FPE Chapter 22

Employees in Place

During the two days the park was closed, Chi Yizhen had recruited a ticket seller, three security guards to maintain order, a guide, and a cleaning staff member.

Although the park was still quite small and could largely rely on signs and announcements in place of a guide, ever since an old man who claimed his eyesight had recovered after fighting magic beasts in the park went viral, Chi Yizhen noticed that the park’s visitors included a growing number of elderly people. Some of these elderly visitors were physically capable but illiterate, and others were hard of hearing — once inside the park they frequently had to ask other guests for help, which negatively affected the visitor experience. On top of that, some elderly visitors had weak hearts, and the moment they entered the park, the game system would issue a warning indicating that such individuals might be frightened into fainting by the magic beasts. Chi Yizhen had already spent considerable time trying to talk these elderly visitors out of buying tickets to enter the park, so a ticket seller and a sightseeing guide were absolutely necessary.

As for daily cleaning, Chi Yizhen had previously used merit points to clear everything with a single command — efficient and cost-saving — but this could only be done after the park closed. As the number of visitors grew, there were always some people with poor manners who liked to litter, and in broad daylight, if he made garbage vanish in an instant, it might attract the attention of visitors. The Fantasy Amusement Park was still in its development stage, and Chi Yizhen felt it was better to keep a low profile, so hiring a cleaning staff member was also a necessity.

With these six employees in place, Chi Yizhen’s workload could be greatly reduced — these miscellaneous tasks could simply be handed off to the staff. All of the new employees were young people in their twenties and thirties, full of energy and enthusiasm, which suited the park’s character very well. In addition, in order to free up more personal time, Chi Yizhen reached out to Little Daze Cutie and asked whether she would be willing to serve as the park’s online promotions officer, planning to hand over the management of all the park’s official accounts to her. His impression of Little Daze Cutie was quite good — the park’s very first exposure online had been thanks to her.

Little Daze Cutie’s real name was Meng Xiaodai. The Meng surname was a common local name in Jin’an City, and just hearing it made clear she was a local. Meng Xiaodai had originally worked as a clerk at a small private company in the city, with food vlogging only as a side gig. Finding work in a third-tier small city was not easy, and the pay was low — four thousand yuan a month with no social insurance, no two-day weekends, and a boss who still acted as though he had done her a great favor, as if it were he who was sustaining her, Meng Xiaodai. She had long been deeply unhappy in the role, but had been grinding away at the position because decent work was hard to come by. The moment she heard the park director offer a nine-to-five schedule, six thousand yuan a month, five types of social insurance plus a housing fund, a raise every six months, meal and transportation subsidies, and weekends off, Meng Xiaodai wasted no time packing her things and rushing to the park. She seized the director’s hand and said excitedly, “Boss, from this day forward, the park is my home!”

Chi Yizhen pulled his hand back without a second thought. “That won’t do at all — this is my home.”

Meng Xiaodai: …

Having received a compensation payout of three million yuan, Chi Yizhen now had very comfortable finances and didn’t mind treating his employees well — the wages he offered were all a notch above what was typical for the same roles in the city. Once the employees were in place, their enthusiasm was high. That evening, when he took the staff out for a group dinner, Chen Hui — one of the girls responsible for guide duties — said, “Director, the park hasn’t hired a landscape designer, has it?”

Chi Yizhen replied, “How did you know?” Surely the park doesn’t look that underfunded? he thought.

Chen Hui didn’t actually think the park was underfunded at all. She had rarely found a job with benefits this good, and was afraid of not making it past the probationary period — ever since passing the interview she had been wracking her brain thinking about how to contribute to the park. She said, “The way our park is going, I’m sure it’ll grow strong and big one day.”

Chi Yizhen liked hearing that, and nodded with a smile — then heard Chen Hui continue. “I’m not in landscape design myself and don’t know much about it, but I do know that some of the more well-known amusement parks on the market have daily visitor numbers in the tens of thousands during peak periods — seventy or eighty thousand visitors a day isn’t unheard of. But looking at the paths inside the park, they seem fairly narrow. If there are ever a lot of visitors, it could lead to a stampede…”

Hearing Chen Hui’s words, Chi Yizhen felt a jolt of alarm. Right — how had he never thought of that?

The Fantasy Amusement Park’s predecessor had been a very small children’s amusement park. Back when his grandmother had been running it, the peak daily visitor count had been only two or three hundred people, and the paths inside the park were indeed quite narrow. After Chi Yizhen had, through a twist of fate, been struck by the game system and begun the renovation process, he had widened the paths — but if the park were to receive tens of thousands of visitors, that certainly wouldn’t be enough.

If no planning was done now, where would the space come from when renovation was needed in the future?

Of course, the Fantasy Amusement Park was not an ordinary park — once it reached a higher level, buildings should theoretically be movable during renovations. But visitors weren’t blind, and they would certainly notice.

Although Chi Yizhen had gained a precognition skill through a character card, having leveled it up to the fourth tier only allowed him to foresee a single day into the future. What would happen in the distant future? How accepting would visitors be? That still had to remain a question mark.

With a mindset of better safe than sorry and nipping problems in the bud, Chi Yizhen decided to look for a landscape designer. In truth, even if Chen Hui hadn’t brought it up today, this was money he would have had to spend sooner or later — as the park expanded in area, Chi Yizhen had already noticed that his own knowledge of garden architecture was proving insufficient. Previously there had been little money, and he had told himself he could put it off a little longer. Now, however, it could no longer be delayed. He nodded and promised Chen Hui a bonus when salaries were settled at the end of the month. Chen Hui was visibly delighted, and the atmosphere among the staff grew noticeably warmer.

But right after making that promise, Chi Yizhen suddenly remembered — oh right, he still needed an accountant.

While the game system would help keep the books — and had previously even helped communicate with the police station — a proper accountant still needed to exist on the surface. At the end of the year, the Fantasy Amusement Park would have to file taxes! He couldn’t rely on the game system to handle everything through online communication!

So Chi Yizhen, who had originally only planned to close for two days, pushed back the reopening date by another three days — which was how that Weibo post about the delayed reopening came to exist, the one that had netizens “rolling on the ground wailing.”

A landscape designer hadn’t been found on short notice, but that same evening, Chi Yizhen revised his earlier design plans — specifically, he widened the pathways in the two new experience zones by tenfold. That way, if small activities were ever organized along the park’s paths in the future, there would be more than enough room.

He told the employees to report for duty on time in three days. For the next three days, the Fantasy Amusement Park remained closed and shut. Passersby often turned their heads for a look, only to catch glimpses of construction machinery and workers moving up and down inside.

Three days later, at eight o’clock in the morning on August 3rd, the Fantasy Amusement Park opened right on schedule.

Local returning visitors from Jin’an City arrived early to show their support.

Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He rushed up with several classmates to queue, and immediately spotted a few other classmates who had arrived slightly earlier. He let out a shout: “He He! Zhang Minmin! You two are here too!”

He He and Zhang Minmin turned to look, their expressions a little awkward. Zhang Minmin thought: I got here so early — how am I still running into them? Aren’t slackers supposed to sleep until the sun is high in the sky?

Cao Xiaoliang squeezed up beside them, laughing triumphantly, with all the air of a vindicated protagonist in a face-slapping story. “Didn’t you say it was fake? Didn’t you say you wouldn’t come? You two… hmph!”

Zhang Minmin said nothing, thinking Cao Xiaoliang was just so noisy. He He pushed up his glasses and said, “It’s summer break — what’s wrong with coming out to have fun?”

“The park is open!”

The voice of a passerby rang out, bright and clear, drowning out Cao Xiaoliang’s words entirely. None of them were in the mood to chat anymore. Zhang He stepped forward and threw an arm around Cao Xiaoliang, saying nervously, “There are so many people today — we need to move faster and snag more rounds of tickets. Last time our ranking on the Merit Leaderboard dropped!”

At the mention of the ranking dropping, Cao Xiaoliang’s expression tightened as well, and he had no more heart left for embarrassing his classmates.

They queued to buy tickets, and found that the line was moving very quickly this time. Moving up, they discovered that a smart ticketing machine had been added beside the ticketing booth — even more convenient than the others, and remarkably, it could even identify their previous purchase count and merit points. A ticket seller standing beside it announced, “Anyone who can’t understand the ticketing machine or is unable to complete a purchase, please come to me.”

Five days gone, and it seems the park has upgraded a lot of features again! Cao Xiaoliang thought as he processed his payment.

[Unmatched War God Defying Heaven and Earth — this is your 8th ticket purchase. Thank you for your continued support of the park. Collect ten purchases and receive one free visit!]

The sound from the ticketing machine drew curious looks from everyone nearby. Cao Xiaoliang straightened up proudly, thinking: They must all think my username is incredibly cool.