@SteveSoCal wrote:

@mysterioso412 wrote:

Maybe stupidly, I’m also taking fewer mystery shopping jobs. I do it after my main job, but, I don’t take any now unless they are very high paying or literally on my way to/from work/other errands

That's not stupid at all. It's utilizing MS in a way that's beneficial to you , and you will get a higher average value for each shop that way.

Anyone losing their job and hoping to replace it with MSing is making the mistake IMHO. The best value of MSing work is augmenting traditional employment, or retirement/disability. It was never meant to be a full-time job and while some can make that work, those who are getting the best value from are not doing it full-time.

A big mistake I made long ago was relying on MS to get me through a period of unemployment, when I doubled down on the shopping. In retrospect, I could have cut back on MSing and invested more time into finding a new job, then recovered quicker.

I agree with this and got into shopping in 2007 after a job loss. I qualified for unemployment but wanted to "do something" besides being home and job searching. I was lucky and found a new job in 2 mths but trying to make a full-time income on MS was a grind back then and still would be today. Now I need the benefits that MS'ing doesn't provide - like health insurance, and with kids, I need a more predictable schedule.

For me, it's actually close to one year from when I was laid from my last job. But I was fortunate to receive severance as one lump-sum payment and still be able to qualify for my state's unemployment benefits. It wasn't until I had to make a decision on going with COBRA for health insurance, that I was able to avoid that and go work where I'm at currently.

Mystery shopping helped to offset expenses during that period though and make unemployment benefits last longer, if needed. I thought the time in between jobs would be a preview of early retirement. The first couple of months were fun, but it was actually quite depressing afterwards. Personally, I found that full-time employment with benefits suits me, especially during prime earning years, with mystery shopping more so as a hobby.

beer money, still
It'd be hateful for me to try it full time.
For all who do, I tip my hat to you....it's me, my personality would not fit well with it full time...which actually leads me to want to do a post about something related to this.

Sorry to get off topic. I feel like I am one of the more younger members here, and you all have more life experience than me. But if anyone does feel like you're going to get laid off, and your company doesn't have an unlimited PTO policy, consider saving/banking it to get paid out at the end.

Also, I've seen some layoffs turn out very differently than expected. Where you would expect the lowest performers / least experienced to get let go, but sometimes a director ends up getting cut for additional headcount / individual contributors (not contractors), and to eliminate an additional layer of management. Some with long tenure nearing retirement may voluntarily request to be laid off.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2025 03:55AM by Okie.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

@mysterioso412 wrote:

Maybe stupidly, I’m also taking fewer mystery shopping jobs. I do it after my main job, but, I don’t take any now unless they are very high paying or literally on my way to/from work/other errands

That's not stupid at all. It's utilizing MS in a way that's beneficial to you , and you will get a higher average value for each shop that way.

Anyone losing their job and hoping to replace it with MSing is making the mistake IMHO. The best value of MSing work is augmenting traditional employment, or retirement/disability. It was never meant to be a full-time job and while some can make that work, those who are getting the best value from are not doing it full-time.

A big mistake I made long ago was relying on MS to get me through a period of unemployment, when I doubled down on the shopping. In retrospect, I could have cut back on MSing and invested more time into finding a new job, then recovered quicker.

Well said Steve, I'd summarize it this way...

MS'ing is to full time employment as coupon clipping is to full price shopping.

@Okie wrote:

Sorry to get off topic. I feel like I am one of the more younger members here, and you all have more life experience than me. But if anyone does feel like you're going to get laid off, and your company doesn't have an unlimited PTO policy, consider saving/banking it to get paid out at the end.

Also, I've seen some layoffs turn out very differently than expected. Where you would expect the lowest performers / least experienced to get let go, but sometimes a director ends up getting cut for additional headcount / individual contributors (not contractors), and to eliminate an additional layer of management. Some with long tenure nearing retirement may voluntarily request to be laid off.

My district just puts you on indefinite furlough, and in order to get severance pay, you have to resign or retire. You get $20 per day of banked leave, and if it’s over $500, you have to put it in a 403B, so you can’t really access it.

@mysterioso412 wrote:

@Okie wrote:

Sorry to get off topic. I feel like I am one of the more younger members here, and you all have more life experience than me. But if anyone does feel like you're going to get laid off, and your company doesn't have an unlimited PTO policy, consider saving/banking it to get paid out at the end.

Also, I've seen some layoffs turn out very differently than expected. Where you would expect the lowest performers / least experienced to get let go, but sometimes a director ends up getting cut for additional headcount / individual contributors (not contractors), and to eliminate an additional layer of management. Some with long tenure nearing retirement may voluntarily request to be laid off.

My district just puts you on indefinite furlough, and in order to get severance pay, you have to resign or retire. You get $20 per day of banked leave, and if it’s over $500, you have to put it in a 403B, so you can’t really access it.

That's horrible!

When I was younger, I worked at a company where there was little turnover, and it was not uncommon to see people who had worked there for over 20 years. I remember someone who was planning to retire, and wanted to get laid off when it came to that. She had been there 30 years and got two weeks of pay for every year. In a sense, that worked out, where it was like a going-away gift.

@mysterioso412 wrote:

@Okie wrote:

Sorry to get off topic. I feel like I am one of the more younger members here, and you all have more life experience than me. But if anyone does feel like you're going to get laid off, and your company doesn't have an unlimited PTO policy, consider saving/banking it to get paid out at the end.

Also, I've seen some layoffs turn out very differently than expected. Where you would expect the lowest performers / least experienced to get let go, but sometimes a director ends up getting cut for additional headcount / individual contributors (not contractors), and to eliminate an additional layer of management. Some with long tenure nearing retirement may voluntarily request to be laid off.

My district just puts you on indefinite furlough, and in order to get severance pay, you have to resign or retire. You get $20 per day of banked leave, and if it’s over $500, you have to put it in a 403B, so you can’t really access it.

There are many different ways companies deal with this stuff (And yes, Okie; You date yourself by even brining up unlimited PTO, which is a thing I often hear younger people talk about, but never have personally been offered).

In my industry you cannot bank years of back pay. At the end of each year, you are paid out for any unused vacation or PTO, and nobody takes it along the way. You just get the payout at end of the year and roll that into an IRA.

And your advice seems sound, but also backwards. This comment will in turn date me, but aren't you essentially saying that if you are concerned about being laid off, don't take PTO? As in...show up for work every day and do your job well? That's a better a recipe for not getting laid off than for having the cash reserves if you do.

The company I work for now offers unlimited PTO, but it's at the discretion of your manager/business unit. In the end, I heard that it averages out to what the standard PTO policy was a long time ago. The biggest disadvantage to this is that a company does not have to pay unused PTO when an employee leaves, because there is no PTO balance.

The company I worked for previously, you could carry an unused PTO balance into the next year. The balance maximum increased after certain milestones in length with the company, similar to a vesting schedule. For example, after three years, you could carry an even larger unused PTO balance. It provides an incentive to stay with the company long-term. For me, I carried a larger PTO balance that was carried forward, and that got included in my last paycheck.

I think your advice is sound. But for me, it was complicated. There was really no way to avoid it, where it was a larger business decision to eliminate a specific department and do a reorg.

@Okie wrote:

The company I work for now offers unlimited PTO, but it's at the discretion of your manager/business unit.

I'm intrigued, but it's pretty off-topic. You get all the time off you want...as long as they approve it? So it actually has limits and they call it unlimited because the generation they hope to employ likes to hear that?

The unlimited PTO was a company-wide policy that was enforced some years back. In theory, it's unlimited. In practice, it's not. As long as you don't abuse it. From what I've heard and seen, it's largely dependent upon your team and nature of your work.

Some departments and roles have steady work and deliverables throughout the year. The way my business unit and team operates with workload during a full product lifecycle is more along the lines of peaks and valleys. We're encouraged to take most of our time off during the times when it's less busy. It's understood that we don't take long periods of time off during busier parts of the year. We try to go into the office more during busier times.

Our team is more skewed towards experienced hires. Everyone is pretty good at communicating and being responsible. We post when we have appointments and then make up the time, if needed. As long as you meet deadlines and deliverables, it's pretty lax and easy-going. But with a small and lean team, I've heard from everyone it really does average out to like four to six weeks. It depends on your workload, how well you manage your time, and plan accordingly.

We also have a "work-from-anywhere" policy, where you can work remotely anywhere for a number of weeks. I don't necessarily think the benefits are geared towards a younger generation though. I think it's more the flexibility aspect. I found that a lot of people starting families or with kids that require daycare find this arrangement a lot more beneficial. In the end, you're more rewarded for efficiency, impact, and results.

For many years, I worked for a big household name company...one you all might have bought service from.
We had an unlimited PTO policy. It's one of those things that sound good on paper.
The reality was that once you started to want time off too often or too much, the boss would frown on that, since they had to approve of your time off request. You know, there's supposed to be glory in suffering for the cause.
god I'm so glad I don't have a boss anymore.

Another thought that struck me. I honestly don't know where MSing will be next year...except I do watch the economic signals and there's quite a bit of uncertainty and volatility right now. Usually precursors to something.
That said, 2025, for me, has seen the most changes in MSing, since the pandemic.
New rules, new terms, new platforms, new schedulers, new editors, new MSCs.
Could mean something. Could mean nothing. I am sure there are people in a better position to know than me.
In terms of layoffs, I have compassion for anyone caught off guard.
I've seen more corporate and government games in my life than I care to admit to. I shudder.

Well, there we go....tariffs throwing the markets into a sell off.

@BarefootBliss wrote:

Well, there we go....tariffs throwing the markets into a sell off.

Buy the dip.

"Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." - Warren Buffett

According to the The Military Times article dated February 25, 2025:
"The nearly 2,500 employees forced out of Veterans Affairs so far amounts to about 0.5% of the nearly 480,000 department workforce. Officials have not said how many workers have taken voluntary buyouts offered by the White House in the last few weeks."

No one on here or anywhere in the workforce would be happy that anyone is laid off of any job. Even though President Clinton had the backing of Congress, the 400,000 federal workers who lost their jobs in the 1990's were no less impacted than those in 2025.

The United States government is $36,000,000,000,000 in debt. Like it or not Donald Trump was elected President and this is his plan to try and do something about that very serious problem.

The Democratic Party is not doing anything but complaining. I would suggest you write to your local senators and congressmen to find out what plan the DP has for the future.

As far as the future of MS, I doubt it's going anywhere because there are shoppers who will do jobs for a pittance amount of money. MSC have convinced the corporate world that they need the evaluations by MS to see how their employees are performing. The cost to the client is clearly very good or otherwise they wouldn't have been around for 25 years.

How do any of us know if our evaluations haven't resulted in someone being fired or reprimanded?

According to available data, in 2022, employee compensation (including salaries and benefits) accounted for roughly 8% of total federal spending
Source: The Cato Institute
Even a reduction of half of the workforce would only get us to maybe 4% of total spending.....so employees are not the outsized problem they are painted to be. They are a target because the administration views them as a deep state that doesn't support his agenda.....don't be misled.
As well, the part that people never consider is people or no people, much of the work still needs to be done...so the new administration will just privatize it - send the work to contractors and well, they will need to be paid.
Don't fall for the smoke screens.
As to the key issue, Congress and the administration will need to make difficult budgetary and policy decisions to address the key drivers of federal debt. No doubt.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2025 11:11PM by BarefootBliss.

@sestrahelena I’m so fascinated when people drop random facts like this. A waitress? It’s like we all know each other, but not at all.

@msfcashshpr wrote:

The United States government is $36,000,000,000,000 in debt. Like it or not Donald Trump was elected President and this is his plan to try and do something about that very serious problem.
/quote]

Except he is not doing anything about this"serious problem." Nothing. He tells you that by saying he is making government smaller and eliminating waste, but he is just making blanket eliminations. These actions will actually add to the deficit because many that have lost there jobs are responsible for bringing in revenue. Beyond that, the 4.5 trillion dollar tax cut is essentially 4.5 trillion dollars instantly added to the deficit. It means that 4.5 million dollars in revenue is eliminated, thus adding to the deficit.

I don't know how any of this will effect mystery shopping other than the big companies.... Exxon/Mobil for example, probably will have no effect whatsoever. Whereas smaller companies might reconsider the return on investment in mystery shopping. As for me, I will role with the punches. Typically, when one door closes for me in this business, I have found other doors that previously I may not have had an interest in or time to pursue open up.

@BarefootBliss wrote:

According to available data, in 2022, employee compensation (including salaries and benefits) accounted for roughly 8% of total federal spending
Source: The Cato Institute
Even a reduction of half of the workforce would only get us to maybe 4% of total spending.....so employees are not the outsized problem they are painted to be. They are a target because the administration views them as a deep state that doesn't support his agenda.....don't be misled.
As well, the part that people never consider is people or no people, much of the work still needs to be done...so the new administration will just privatize it - send the work to contractors and well, they will need to be paid.
Don't fall for the smoke screens.
As to the key issue, Congress and the administration will need to make difficult budgetary and policy decisions to address the key drivers of federal debt. No doubt.

"...much of the work still needs to be done..." The "work" needs to be productive work. The concern is that the payrolls, and associated benefits, expanded beyond historical norms and even those were questionable. We need to get back to basic services. For example, let local school boards deal with education and not at the Federal level. Throwing more money and useless regulations around just increases the corruption.

Focus on outcome based results. This is what the 79% asked for.

There is always redundancy, waste, fraud and abuse that needs to be addressed. Always has been, always will be.
But it's been publicly stated in the past few weeks that a large part of this effort is to privatize as much of the activity as possible. The information is out there, none of this is a secret.