Even before the pandemic, the trend has been moving to social isolation which isn't all that natural for human beings. Wouldn't it be interesting if taking isolation to the ultimate level reversed the trend.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2020 04:53PM by LisaSTL.

I was making this a full-time sole source of income without the restaurants shops and phone shops, neither of which paid enough money to include in my mystery shopping schedule. So I am hopeful that mystery shopping will slowly retur just as it did after the depression of 2008.

[www.forbes.com]

Tom Colicchio - celeb chef - estimates that 70% of all restaurants will be gone after COVID-19.

With everyone sacrificing, should members of Congress have reduced salaries? Maybe put them on minimum wage, as they say it's fine and we don't need to raise it?

this is a 2 headed hydra: the corona virus and an economy in trouble, even before the virus arrived to inflict the final wound.

the federal reserve bank announced that they expect unemployment to reach over 33%, which exceeds the unemployment numbers during the great depression. nearly everyone I know is suddenly unemployed, with many having only enough savings to last maybe 2 months. IMO mystery shopping retail businesses is over with, for now and likely until there's a reason clients would need MS services.

every crisis presents opportunities, and there are opportunities, even while this crisis continues to unfold, for those with an entrepreneurial spirit.

@shoptastic wrote:

With everyone sacrificing, should members of Congress have reduced salaries? Maybe put them on minimum wage, as they say it's fine and we don't need to raise it?

535 members at $174,000 per year is just over $93 Million, or .004% of the 2.2 Trillion Cares Act. That's the equivalent of someone making $50,000 a year saying perhaps I should buy the $1 cheeseburger at McDonald's because I can't afford the $2 Big Mac.

@shoptastic wrote:

[www.forbes.com]

Tom Colicchio - celeb chef - estimates that 70% of all restaurants will be gone after COVID-19.

Many local favorites I grew up with out here in Colorado Springs have been permanently closing their doors as a result of the epidemic..... So saddening

My IC work included some restaurants but more of other job types. Did I say included? I should have said, I wonder if I will have any IC work in future and what a work day will look like then.

For giggles, I have been browsing sites that feature defunct restaurants from long before COVID-19. I have the memories and hopes that people will find their way to some sort of work.

Here's my reality, oil prices dropped to $20/barrel (and continuing to drop) for a variety of reasons; not just COVID-19. I'm obviously leaving out the other speculative reasons, as that's diving into politics.

My industry has been so disrupted, damn near all of my clients and the company's clients pulled the rug from under us this past month.... Literally ALL upcoming projects were either delayed for the foreseeable future, or flat-out CANCELLED. The disruption forced my company and all the nearby competition to layoff a LOT of their staff. With my company, they laid off many damn good engineers and nearly all of the designers down to the bare minimum. Other cost cutting measures include the former principals that are still working to drop their salaries to minimum wage, as they still have their fortune from the buyout almost a decade ago to survive on. Still, that wasn't enough....

.... So here's how this can relate to the effects of on the mystery shopping industry.... My company also cut out ANY non-billable positions, such as the front desk receptionist, accounting controller, project controllers, any extra IT support, HR generalists, etc.

Depending on how these clients of the MSC's treat and see the value of mystery shopping services WILL have an extreme effect if this quarantine extends into the summer. If these clients see this as an expense with little to no value (such as what happened to the non-billable positions in my company), meaning it's an expense with an ROI that isn't exactly guaranteed, then the mystery shopping work will easily be the first on the chopping block for those clients. Another scenario that can pan out though is that the MSC's fight and cut their rates even MORE, cutting fees and reimbursements on future shops even MORE, just to keep their clients on board with ANY mystery shopping services.

I sound real pessimistic about this, but being waist deep in the work force and being in a locked down city in Colorado, I'm witnessing a literal economic bloodbath the longer the quarantines continue.

I hear that, Tarantado. I like to do some of my IC work in Colorado, including in Colorado Springs. The Springs involves extremely long days, but other cities fit into merely busy day trips. Your shutdown and reduced work is my lack of work opportunity. And I don't even live in Colorado! I do not know what should happen. But if I lived there and the Broadmoor or some other swank place re-opened, I might go for a bell hop job. They get big bucks just for handling luggage..Or, they used to in a pre-COVID-19 world. Meanwhile, no one is supposed to travel...

@Tarantado wrote:

@shoptastic wrote:

[www.forbes.com]

Tom Colicchio - celeb chef - estimates that 70% of all restaurants will be gone after COVID-19.

Many local favorites I grew up with out here in Colorado Springs have been permanently closing their doors as a result of the epidemic..... So saddening

A good friend of my mom's worked as a kitchen prep worker. They shut down around March 10th with no return date in sight. The restaurant was struggling to begin with and something was likely to happen (cutting staff or cutting wages). She may not have a job back with them after this is over.

I know, as a family, we are not going to go out much for dining UNLESS we have immunity tests that show we're immune (at a bare minimum, my dad - due to his heart condition).

It's sad on a lot of levels. Our local restaurants will have many closings. Some JUST opened up too and I have to feel for those people. They had dreams and were just getting started. This will be absolutely killer for the new ones. It'll be tough for us as a family, because we do enjoy going out to eat.

Without a vaccine or highly effective therapeutic for COVID-19, I could see this disaster playing out for two years. Even 18 months for a vaccine is HIGHLY optimistic. And supposing that places us in June 2021, we'd need lots of time to produce and distribute it. ...So, maybe late 2021 as a super best case scenario?

Most businesses will not survive that. Loans with interest won't help them if customers won't come. If they have 50% less customers, that could be the end of them. Grants can help them stay alive. But, you still need to get back to pre-virus business for a lot of places (esp. ones with high fixed operating costs).

lol - for those needing some humor:

[www.theonion.com]

The Onion had this piece on restaurants.

Growing up in the heart of the auto industry, with my Dad working (only one income) for one of the Big 3, and a spouse working for a supplier our entire married life, I am grateful that I/we were born knowing that all things are cyclical so never bought the huge house/expensive car/vacation home. This job has allowed us to function on 1 income with me paying for the extras. The last recession caused me to move from doing mostly retail to doing gas station audits. Since most of my work is with the largest in the industry, at least for that type of assignment, and the contracts started in January, I'm trusting that that means that I will have work when we can leave the house. My daughter is almost through high school so my need for flexibility will go away in a year and, realistically we could survive without this income (I'd have to clean more, yikes!) until everything stabilizes. I am glad that I killed myself over the last year to make sure that all my debt was paid off. I think that this industry will be needed in some form or another. What I foresee is more app based assignments (much less need for schedulers), more pictures only (less editors to correct reports), and less patience for error (easier to just terminate an IC because there will be plenty more out there). I also foresee fewer bonuses as well as shops confined to "essential" businesses, i.e. gas stations, hardware stores, grocery stores, banks.

The one thing that I wish people would pledge to do is to resist the urge to judge anyone else for the fee that they are willing to take to work...yes, jobs "used to" pay more. It's also really easy for someone to say "just hold out" for a certain fee or, the worst one, "this is hurting us all". Honestly, after this is over there will be people really, really hurting, at least for the short term. What might be an "insulting" fee for one person could literally mean the difference between eating and not eating, paying rent or not, putting gas in the car, etc. Hopefully the pain is short term and things will get back to normal. However, who is anyone to judge someone who is doing whatever they need to do to survive?!? If you don't like the fee, don't take the job. If you need to figure out a way to change industries, do it. But, for goodness sake, be kind and bite your tongue. I'm sure that "you" are the last person that they consider when doing what is best for them, not thinking "how can I make it harder for someone else".

Well said, Karen! The competition for the jobs will be fierce at first ...

Looks like work for people operating "wet markets" (the type from which COVID-19 is supposed to have come from) in China is partially back up and running. This boggles my mind like nothing else! We have a global death and economic recession/depression going on because of animal-to-human virus transmission from these markets and they are BACK UP AND RUNNING?

[nypost.com]

@ wrote:

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday that all of China‘s wet markets should be shut down immediately in light of the pandemic ravaging much of the world.

“It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci told “Fox & Friends.”

“I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that,” Fauci said. . .

The Chinese government has reportedly allowed some wet markets in the country to reopen as the threat of the contagion lessened, although the one in Wuhan remains shuttered.

Fauci said that other countries should speak out against any unsanitary selling of wildlife.

Speak out? Yes, we should. Will that ever convince the Chinese government of anything? Sadly, I doubt it. If the scale and misery of COVID-19 doesn't motivate the Chinese government to ban wet markets, I don't know what else will.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2020 04:12AM by shoptastic.

@shoptastic wrote:

Looks like work for people operating "wet markets" (the type from which COVID-19 is supposed to have come from) in China is partially back up and running. This boggles my mind like nothing else! We have a global death and economic recession/depression going on because of animal-to-human virus transmission from these markets and they are BACK UP AND RUNNING?

[nypost.com]

@ wrote:

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday that all of China‘s wet markets should be shut down immediately in light of the pandemic ravaging much of the world.

“It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci told “Fox & Friends.”

“I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that,” Fauci said. . .

The Chinese government has reportedly allowed some wet markets in the country to reopen as the threat of the contagion lessened, although the one in Wuhan remains shuttered.

Fauci said that other countries should speak out against any unsanitary selling of wildlife.

Speak out? Yes, we should. Will that ever convince the Chinese government of anything? Sadly, I doubt it. If the scale and misery of COVID-19 doesn't motivate the Chinese government to ban wet markets, I don't know what else will.

This is obviously what most westerners cannot comprehend, but has been an active cultural thing that's been going on forever.... China isn't the only country that has wet markets, and flat-out banning that just shows how oblivious most people are to the rest of the world.

@Tarantado wrote:

@shoptastic wrote:

Looks like work for people operating "wet markets" (the type from which COVID-19 is supposed to have come from) in China is partially back up and running. This boggles my mind like nothing else! We have a global death and economic recession/depression going on because of animal-to-human virus transmission from these markets and they are BACK UP AND RUNNING?

[nypost.com]

@ wrote:

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday that all of China‘s wet markets should be shut down immediately in light of the pandemic ravaging much of the world.

“It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci told “Fox & Friends.”

“I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that,” Fauci said. . .

The Chinese government has reportedly allowed some wet markets in the country to reopen as the threat of the contagion lessened, although the one in Wuhan remains shuttered.

Fauci said that other countries should speak out against any unsanitary selling of wildlife.

Speak out? Yes, we should. Will that ever convince the Chinese government of anything? Sadly, I doubt it. If the scale and misery of COVID-19 doesn't motivate the Chinese government to ban wet markets, I don't know what else will.

This is obviously what most westerners cannot comprehend, but has been an active cultural thing that's been going on forever.... China isn't the only country that has wet markets, and flat-out banning that just shows how oblivious most people are to the rest of the world.

Vietnam announced weeks ago that they would ban the sale of wild animals for food. In theory, China has also agreed to the ban.

[nypost.com]

I am not oblivious. I am disgusted by it.

@SoCalMama wrote:

@Tarantado wrote:

@shoptastic wrote:

Looks like work for people operating "wet markets" (the type from which COVID-19 is supposed to have come from) in China is partially back up and running. This boggles my mind like nothing else! We have a global death and economic recession/depression going on because of animal-to-human virus transmission from these markets and they are BACK UP AND RUNNING?

[nypost.com]

@ wrote:

White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday that all of China‘s wet markets should be shut down immediately in light of the pandemic ravaging much of the world.

“It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci told “Fox & Friends.”

“I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that,” Fauci said. . .

The Chinese government has reportedly allowed some wet markets in the country to reopen as the threat of the contagion lessened, although the one in Wuhan remains shuttered.

Fauci said that other countries should speak out against any unsanitary selling of wildlife.

Speak out? Yes, we should. Will that ever convince the Chinese government of anything? Sadly, I doubt it. If the scale and misery of COVID-19 doesn't motivate the Chinese government to ban wet markets, I don't know what else will.

This is obviously what most westerners cannot comprehend, but has been an active cultural thing that's been going on forever.... China isn't the only country that has wet markets, and flat-out banning that just shows how oblivious most people are to the rest of the world.

Vietnam announced weeks ago that they would ban the sale of wild animals for food. In theory, China has also agreed to the ban.

[nypost.com]

I am not oblivious. I am disgusted by it.

Unless ..... maybe they know the virus didn't actually come from the wet market? So they would really have no motivation to shut it down?

[www.washingtonpost.com]

[www.nationalreview.com]

we just lost my uncle in New York

i don't think i can eve speak....mother is devastated beyond belief

IF YOU'RE NOT FEELING WELL W/ COVID-19 SYMPTOMS, take them very seriously

My uncle didnt' feel well Thursday. Aunt asked him to see a doctor and he didn't want to make a big deal about it. Passed Friday we were told.

Take it seriously people!

Sorry to hear that.....I pray my loved one's will be o.k. and survive this virus.....this is a time to come together, I admire the Governor of New York, and CA is doing everything in it's power to keep us safe...wear a mask.

Just to be clear, my uncle did not test positive for COVID-19 yet. They won't know for a while. Official cause so far (from what we were told) was a heart failure sort of issue.

Aunt said he complained of pain in the chest/heart area.

@shoptastic wrote:

we just lost my uncle in New York

i don't think i can eve speak....mother is devastated beyond belief

Shoptastic...you made this sound like your uncle passed away from the virus, you need to use your words carefully, as this is a post regarding the virus and our work....regardless, sorry for your loss.

@Irene_L.A. wrote:

Sorry to hear that.....I pray my loved one's will be o.k. and survive this virus.....this is a time to come together, I admire the Governor of New York, and CA is doing everything in it's power to keep us safe...wear a mask.

Thank you for the kind words, Irene.

I pray God protects you and your family through all of this. And the same for all other forum members here. Hope everyone considers taking extra time, too, to just "be with" family (even if afar) to make sure they know you love them. Maybe "get right" with those you're disconnected from. And be there for others in love during this difficult time. They will all appreciate it!

Be strong and be loving!

@Irene_L.A. wrote:

Shoptastic...you made this sound like your uncle passed away from the virus, you need to use your words carefully, as this is a post regarding the virus and our work....regardless, sorry for your loss.

We are not sure yet, but he had one of the severe symptoms associated with COVID-19: chest pain. There doctors gave a temporary diagnosis of some sort of heart failure, I believe, but are testingn him for COVID.

We suspect it (my own thought was that the virus could have triggered heart issues), but won't know until results come back. I won't post on this anymore (maybe only to confirm the diagnosis when results come in).

(just so emotionally overwhelmed - not thinking straight when I posted it)

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2020 12:00PM by shoptastic.

(((gentle hugs)))

@shoptastic wrote:

@Irene_L.A. wrote:

Shoptastic...you made this sound like your uncle passed away from the virus, you need to use your words carefully, as this is a post regarding the virus and our work....regardless, sorry for your loss.

We are not sure yet, but he had one of the severe symptoms associated with COVID-19: chest pain. There doctors gave a temporary diagnosis of some sort of heart failure, I believe, but are testingn him for COVID.

We suspect it (my own thought was that the virus could have triggered heart issues), but won't know until results come back. I won't post on this anymore (maybe only to confirm the diagnosis when results come in).

(just so emotionally overwhelmed - not thinking straight when I posted it)

Wet markets exist all over the globe, and is common with indigenous people who have lived this way for generations. That is how they eat and live, trading this for that. Monkeys, bats, intestines. You name it and someone is eating it. Even right here in this country, pathogens are inside the food supply, and in wild caught animals trapped and eaten, as well. That is why health departments and the World Health Organization monitors illnesses and deaths when they occur in groups, as this can be the first sign of an outbreak. It's not uncommon for viruses to transmit between insects, animals and onto humans, and back again. Mutating along the way. This is how AIDS started. Black Plague, etc, and why it's so important to have global health organizations monitor outbreaks.

Right now, there are concerns that the thawing of the perma frost may be releasing viruses. Suddenly, entire herds of reindeer die for no apparent reason, and lakes appear where no lake existed the previous month.

There are excellent YouTube videos on these very same subjects. I have learned a lot watching them.

Isolation and testing are the best ways to contain outbreaks. This should have been done very early on. Even now, with stay home orders in effect, I have seen parents and their children on outings to the grocery store, scampering about as if it were the first day of summer vacation. Picking up produce and then putting it back down.

I began my stay at home and mask wearing 2/22 when I saw the video of the Chinese police allegedly welding closed apartment buildings with people inside.

Best wishes to everyone here and I hope our jobs return.

Buffalo Wild Wings is a shop/business I think could see closings.

Locally, they were struggling a bit at a few locations here before COVID-19. With:

a.) overpriced food that is mediocre (I found the bone-in wings very tasty actually as the main exception, but felt they were too much in price)
b.) the shutdown of sports competitions for a while, which is what customers often go for as their main attraction - take-out does NOT seem like a big demand for them
c.) restaurants being places, in general, that people will likely be slow return to

They could be a casualty of the virus and so too their shops.