The Promotion

[skillbox]

Chapter 1 - Assistant Manager

Working for minimum wage was hard, Niya decided. She'd had that thought often but this shift was being especially challenging. She'd nearly broke composure, pulled down her thick glasses to glare and shout rather creative expletives after the fifth customer had complained the coffee was too cold. And of course, once she had fufilled the request to heat it up, the customer had then fussed that it was too hot. The only thing stopping Niya from losing her mind was her stunningly commendable sense of professionalism.

Niya had worked in customer service in this nation-wide coffee store for only a few months but already that unshakeable competence had gained the admiration of the store manager. Most people quit after a couple days if they made it through their first shift. Even the assistant managers he'd been going through like toliet paper. He watched as Niya pulled her frizzy hair back, gave a polite smile to another insuffrable customer with an innane complaint and did her best to fix the issue. Yes, he decided. She might be underqualified for the role but he expected she could do it better than anyone else.

The shift had just ended and Niya put her apron back in the staff room, unbuttoning the top of her shirt and laid lazily down on a nearby chair exhausted. She was only 25 but at this rate she was worried she was going to be getting stresslines before next year. Joe walked in, grin on his face; for what reason, Niya had no idea.

"Ello, Niya," He said, his odd accent coming through along with a smug tone, "Good news for ya."

"Hm?" She responded, hurrying to make her posture more practiced while in front of her boss.

"Well, it took a bit to convince the higher ups. Ah said ah'd take the heat if anything went wrong... But..." He grinned, "You're gonna be getting double the salary from now on, Assistant Manager."

It took all her willpower to not squee happily and hug Joe. But she attempted to remain composed, though a smile creeped onto her face, "What duties does that contain?"

"Ah, you'll just be helpin' to train new staff. And when ah'm gone for whatever reason, you gotta deal with the higher ups," He paused, "Good thing ah got them to agree. Guess ah'll be able to take my vacation this year after all..."

Niya's betraying smile grew bigger, "You deserve it. Thanks for this opportunity, Sir."

"Ah, we're both off duty. Just call me Joe, aight?" He paused, before shrugging, "How about we get a few drinks to celebrate?"

Normally Niya wouldn't bother with going for drinks, she would rather spend the time catching up on Netflix and lazily lying on the sofa relaxing. However, Joe was a legitamately nice guy. And she was very giddy from the promotion. So she decided, why the hell not?

And in the end, her reasoning turned out correct. She had a good time, Joe gave her some of the details of the role. She'd be having to face her first major challenge as assistant manager soon. She'd be running the store by herself for seven days with her only help being the new hire who hadn't even done their first shift. She nodded, her dark cheeks a bit flushed from the alcohol and promised Joe that everything would go well. And she intended to keep that promise.

---

It was the first day of Niya's solo week and everything had already went wrong. She'd had an appointment over video call with the regional manager she'd had to delay at last minute due to the new hire being a hour late. So she'd took over duties at the front of the shop making coffee and dealing with customers who seemed to be especially rude today. When the late newcomer eventually arrived, Niya sighed in relief.

"Oh, thank god you're here, Eliza." Niya didn't even wait for the inevitable excuse of the short girls latecoming, just glad that she made it in at all, "Can you take over here for ten minutes? I'll be back to help soon, I just really need to do something in the back."

Niya found herself rushing towards the backroom where a video call awaited. She didn't even bother to change out of her apron. With a check of the time, she realised she was one minute late for the meeting and gave an unsatisifed curse. After checking she made the call and the face of an unhappy older blonde woman appeared on her screen. She reminded Niya of some of the most obnoxious customers she'd had, almost with frown lines from all the scowling she probably did and despite her eyes focused on Niya she seemed to be ignoring her, as if she was simply decoration.

"It's rather unproffesional to be late to your first meeting," The lady who after a brief glance at the screen Niya realised was called Mrs Williams, "I do hope Joesph made the right call by hiring you."

Niya found herself taken aback by how forward this lady was, "I apologise Mrs Williams. It won't happen again." She said hesitantly, trying to keep your face unreadable.

"Naturally," She said coldly, "I'm calling about the Promotion."

Niya nodded hesitantly in response, "Well... Things have been going well so far. The store is running at capacity and the new trainee seems to be..." Niya found herself rudely cut off.

"Not that Promotion," She sighed, "The Au Natural Promotion. You should've seen it in your email?"

That'd been the first time Niya had heard about it. Unsurpisingly because she hadn't even been given an employee email yet (which Niya noted, wasn't her fault as she was still waiting for the IT team on that), "Er... I don't have my email set up yet, Mrs Williams."

She somehow scowled even larger, with her frown now taking up half her face, "Really? The Promotion is two days away. You won't be able to hire models in that time." Then the unthinkable happened; she smiled. Mrs Williams smugly continued "I suppose you'll have to just use employees. It's happened in the past."

"Could I have some details about this Promotion?" Niya said, face scrunched up. She was barely running the shop without putting on a promotional show.

"Of course," The lady was suprisingly forward and happy to share the information, "We like to prove that our coffee is 100% natural without any chemicals and nothing to hide. For that reason, we do a bit of a publicity stunt. We show that our employees don't hide anything either. They come to work wearing nothing but a confident smile." She said it naturally, as if what she'd just spoken wasn't completely insane.

Niya took a stunned second of silence to respond, her glasses ascew, "Y-You mean, naked? At work?" Her professionalism had officially broke, replaced with the embarrassed squeakings of an insecure woman.

"No, of course not." She replied smugly, "You'd know all this if you read the email. You'll have an apron on. You'll be outside the coffee shop too at a small table; offering samples."

"B-But," Niya desperately scrambles for a way out of this, panicking at even the thought, "W-We only have two employees in store including myself!"

Mrs Williams shrugged, the smallest sense of humour now gone from her voice, "You only need one to do the promotion. The other can stay inside the store, fully dressed. You should know that this promotion came from above me. All I'm supposed to do is make sure it is done," She frowns, "I assume there won't be any problems?"

Niya thought. She'd just got this job paying well and as much as she sometimes hated it, she felt it was rewarding; she'd got promoted after only a few months and was informed by Joe there was a major possibility for her to go further. Speaking of Joe, he would get into trouble for going on vacation and she'd promised she wouldn't let him down. And... Well...

She was a professional. This wouldn't be an issue. She'd get it done.

"No problem, Mrs. Williams. Anything else?"

[skillbox]

Hey! I'm always a bit nervous about my writing. Any feedback would be appreciated!

[Debbifan]

No need to be nervous about your writing. This is well written, flows nicely, is easy to read and is a good idea.

I think there's a chain that does this every year. Lush or something like that ? They always seem to be having a lot of fun but I've always thought that there was a lot of scope for humiliation. Especially if it is only one person and not the entire staff.

We know she has thick glasses ( to become part of the plot I wonder ? ) and frizzy hair. In due course would be good to have a description of her body too.

[RollTiideRoll2]

I enjoyed the read so far! Awesome job. I can see some of this stunt being messed up, maybe they don’t want to be completely naked, minus the apron. I’m sure someone will try a bra and panties or a panties only approach just to have some humiliating punishment happen to them.

[Revengedpirate]

You’ve stated that two girls work in the store but you haven’t really stated which is going to end up naked or both. You haven’t described either girl other then one wears glasses and the other was late. The girl who was late would usually face punishment so maybe being naked is her punishment? But so far a good start. I’m not sure if the word “ah” was correct I had to mentally change it to “i” sometimes to make sense.

[skillbox]

Yeah, this is absolutely inspired by the Lush Promotion! There's just a tiny bit of build-up for now until we get to the climax.

I'll try and explain her appearence more in the upcoming chapters (I just always find it awkward to fit in! But it should be easier once we get to the parts where she's actually thinking about her body.)

Ah was my attempt at doing an accent Though I'm worried I spent a bit too much time on a character who will (probably) not show up again. He's mostly there as flavour and extra motivation for Niya to try and find a way for this promotion to happen.

[ENFfanatic]

I generally prefer when stories are more, slow/natural with their characted descriptions. It often feels too forced for me when you start the story with with "I'm a 5,8 girl with D- boobs, 59kg." Feels kinda like a shopping list? Like the author just wants to get it out of the way so they can get on with the story and not think about it anymore. A slow drop of information like that often feels much more natural to me.

[skillbox]

Chapter 2 - The Days Before

Niya tried to ignore the conversation for the rest of the day; there was work to be done after all. But her mind couldn't stop flashing the horrifying image of her standing out in the street in only a flimsy apron, her long bare legs sticking out. She pushed the thought down and then pushed the tab down to serve another coffee, showing the new hire Eliza how it was done. She didn't know much about Eliza and while the white short mop-haired blonde was certainly bubbly and kind, she was just a bit ditsy. But customer service tended to care more about personality than anything else.

"Ooooh!" Eliza cooed, "I get it now. That machine is way easier than doing it by hand."
Niya smiled, her brown delicate fingers handing over the coffee to the next customer, "Yes, yes. It's a lot less complicated than it looks." She checked the store, seeing nobody in a queue she leaned back a bit, managing to finally give the new hire her full attention.
"Where's... Um, Mr. Simpson? Is he not coming in today?" Niya noted that she wasn't on first name basis with Joe yet. That'd probably happen soon. Joe hated being called his first name.
"Er, no. He's on vacation," Niya responded simply, "I'm manager until he's back."
"Oooh! Does that mean I should be careful about what I say around you, then?" Eliza chuckled, giving a cheeky elbow to her 'boss'.
Niya just shrugged in response, "Don't worry about that. Joe'll be back by the end of the week anyway."

Niya thought for a moment, trying to think if there was a way she could convince Eliza to take her place in the embarrassing nude apron showcase. She was just about to try and do the near impossible task of bringing it up, when a customer arrived distracting the blonde girl. Niya ran a few nervous fingers through her long black hair, as she was given a bit more time to figure out how to phrase the topic.

"So... Um, Eliza..." She said, with untypical shyness and demureness, "We've got a promotion on this week. I know you're new here, but I was curious if you'd be interested? Warning, it's a bit, erm... Inordinary. But it should be all in good fun." Did she particulary believe that? No. It would be humiliating. But she had to at least try and sell the idea.
The short and sweet girl nodded, with the kind of enthusiasm only someone who had no idea of what they were being asked would have, "O-Oh! Of course!"
Niya sighed in relief, "G-Good, good. It's called the Au Natural Promotion. This brand is doing it across the country. You... Er, are supposed to just wear an apron to-"
"N-Naked?! No way!" Eliza shouted, cheeks turning bright red and her voice attracting the attention of many customers.
Niya frowned, "W-Well... I will hardly force you to do it but-"
"Look, uh, thanks for the offer! But I can't do that! That's waaaaay too embarrassing, Niya! I'd die!" At least that, they could both agree on.

Niya was just about to attempt to reconvince her when a customer appeared and it was one who she recognised. It was a regular, a mid forties buisness man named Chris who usually visited each day when they were about to close up. He spoke up, a hint of genuine curiousity in the teasing tone of his voice, "What was that about nudity? What kind of conversation were you girls having?"
Before Niya could even respond, Eliza spoke up obnoxiously, "Niya was just telling me about this promotion the store was doing! Apparently, she's going to wear and apron and get butt naked!"
Niya's sepia cheeks reddened further, she had been really hoping she wasn't going to have to do the promotion herself. To the point of not even suggesting to Eliza the idea. But Eliza just raised the likely possibility that she might have to, by herself, probably by the way Niya suggested it'd be 'good fun', "Well... Erm... Maybe. If I can't find someone else." She said politely, trying to shut down the conversation.
Chris laughed, a grin appearing on his stubbled face, "Then I really hope everyone is busy that day!"

Apparently this joke was good enough to make Eliza giggle too. But it only served to remind Niya of the humiliating situation. And also made another thing clear regulars who had visited this store and would continue to visit in the future, would be seeing Niya in all her glory. They'd be able to look at her and remember that moment she'd served them in just an apron with her pert buttocks out for all to see. Not just that, these were people she knew. People she'd got on a first name basis with. That made the whole thing even worse.

She served Chris his coffee, giving a polite smile with pointed lips and tried to act good natured despite her sight annoyance. It may have just been a humorous comment to him, but to her this could be her nude reality in a couple days. She really wasn't ready for this. She checked the clock and realised with relief they were shutting soon, so with a quick aside to Eliza to keep up the good work, she went into the backroom.

There was only one thing that could save her literal butt now. She put up a job listing for a nude model and as she wrote in all the humilating details the job entailed, she realised very quickly how much she didn't want to do it. She stared at the screen, the job which would be hers if nobody else accepted. Naked public and model. She prettied up the language a little, but that was basically what she was asking for.

Now she absolutely felt stress lines. This week would age her by years. With great effort she pushed herself off the chair, moving to Eliza to close up before heading home. She wished the blonde a good night, though she was a bit resentful she didn't accept her offer. Though she could hardly blame the new hire. She would have probably laughed if it wasn't all too real.

At home she didn't know exactly why, but she felt herself examining her body. The flaws were instantly apparent to her. There was a little bit of pudge, her black mane of hair was just a bit too wavy for her liking and her obnoxious glasses. She cringed, she really shouldn't be so critical of herself. While there was stuff about her body she liked, for example, her mostly blemishfree smooth skin, nicely formed breasts (if a bit small) and hidden shining jewel green eyes. She tended to ignore those over pointing out the imperfections. Niya supposed she'd always been a bit of a pessimist, even as a child. With a tendacy to want things to be exactly correct.

She realised how dumb it was to stare at herself in the mirror, looking away with a sigh. She just had to find a way out of this. There was no way she'd have the confidence to do something like this. She'd just have to make sure somebody (hopefully one more confident than her) would accept the job. There was no other option.

It was with horror that the night before the promotion she opened her laptop and found that she had no applicants.

[mikewozere]

Enjoying it so far. Nicely written.

[Revengedpirate]

Probably being a little idiotic but why doesn’t she just go sick? Then the other girl would have to do it or the shop would be shut either way she’s not being forced to be naked.