Today was an epic first in mystery shopping for me. What normally should have taken ninety minutes at best to complete took exactly six hours. Though originally given an hour by my targeted employee early in the morning (7:30 AM), the shop concluded at 1:30 PM with only a brief explanation in the final 30 minutes on why the shop took too long. The response that came before the explanation was "We just got really busy today." My scheduler, of whom I kept in constant contact throughout this ordeal, would not allow for me to either leave or prompt the employee for information. I just had to let the shop play out.
For the purposes of ICAs and client confidentiality, I can't reveal the MSC or even the type of shop. For those on this site that have an idea, your suspicions are correct- it is THAT type of shop. I will say that this type of shop is very, VERY high end.
Given that I didn't have a bathroom to use, drank coffee that was ridiculously bad (I spit it out immediately), farted on by two rude & snooty customers (one of which decided to take her shoes off and pick between her toes), witnessing rude customers go off on salesman with colorful language for nearly forty minutes due to what they were entitled to, walking to the nearest bathroom a half a mile away to rid myself of the terrible coffee (and lack of food) despite being pressed by my scheduler not to do anything (or much less leave the premises), upsold by an annoying salesman to spend over $100K for a product replacement, and then finally explained by the original employee from the beginning that within the final hour that I'll have to spend nearly $28K in necessary product refinements and be without the product for several weeks.
After all that, I escaped the 6 hour debacle with my dignity still intact, yet slightly fatigued. There are some good days in mystery shopping, and there are certainly some doozies where you bear witness to customers next to you picking toe jam as if it is strawberry season, employees that ignore you for hours until you are fatigued, schedulers that won't let you talk to the employees (or the employee's customers) unless they talk first, getting asked to spend a ridiculous amount of money, and lack of usable bathrooms to relieve your stomach tempest. And oh, yes, getting farted on.
Yet another day in mystery shopping. It can be great, yet exhausting sometimes. Has anyone ever had a never ending shop?