A "Free" Meal is NOT Enough for Hours of Work on Dining Shops
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Honey, they give you the clear water cup for water. They give you the other cups when you have paid for a drink. It comes down to honor and ethics. I once had someone tell me that "ethics is doing the right thing when no one is watching you". Refill of drinks is on the honor system. You probably will not get much push back from a minimum wage employee who is not vested in the establishment. But ethics should still have people doing the right thing.
Although I highly doubt it, given that Five Guys is a franchise and they ask on shop reports if we're charged for soda, it's possible that there may be some businesses where the owner has a store-specific policy (not to be expected elsewhere) that this is okay to do. After all, it's his or her own business and they can run it any way they want (not sure how much leeway franchises have). Maybe THAT SPECIFIC store owner's policy was to allow it.
In general, short of the store telling you its okay, I'd not assume we could take a water cup and fill up with soda. I'd consider it theft. But, just saying ...as a possible exception..
Today I learned that I don't really care about how bad the customer service is as long as the food is as good as it is at Texas Roadhouse! Although I would not call it fine dining, but I would do these all day long for just the reimbursement alone. I can think of a couple hand-fulls of other restaurants also. I have an outline in my head already that I stick to for every single restaurant; The phone call (if there is one), the greet and seat, the ordering process, the receiving food process, the checkout process and an overall feeling of whether I would be back and recommend it. I write a small to large sentence or paragraph about each of those for all dining shops and sticking to that plan I don't really have to pay attention to the details except for the timings during the shop. Visualize an outline, keep emotion out of it and you've got it!
I similarly have a general framework for how all dining shops work. I'd just be careful to not have too much of a cookie-cutter formula and lack of differentiation between shops that you might get accused of cutting and pasting your report.
It's been reported on this forum before, where an editor thought a report looked too similar to another one and accused the shopper of just copying the same thing from another past report. It got rejected for that reason.
Putting aside whether that specific instance was an example of cheating or not, I would not doubt that it does happen sometimes and shoppers try to pull a fast one on the MSC.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2018 06:09PM by shoptastic.
I don't copy and paste, except to use the same basic report to apply for companies that ask for an example report. I have the outline in my head as all dining shops are of virtually the same pattern with some shops wanting more information and some wanting less. The same with auto sales, cell phone, retail clothing etc. I think if you do this long enough you get to the point where you don't consider your own feelings about the experience and what you are personally going through with your feelings about the pay, the level of customer service you received, you personally received, that scrambles your ability to write a quick enough report and process the information that they are asking for, and not the information you are personally considering, and then you let go of it and go on to your next. That's how I do my reports and I save my personal energies for my personal adventures. That works for me and also allows me to be less memorable so I can repeat any shops I want to.
Sometimes the subjective stuff gets me...like "friendliness" level.
I can leave "feelings" out the door for stuff like how quickly they cleared my plates, did they offer me timely refills, did they suggestive sell me on things, etc.
A few questions have a subjectivity to them that does make me sit back and think about everything. I want to be fair and accurate. I mainly don't want to harm an employee unnecessarily, as I know their jobs can be on the line.
So, if I get questionable service, I tend to take a while to figure out what may have happened. Say a server's tone rubbed me a questionable or wrong way and I have to pause and think. There was one like that at a sit-down burger shop I did actually (not Five Guys). You start to ask, was she just busy? Was it me, just being too picky about her tone of voice? Am I reading too much into this, etc. I don't want to get someone in trouble unfairly. It takes time to figure out what happened and how to describe it fairly and accurately.
Those are the harder reports.
Those and the ones where I have to re-listen to audio and it sucks b/c of all the background noise. One Smashburger shop had me listening to to a 20 second segment to see what the cashier said about 20x. I honestly think I damaged my own hearing doing that report. I couldn't hear it (too many people talking in background and other noise) and turned up the volume to max level, put my head near the speaker, and it hurt my ears. My hearing is not the same now - I can tell. 
I sacrificed my health for that shop!
Never again - next time I'll just say I wasn't sure. Not going to endanger my health again!Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2018 06:36PM by shoptastic.
You can decipher excellent, good, perfunctory and crappy customer service, doesn't mean that they are perfect or sickly sweet and who cares WHY their customer service is what it is, you don't because shops specifically tell you NOT to.
Heh. That's the thing, though. I question even if my perception is right or not, because there can be all sorts of subjective ways of looking at the same thing.
I made a thread about this around the time that I first joined and asked how we can think about and interpret things like "friendliness." I mentioned that people with different personalities express themselves in very different ways, while intending the same thing. I even said sometimes there can be culturally/ethnically-based differences in how people express the same intended emotion. I used (admittedly, a stereotypical example, but not without merit, as UCLA literary and Asian American Studies scholar, King-Kok Cheung has written on this in her seminal book, Articulate Silences) the case of a hypothetical Asian/Asian American server, who may have a culturally-based expressive style that is less direct and seemingly more reserved or meek than may be "typical" of American styles of communication. What if this person's way of expressing respect, enthusiasm, and friendliness is to be humble and reserved - as a show of respect? Whereas, someone with a more "mainstream" American cultural upbringing (sorry to use such generalities, as I know this can treat all American culture as a monolithic, homogeneous, and amorphous glob of undifferentiated characteristics, but I'm just using this term for ease of comparison and assuming some basic common traits we probably all think of as "mainstream" ) might express their warmth and friendliness in a more verbally or physically direct and upbeat way. You know - waving their hands and "loudly" welcoming you and asking you a lot of questions to show interest in you. For someone of a different cultural background, this same intended warmth might actually be expressed totally in the opposite fashion of perhaps using a softer voice, a nodding of the head (perhaps kept bowed as a show of respect), and asking how they can help and giving you space (so as to not overcrowd you or ask you too many personal questions to bother you or invade your privacy). But, that lack of verbal engagement might be misinterpreted as the person being "cold" or unfriendly.
Different people show their emotions differently. And that's why it's always hard to gauge these things on the job.
It's actually one of the things I least like about reports. I always get tangled up in these sections for long periods trying to analyze things. ...I vaguely recall some interesting responses in that older thread that helped me get a better sense of how to judge these subjective qualities, but it's still tough at times. There can be hard cases.
I think I said in the thread that I would use ACL's recommended standard, which is that if you don't see or hear anything blatantly (as to be impossible to miss) rude, then it's fine to say the server was friendly. This sort of gets around all subjectivity problems and you don't run the risk of interpreting something wrong and unnecessarily harming a worker. But, that method might also give too much credit to a worker for being friendly.
In the end, I always try to err on the side of caution - a la ACL's method - and don't "count off" for anything unless it is blatantly rude in a way that would seem universally objectionable. ...But then, when describing the specifics of how the person acted, I take a lot of time on that sometimes too.
I might be doing some unnecessary work. Or...overthinking it. But, that's my natural instinct. So, I might have to take some time to reconceptualize and revamp my shop reporting approach. They take me forever!
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2018 08:50PM by shoptastic.
Perhaps a little general suggestion could be: for first-time or new-ish meal shoppers, please allow extra time (such as several hours) to complete the report. At best, you can relax and not feel pressured by a deadline, and you might naturally work more quickly on these reports as time passes and you have more experience. At worst, which is really the other side of the best coin, you might find out that you are perfect! As it turns out, you need that amount of time for your restaurant reports, and this is just so fabulous that all you need to do is leave time in your schedule for them. If you plan well, you will not mess up your digestion with pressure of a deadline because you are relaxed and working in your zone. You can have your "free" meal and digest it too! Who knew?!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2018 11:37PM by Shop-et-al.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2018 11:37PM by Shop-et-al.
Maybe adjust your tuner to 3 choices, small, med and large. Sounds like you have given yourself so many choices, too many choices means you loose something, invariably. Decision making skills are important, develope those.
I do need to consider simplifying my approach and analysis.
I don't put much work into it, I realize. I should! I move from school studies to ms-ing in a way where my brain is often focused on something totally different from ms-ing. And I'm just not focused on it in a way where I can perform well. Like I could be learning how to solve maximum and minimum functions in business calculus or conceptualizing a particular normative theory of ethics in philosophy to suddenly having to do something like live human behavior analysis for a ms shop report! My brain is NOT prepared and even in that mode. So I sometimes have a "shock" factor kick in and things take me a long time to get used to again with ms-ing.
I feel like I need time set aside to sort of sharpen my ms-ing skills rather than treating it as a last minute thing to jump to with no preparation.
Going to put in more work to become a better shopper!
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2018 12:57AM by shoptastic.
That's the thing though, we aren't analyzing anything including behavior analysis, at all. We are grunts, and we are nothing more than grunts. They ask us to literally tell what happened, not to tell what happened after it's been analyzed or to provide our interpretation of the why and how, just the what. These companies, they have people with marketing degrees, some with psychology and sociology degrees and many with tons of experience using them and they are using them to analyze the data and make recommendations based on the criteria they receive from the client. We don't do anything remotely close to that. That's why the pay is so low.
A lot of the report criteria are definitely of that sort.
I shall still stand by my view that analyzing "friendliness" is a mentally challenging endeavor at times!
Too many memories of sitting in front of my puter trying to think how to rate the person and how to write it up.
But, I'm driven to improve my skills and make it easier going fowrad!!
Chilis is my absolute favorite restaurant! Are you able to tell me which MSC has Chili’s as a client?
Can't do that per our ICA agreements, Dinzy. We have to keep these things secret.
But, I highly encourage you to go down the list of companies in the forum company master list (linked below every page here), as you will eventually find it.
My favorite report! So short!!
, re-read, excellent advice.
I totally disagree with you. Irene is an equal-opportunity lambaster!!!
(And thanks for the laughs in this thread, Irene! You go, girl!!!)
I may have overreacted. But, I think I also was likely transferring some frustration and anger from something entirely different (not related to Irene in any way) when I posted my comments to Irene (in other words, I was already in a bad mood and probably more sensitive to things that on another day wouldn't have bothered me the same way). Things got out of hand.
@ Irene - I wanted to write you an apology, but don't have the time to put things into words and express my full thoughts adequately.
I will re: this when I get the chance.
I think I was unfair to you in some things I said and wanted to apologize. I hope you are doing well.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2018 09:50AM by shoptastic.
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