When recording is expressly forbidden...

Or use the note to self function.

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Problem being is that on most of those no recording shops they also have a no cell phone policy so they get you coming and going.

This bears repeating.

@CoffeeQueen wrote:

Our real job title is data collector. Not data inventor.

Use a speech to text app. Like Dragon Naturally Speaking

If no recording AND no cell phone use, I would simply go the old-fashioned way: after two or three interactions, go to the restroom and make notes. Then do the remaining two or three interactions, and write those notes as soon as you are away from the store.
Fortunately, pen and paper still exist and work wonderfully.

@Ms.V wrote:

Fortunately, pen and paper still exist and work wonderfully.

I'm pretty sure the the mobile phone policy doesn't pertain to when you are in the restroom. You are free to take notes into your phone there.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

@Ms.V wrote:

Fortunately, pen and paper still exist and work wonderfully.

I'm pretty sure the the mobile phone policy doesn't pertain to when you are in the restroom. You are free to take notes into your phone there.

I guess texting yourself or making notes silently would work in the restroom. I use a recorder which I find much easier to handle....the issue is the women's restroom is often full of others unlike the men's restroom. I have not entered the men's but I rarely see anyone going in. Women spend an inordinate amt of time in the restroom compared to men so sometimes it is not possible to be alone. This is an issue with restroom pics too for females. Some come in and stay forever running water, flushing, primping, sending little kids into the stall. all preventing a secure and silent place! And to top it off we have no hooks for our many bags! Anyway, restroom is what I do despite the often relentless crowds chancy floors to lay your stuff down on while you hold a phone or recorder etc.

Notes apps in stalls are as good as pen and ink in stalls. All you have to do is hope that no one is pulling a Sheldon and holding a giant dental mirror under your stall door... (Big Bang Theory fans will remember that Sheldon had a complete safe potty kit.)...

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao-Tzu

I don't know if this is true any longer, but in some two-party states, it's OK to record something if, for example, you're in a classroom and these are your notes, if the recording is made for career purposes (at a seminar, e.g.), or if the people you're recording are in a public place with no reasonable expectation of privacy. I assumed that meant if you're yelling to your lunch companion in a noisy restaurant or a mall food court, where anybody near you can hear you, you have no expectation of privacy and can, therefore, be recorded.

I looked up the laws in my state and in one other, and that's what I found. This was a few years ago, though, so the laws may have changed since then.

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

@sandyf wrote:

I guess texting yourself or making notes silently would work in the restroom.

If the restroom isn't convenient, I've gone and "hidden" in an aisle not nearby and made notes on my phone. People just think you're texting.

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

Yes Birdy, the law in California when I looked it up said that if you had no reasonable expectation of privacy you did not have to get permission. That is what I read and what I have mentioned here. Glad someone else read what I did! In classrooms however, or even seminars, it would be a good thing to check with the prof or speaker. It could very well be that you signed some twenty page agreement with the school etc when you first entered that included not recording certain things.
Still everyone should read their own state's rules and make the decision themselves based on what they read rather than rely on our opinion.
Grammar police let me know if my commas are wrong. After living in Japan for two years many years ago my spelling and grammar have never been the same. I got corrupted by constantly seeing British English, American English, New Zealand English and Japanese English and I lost track of what was correct for us.

I record all shops. Period. In my state, I can.

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