Friday, April 11, 2008

Letting Go

I use to be a mystery shopper.  Technically I still am.  I get emails and phone calls from schedulers, I'm still signed up with many companies.  But I haven't completed a shop this year.  I don't really plan on "shopping" again, but I just can't seem to take my name off the lists.
 
It is possible to be a full time shopper and make decent money doing it.  I've met people who do.  But when the thought of completing even one more shop at the store you've been to a dozen times in a month looking for things you have no intention of buying or hearing the sales pitch and asking questions about a product you probably  know more about than the sales person brings you to tears, it's time to take a break. 
 
And with gas prices as high as they are and shop fees not increasing, the distance you are willing to drive for a job decreases which means to keep working you have to keep shopping the same stores over and over and you begin to fear that the store has you picture hanging in the break room with the caption "known mystery shopper" like the wanted posters of the Old West.
 
I don't want to be a mystery shopper anymore, not really.  Sometimes it's tempting, but the work/pay ratio just doesn't make the effort worth it.  But it was a lot of work to get signed up and it'll take just as much effort to remove my name from the lists. And what if I change my mind and decide to be a shopper again? 

2 comments:

ali cross said...

Huh. I always wondered if that sort of thing paid well - or at all. I signed up for a couple places, but the only email I got was looking for someone with dings in their car to go see about getting it fixed. I didn't qualify so I couldn't do the job. Bummer.

Just keep deleting the emails. You don't have to decide anything right now, right?

April said...

I agree with Ali. Just delete the emails and decide later. I'm sure the time will come when you can decide for sure.