Shhh. Don’t make eye contact. Pretend you are not reading this. Look around. Stretch. Good. You look very natural. That’s very good. The goal is to not stand out, not get noticed. Be average – even boring. Be very quiet. Don’t talk much. There. Now you’re getting it. Now that no one is paying you any mind, you can see much better. That’s what mystery shopping is about. Seeing what no one thinks you see. Hearing what no one wants you to hear. Noticing the details that make up the whole.

Now, while you are sitting there, acting perfectly natural, let me tell you a little bit about me. This isn’t the stuff you’ll find on the About page; this is a little peek into what makes a grown woman with three kids want to be a mystery shopper, aka corporate spy.

I guess I’ve always been a bit of a tattletale. Being the oldest child of a single mother fresh off the boat from Germany, a lot of responsibility fell on my shoulders. If my brother forgot to take out the trash, it was because I didn’t keep after him. If my sister didn’t get her homework done, Mom came down on me for letting her play outside too long. I learned early to keep an eye on everyone and make sure they did their jobs and they did them right.

I also seemed to get the job at school of helping Teacher out with grading papers or resetting the classroom for the next group of students. Yep. I was the Teacher’s Pet and proud of it. Come report card day, my hard-to-please mother got glowing reviews about me. I learned that overachieving saved my behind from the belt. It was very motivating.

Fast forward to my late 30’s with three little boys under my watchful eye. Once my youngest went to school, I was ready to do more than just change diapers and sell Avon to neighbors. When one of my friends went to work for a company that sent shoppers into a major grocery store chain and paid them to do their shopping, I signed up pronto.

Not only did they reimburse me for groceries I needed to buy anyway, they paid me a fee and mileage! The Mother Lode! By driving to neighboring towns, I was soon making a few hundred dollars a month, doing what I already did, just a little further away. This work-from-home side hustle fit me to a tee.

These first shops were a bit tricky, though, and I found I needed to use a bit of stealth and some of the acting skills I had picked up in college. The guidelines required me to visit every department in the store and ask a similar question to every employee. “Can you tell me where to find the XYZ?”

Now, imagine starting out in the bakery and asking the employee where to find the vanilla. The employee is required to walk me to the aisle and show me the item, ideally placing it in my hands. After I thank her, I head to the meat department and ask the butcher, “Can you tell me where to find the bullion cubes?” Mr. Butcher rolls his eyes, wipes his bloody hands and quickly walks to the aisle with bullion cubes. I thank him and walk over to produce. I ask the young man stocking bananas where to find the turnips. And so on.

Don’t you think someone is going to catch on to this lady hitting every department asking where to find something? These employees have been shopped before and they know what the shopper is supposed to do. I might as well be walking around in a trench coat with a fedora dipped over one eye. Especially when the bakery lady is watching the produce guy cut open a cantaloupe for me (another thing they are supposed to offer to do.) So how does a veteran mystery shopper stay under the radar? I’ll answer that in my next post.