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Welcome to my new monthly column "Coach's Diary"! It will regularly appear here on the Mystery Shopper Coach's Corner web site and will also be e-mailed for free to all Perfect Work-At-Home Job Update subscribers around the first of each month (subscribe by e-mail to mscoach@aweber.com).
This column came about since so many of my e-zine subscribers, book customers and coaching clients have requested some more personal insight into my experiences when I go out on assignment. So I am adding these tales from the field to provide both amusing anecdotes and additional ways you can learn from my experience.
Plus, all subscribers to my free monthly e-zine Perfect Work-At-Home Job Update are welcome to submit their own stories of unusual and educational shopping experiences, and the best will be published in this column and on this site with full credit given to you. You'll be featured as a "Guest Coach".
Please include your name, city and state and contact e-mail address with your submission (your e-mail address will not be published and we can either use your full name, first name and last initial or vice-versa).
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Honesty Is The Best Policy
Well, they did it again. I get lots of car dealer-related work from one mystery shopping company scheduler I hooked up with way back. But my pet peeve is that they are the slowest to pay--45 days after the month the shop is done! Yet they are very reliable--usually. I just had to call to check on a payment that was overdue for my December work. I got an apologetic voicemail and a promise that my check would be sent out immediately that day. Fair enough. And they did.
The funny thing was, two weeks later a second check showed up in the mail covering the same assignments. Hmm--what to do? Well, I decided it was best to be honest, so I called the company and left a message about the duplicate check. At the same time, I mentioned that I did have a March oil change shop that would be the exact same amount as the duplicate check, and asked if there any chance I could just keep the check as advance payment for that work? A couple of days later I not only got a phone call saying that as one of their top shoppers they would be glad to let me keep the check as payment for the upcoming shop, I was offered four more shops! It's nice to know honesty and good work are noticed and rewarded!
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The Nametag Challenge
Here in Southern California, we have a popular salad buffet restaurant that also has many locations across the country. Recently, one of my schedulers notified me that this restaurant was now one of their accounts. The only thing better than going to a favorite place, is going there for free!
I don't do lots of restaurant shops since you don't really make much, if any, money on them, but if it's a place I like, fine. What I always find fascinating is that when you go to a business you always patronize, but now as a shopper, the experience does change because you are in researcher mode. What I found most challenging was reading the nametags of the personnel behind the main salad bar because the top frame and sneeze guard were at a level that blocked my view of the workers. The first person was pretty easy. Salad bar attendant number two was giving myself and my husband the fits. She kept looking down with her body bent over where her nametag was while sweeping, and sweeping, and sweeping! Great--I have to get the worker whose goal is to have the world's cleanest salad bar floor!
I bent lower, acting like I needed to reach the broccoli-the worker is still sweeping. My husband went to the other side of the salad bar, she turns away just as he gets there. Does she turn in my direction? No, now she goes all the way down on the floor to investigate the broom bottom. We keep working at it as we fill our plates with salad items and move down the line; she keeps sweeping. Finally, I decided to ask her a question, figuring I've got to see her nametag when she talks to me. Oh no! She stands with her hands on top of the broom as I speak with her--exactly in front of her nametag. As my mind raced for another idea, I finally hit pay dirt. I heard someone call out "Tanisha, I need you over here". As luck would have it, the mad sweeper's identity became known. Tanisha, you are a credit to sweepers everywhere! And for the shoppers reading this--always stay alert, be creative and persevere.
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The next Coach's Diary column will be published on May 1st. The next issue of Perfect Work-At-Home Job Update will be released on April 16th. Your comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. New subscriptions are welcome by e-mailing me at mscoach@aweber.com.
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Copyright 2001-2008, Melanie R. Jordan E-Publishing
