman in front of Barbara was holding a skirt expectantly.

“Sure, of course, no problem.” She scanned the skirt and the price appeared on the screen. “Will that be all?”

“Yes.”

Barbara pressed check out and told the woman the total. The woman produced a credit card and paid for the skirt. Barbara removed the security tag from the garment, a tag she had probably attached a few days before. She put it into a bag and handed it the woman with the printed receipt. She said, “Thanks for shopping at The All Quinn.”

As the woman left, Barbara wondered now if The All Quinn somehow referred to why half her body was a mannequin body.

She happened to notice something flashing on the point of sales screen.

“Store is empty. Rest mode?”

She hit yes and a moment later she could not move. Her entire body was now a mannequin body. Time passed. She was facing the door to the store. People walked by in the mall but no one entered.

Her boss walked through her field of vision pushing a rack of clothes that she was hanging on the sales racks. Barbara noticed Yvette seemed oblivious to her current status as a mannequin. Perhaps she didn’t think that was out of the ordinary. Barbara wondered how many times she’d walked passed Janet and not noticed she was a mannequin?

A customer walked in. He was going to walk toward the counter when he spotted Yvette and instead spoke with her. After a few moments, she showed him a different rack of clothes and helped him pick one out. They both started walking toward the counter.

Barbara felt something happen and her upper body was once again able to move. “Here you go, sir. Janet, I mean, Barbara here can check you out.”

Before Barbara could say anything, Yvette was no longer nearby.

“Thanks,” the man said to Yvette. “Hello,” he said to Barbara.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” she said, taking the garment and ringing it up.

“Oh, yes. That other sales clerk was very helpful.”

“She’s actually the boss.”

“Good to see a boss who knows the merchandise.”

“I suppose so.” She told him the price and after he paid and left, the monitor asked again is she should enter rest mode.

At this point, Barbara found the transformations fun and interesting so she poked the yes button and made a point a posing her arms in a more mannequin manner before she was once again a mannequin.

The day continued in similar fashion. She spent more than half the day as a mannequin and the rest of the time as half a mannequin. Around closing time, Barbara was a full mannequin when her upper half became human and the monitor said, “Closing time. No customers. Release?”

She pressed yes and her legs were restored. She took the store key and locked the doors. She went into Yvette’s office and sat in the chair opposite her boss.

“How’d it go? Anything weird happen?”

“Nope. Easy-peasy.” She handed Yvette the keys. “Am I getting paid over time?”

“Of course, although I doubt you accrued much over time given you spent seven hours in rest mode.”

“Seven hours?”

Yvette turned the monitor on her desk toward Barbara. It listed all the times she had spent in half and whole mannequin mode over the course of the day.

“I take it from your attitude you didn’t mind being stuck behind the register.”

“At first it was frightening. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“It’s easier to have it happen to you than to explain it to you. If you had freaked out, I’d have released you and we’d discuss what to do from there.

“But after the first time as a whole mannequin, I guess that’s what it’s called, I understood how Janet could spend the whole day on her feet.”

“Ready to go dancing?”

“If I had a dancing date, I’d be keen to go.”

“Great. Janet actually quit. If you want to be the permanent cashier, consider it a done deal and I’ll put up a posting for your old job.”

“I’m in,” Barbara said, shaking Yvette’s extended hand. “You didn’t happen to take my picture, did you?”

“I did.” She took out her phone and shortly Barbara was looking at her mannequin self in the text she received from Yvette. “Amazing.” She was about to turn and go when she had a question. “Are there any other store positions here where people become mannequins?”

“You’ve only been here two and half weeks. Ease into learning all the store’s secrets, Barbara.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

Barbara went over to her locker to get her purse and passed three mannequins that were usually in the front window. They were naked, standing in a row next to a rack of clothes. She looked at one of them close in the face but it looked like an ordinary mannequin. Though looking at them, the faces of the three mannequins were unique.

“Nah,” Barbara said, as she left via the employee’s door.