Feb 18 2009
Mystery shopper’s mailbag - Vol. 3 - your secret identity
The mystery shopper loves your questions and comments and theoretically will be answering them every Wednesday. This week’s questions comes from G.D. in Texas.
Q. What do you tell your friends/family/people when they ask what you do?
A. Generally, I do try to avoid mentioning that I am a mystery shopper. Frankly once you do tell people that you mystery shop you get the same thousand questions before they segue into asking how they get your job. It doesn’t worry me creating new mystery shoppers in my area because I can’t do all the jobs and there might be some I’m not interested in, but it does tend to get a bit repetitive. Let’s be real - we know most people have heard of mystery shopping through a scam-type ad and are under the impression that this is just fun and games. We know that this is a fun job, but it is a job with actual work involved and most people just get dazzled by the free stuff they might be getting. Once they find out it’s real work they usually don’t mystery shop for long.
Plus, and not to sound paranoid or anything, you never know who’s listening, or who they are going to tell. Someone who has overheard you state that you are a mystery shopper might be the clerk in the store you have to mystery shop tomorrow which will out you and disqualify the assignment. Honestly, if I’ve bothered to read all of the guidelines, plan the shop, and drive to the location, I don’t wany anything to screw up my paycheck and waste my time. You might also be inadvertently ‘outed’ running into a friend or neighbor. Say you are in a store on a shop and your friend catches up with you. She asks something like, “So how’s the mystery shopping going?”, or figures out that your on assignment at the moment and blurts out, “Sorry you must be on a shop, I’ll call you later.” If any store employee is nearby you are finished.
So what do I tell people? I tell them that I do market research. The word research conjures up images of boring charts and graphs and usually convinces my listener that they need to ask me something else. ‘)
