"The merchant house management is very busy, miss. I can make sure they see this, but I can't promise anything."

"I understand."

If she comes back the next day, customer service has been told to arrange an appointment. Mr. Griffing is sufficiently interested in the new arrival who has complicated intellectual ideas and some kind of rumored affiliation with technology to skip the rest of the layers of bureaucracy. Does 5 in the afternoon work for her?

Yes it does. She'll trade away a dinner shift if she has to.

In that case she is invited into his very nice office on the fifth floor with lots of books, thick carpet, dark furniture, lots of paperwork, and a view of the open sky. Mr. Griffing is 40-something, sharply dressed, bespectacled and clean-shaven (unlike most men).

"Thank you for coming to see me. Your idea with the queues is interesting but I'm not sure I fully understand it."

"Do you have some tokens I can use to represent people to show you?"

"Of course. I was hoping for a demonstration, actually, here..."

He unrolls a big paper map of his mall on one side of his expansive desk, showing all five levels, and sets down a stack of coppers and a few silver coins, and watches attentively.

And she demonstrates what she outlined in the letter under various assumptions about customer throughput and segues into something she didn't mention.

He's pretty sharp, and takes notes. At some point he asks, "Have you actually tried all this as an experiment somewhere or is it all very clever ideas on paper? Frequently, those don't hold up well when tried out."

"They'll hold up! If you want to figure out how to settle a bet, I'll bet you."

"I'd be making a bet if I tried your ideas at all, you know. Changing things around takes time and attention and might not actually help anything."

"That's true. You could skip it if you'd rather."

"It does make a lot of sense on paper. I'm pretty curious where you got the idea, to be honest."

"I come from a place called Mars."

"I see. Miss Tarinda... Do you have a family name? You, frankly, are either a very bold liar or a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'm going to try your queue design. If it works as you describe there will be a generous consulting fee for any further clever ideas on paper."

There's more than a little bit of greed, wonder, and excitement in his eyes over the skepticism, now.

"No family name, but I could make one up if you prefer."

"As a warning, city hall might decide to give you one, but no need to do so on my account. Thank you for coming to see me today. It's been a pleasure. Is there anything else you want to discuss now?"

"Nope. Have fun with your queueing tips."

"I intend to."

The next day, nothing is changed. The day after that, parts of the merchant house are arranged a bit differently and a woman with a clipboard is wandering around, people-watching and writing things down. On the third day, Mr. Griffings would like to meet her again.

She is available.

He's a lot less serious and businesslike this time. He has a fancy lunch and tea brought in, he shakes her hand and smiles.

"Thank you for coming by again! I had to verify it, of course, but the results of the changes were nearly exactly what you said they'd be. It's hard to measure the effects of easier traffic, especially short-term when people are getting used to changes, but there are definitely some benefits."

"Yup! Inconveniences do more than they seem like they will."

"People are happier to be inside, more people see more different stores, people buy more things. I have ideas about rearranging signage and products as well, building on what we discussed. But that can wait - I'm very excited to work with you or have my people work with you on other projects if you're interested in that. I hope that today we can discuss in general what kinds of things you might have ideas for, and I can give you an idea of the resources available to me."

"I'm interested! I bet you can beat waiting tables by a long shot."

Heh. "Quite."

He names an hourly rate five times waiting-tables-with-good-tips. "...And that will go up when you have a track record of more than one good idea."