The Shop Logs

After voting/lobbying for a conference as close to me as Chicago will be I will miss it. As of now I live about four hours from the conference….
However, I will be moving to the Atlanta area the last week of June/first week of July. I will start my new job July 25th, or sooner.
It looks like I will not be making it…..

Can I vote f or the ATL area for next year yet?

I recieved an odd sort of emal today from a scheduler. It made reference to identifying numbers from a shop, but I don’t have any outstanding shops with this Mystery SHopping company. I called back & left my contact information, but haven’t heard back yet…..
I would be ticked if it was someone just trying to fill a shop only because they are making it sound important…

I’ll post when she returns the call.

More exactly when Mystery Shopping friends call, I feel so happy!
This is a crazy business where I feel Mystery Shoppingcompanies want to pit shoppers against each other for a competitive cost advantage.
Yet every once in awhile a friendship breaks through - thanks friends!

I am a woman, therefore I have had many ‘breakups’ with guys that were not skilled in letting a gal down easy.
Maritz has joined the ranks of some skanks of the past.
Another thoughtless MS company keeps showing how they have no idea where I actually live & this all is making me feel a bit 10th grade geek this week; well, thanks, you can help by reading on…..
I guess I hadn’t shared this with you yet because it is a bit awkward. I should have known better than to get in to a mystery shopping situation with a company after I had changed their profile information to my new place & GA and placed them under the cumbersome GA MS Favorites File. But shoppers are such suckers when the anonymous voice identifies itself as a scheduler, regardless of the company. Thus resulting in my “Smooth Move” of the 7th.
Of course, I’ve repressed it a bit, but here are the details as I recall them: My DH calls to ask me why Maritz sent me a large package there; good question, it is because the IDIOT I spoke to about shops in GA & assigned me one in MI & then sent the info to GA- don’t make me explain in any level of detail at what level I hold her intelligence please. I then get the autoreminder email & respond with the situation. I suggest they simply resend the inforamtion to me at my current, MI, address & I can complete the shop (within one mile of my house).
Well, I got the call in the evening; it has been awhile since I’ve been dumped, I don’t remember if the evening is the “pref” time or not. I know it is difficult to get people from Maritz on the phone after business hours sometimes. (Ahh, I do remember the paranoia that sets in after the dumping) The girl sounded young, possibly this was the first time she had made this call herself, maybe she was still dealing with the inept festival of bad dumpers in her life. I, as I had been all though school years, was kind & genial to the dumper. She told me how “they” really can’t resend materials, and how “they really don’t just let her” send to a different a different address than what the profile supplies.
(side note: how many times have you called them and “they” have given you your password though? Hmp.)
I suggested to her that maybe the person who called me shouldn’t have scheduled me for a different state than my profile address then.
She had nothing to say.
I asked, so what do we do? Do you want me to shop it or not? She latched on to that not like a terrier. Thanks for letting her “off the hook.”
And with that she hung up.
I felt dirty and embarrassed in my own house all by myself that night, I had been dumped my a mystery shopping company.

As an aside I have been thinking about the new house, wonder if/how life will be better down there. This surrent house is destined for resale, I get to pick the next one honey! By then we will need to do a exterior makeovers as they are becoming more important to moving homes on the market - I found this place Barrington Real Estate that has the most comprehensive listings available for Barrington real estate here at New Castle Realty. I should suggest to Maritz, Sung from AthPower (who keeps emailing me on “Urgently Needed Shops” w/0 zips/addresses) or the bulletin boards giving me listings for states other than MI or GA to use a realtor!

I am slowly changing over my addresses in Mystery Shopping company profiles as I log into them. Since I am on a self imposed MSing vacay I really am not changing more than a few over a week.
*regardless*
Maritz called me Friday and asked if I could do a couple of shops. Well, they gave me names of towns I had never heard of before. This did not seem atypical, I mean how often do MSPs tell you of an opportunity “in your neighborhood,” which turns out is 40+miles away? (it was rhetorical - say A LOT) I said since I had never heard of those towns they must not be near me. The person on the other end of the phone said the computer showed ‘blahsville’ less than 5 miles from my home. Of course both of us were dumb-asses. She was giving me shops in GA while I lived in MI….it took both of us 3 minutes to put this all together. She offered to look up shops for me in MI, whic was time consuming as she had difficulty with the zip code I was giving her, repeatedly. She ended up offering me a shop less than one mile away, from my current addy & DH called me to tell me she shipped the info to my NEW addy……naturally am less than 801 miles from the location there…..
Maritz’s email Contact Us is being stupid & I will need to contact tomorrow I guess…..

I used to suffer from mystery shopper burn out…..now I just am a burnt out mystery shopper. Wondering if you are too? Check off signs that describe you:
1. You’re more interseted in the Volition posts than doing actual shopping.
2. You get incensed with Ray and want to shoot him with a paintball gun, the way they used to mark cattle, “watch out, this one is cRAYzy!” (as an aside did you know ‘Sport’ Paintball Guns were not patented until 1985 - what DID my DH do before then? )
3. You start to root for the servers, salespeople & call center people….. You LOVE when you see them sticking it to the MS companies by posting responses YOU KNOW are to shops!
4. You lead bad salespeople into the questions, it’s like you are the Cliffs Notes and this sale is their cram study session.
5. You look to fill out a customer service comment card, but then realize the fee is the same as if you’d have to for ‘work.’