coughing scenario?

I do merchandising now, but I need to know for my sanity if there is a mystery shop scenario that involves coughing your head off in a drug store? I'm in different stores all week, all throughout the pandemic, and have never heard prolonged coughing like this with no regard for others even pre-covid. It happened Thursday evening and again Friday evening at a different store in the same retailer. Friday, I thought this can't be happening again and it's not real, and started paying attention to other things the second woman was doing. I noticed she could talk without setting off an attack, which doesn't usually happen. Also, she finally paid and left, then came back in and went to back of the store (no longer coughing) so I assume she needed to check the bathroom or get another name, etc.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

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You paid a lot of attention to that person's cough.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

You couldn’t not pay attention. At both stores, employees and customers were freaking out. Like I said, I couldn’t believe it was happening a second time. It was like they were trying to be asked to leave.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

Lol. Maybe the same company that has you litter in the bathroom and check back on the trash. Poor employees.

I will sometimes get a coughing fit, but it's usually after waking up. I have bad post nasal drip and I will cough up phlegm. Once I get it out I'm fine.

Also, smokers can get coughing fits because smoking kills the cilia in the trachea , especially when they first wake up.

When my allergies act up, I can also have coughing fits. Or just when it's very dry, or when I'm taking meds (antihistamines) that dry out my mucous membranes.

However, I do understand everyone wanting to call 911 thinking this person is dying. But, imagine their embarrassment that they can't control the coughing and bringing attention to themselves.

Just giving another perspective.

I understand that. I work in stores every day. This was not normal. An embarrassed person would eventually step outside or even buy cough drops. This was more than 15 minutes.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

I had a stranger diagnose my coughing fit as bronchitis. It was allergies.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

No one coughs like this in public. It wasn’t one coughing fit. I wouldn’t post about one coughing fit. Thursday, the woman bent over from coughing while clinging to a shopping cart. It was over the top in a time when coughing is taboo.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

If the store's other customers were wondering whether she had covid, maybe she did...

It was two separate customers in two separate stores on two different days. However, it was the same type of over the top coughing at the same time of day in the same retailer.

I worked in public all day today at three different stores. Nobody coughed enough to notice.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

I coughed like that when I had pneumonia 20 years ago.

Was she masked up? Were you? Just reading about this makes me worried for you both.

What about... asthma? Whooping cough? Sensitivity to something in the air, or on someone else (perfumed product)?

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

@Shop-et-al wrote:

What about... asthma? Whooping cough? Sensitivity to something in the air, or on someone else (perfumed product)?

During a global pandemic where the USA is accumulating 110,000+ new cases daily, it’s not at all all unreasonable to ask someone who is coughing violently for multiple minutes to leave the premises. Especially if they are unmasked.

Every MSC that I perform shops for has a COVID statement asking shoppers to exclude themselves if they are sick. I don't believe that any reputable MSC would ask a shopper to deliberately cough in a public location.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

@ColoKate63 wrote:

I coughed like that when I had pneumonia 20 years ago.

Was she masked up? Were you? Just reading about this makes me worried for you both.

I am always masked. I wasn’t in a city with a mask mandate, but employees and most customers were masked. Thursday Lady was masked BUT at one point when I looked at her, she pulled it down and coughed into her hand! An unmasked customer said she was afraid to go over there and I told her the cashier would probably give her a mask. Friday Lady also removed her mask! To dramatically use a Kleenex. Both mask removals occurred after about the same amount time of coughing, further making me suspicious that they were fake and all this was on a time schedule.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

Even “fake coughing” by a healthy person would spread billions of aerosolized particles. Asymptomatic people can spread Covid. I can’t imagine any MSP
creating a shopping scenario involving coughing, not in 2021.

Think there is a difference of perspective here. I do not automatically presume that someone who is coughing has covid,. Some people understandably think of covid first, before other options. All is well,.

@OP: I never have heard of a coughing scenario. At most. I have heard of shoppers giving a small cough during a recorded gig in order to remind themselves of a critical point in the conversation. At my personal best/worst, I have had coughing fits pre-pandemic and recently. Thanks to phlegm wads and some chemical triggers, I can cough with the best/worst of them.

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

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2021 12:09PM by Shop-et-al.

Everybody coughs. Everyone who has taken the time to describe the way they cough and what makes them cough…..you are missing the point. Surely you wouldn’t remain in public for 15 minutes or more. I know you wouldn’t because I’m in public all day everyday and this has only happened twice. But I do agree it would be risky for a MSC so maybe it is some type of scam looking for a lawsuit or a viral video to hurt the retailer.

Former mystery shopper, current merchandiser.

May be they are testing it inhouse how the employees react. There are companies that do inhouse shopping.

I actually think everyone is reading more into it than it really is.

With some of the shopping scenarios I have read about on this forum it seems to me that for some msc nothing is taboo. That said I would think some member reading this would have come across a shop like this but so far no one has so it is unlikely to be a shop.
My only thought is it could be some extremist section of anti vaxxer/non believers in covid making a point. I would think this more likely to happen in a state or city where masks are mandatory like my own. I have read reports of all sorts of disturbances the extremists have created including threats and really bad behaviour on a flight. I myself remember pre vaccines when we thought covid was spread more easily having a car full of twenty somethings drive very close to me walking down the street with an open window, slowing down and sticking their heads out the window maskless and coughing at passersby. Anything is possible or it could be as simple as someone with a piece of food lodged in their throat.

So now I think maybe you were being trolled. Not you personally, but everybody in the store. What kind of sicko would think that was funny is beyond me, but the over-the-top dramatics are a little suspicious.

@cm wrote:

I am always masked. I wasn’t in a city with a mask mandate, but employees and most customers were masked. Thursday Lady was masked BUT at one point when I looked at her, she pulled it down and coughed into her hand! An unmasked customer said she was afraid to go over there and I told her the cashier would probably give her a mask. Friday Lady also removed her mask! To dramatically use a Kleenex. Both mask removals occurred after about the same amount time of coughing, further making me suspicious that they were fake and all this was on a time schedule.

Floating up from memory..... early in the pandemic, didn't some people cough on produce in stores? It was thought that they did this just to be jerks, or pooh-pooh the notion of disease, or something. ?

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

Yes, they did. Thousands and thousands of dollars of food products were destroyed out of precaution. Some people are true idiots.

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Floating up from memory..... early in the pandemic, didn't some people cough on produce in stores? It was thought that they did this just to be jerks, or pooh-pooh the notion of disease, or something. ?

What is so oddball about removing a mask to cough? I don't cough or sneeze in my mask. That's icky.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

Doesn't removing the mask to cough or sneeze defeat the entire purpose of wearing a mask? That is why they are disposable. Time for a new mask.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

What is so oddball about removing a mask to cough? I don't cough or sneeze in my mask. That's icky.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

I pull my mask down and cough/sneeze into the inside of my elbow.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

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