@nikkinicky wrote:
Crazy thing is this isn't my 1st time hearing someone tell an employee this. I told this story before here but during one of my routes for gas station inspections, I came across a guy that almost turned down letting me complete the inspection (my guidelines stated that he was allowed to decline). He was still on the fence until I told him I couldn't make him do anything and it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable with it and he gave me the go ahead because I was upfront about it. He told me that the last MS (an elderly couple) came to the store and threaten to have him fired and the store taken if they didn't let him do the site inspection. After I was done I went to the next station on my route not too far from the previous one and they had the same exact story down to the threats.
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I have had this happen to me on numerous occasions. I had one scheduler tell me they (the gas station) do have the right to report the shoppers in question to their jobber, and they can and will be taken off the program if enough companies complain. I was at a Marathon in Kentucky in 2021, back when it was with the other company, not the current one. The woman said, "Hey, I have a question for you before you get started." She went into a laundry list of issues about the last shopper. I told her to contact the jobber, and they have the right to ask them to be removed. So she pulls out the report she received and asks me all kinds of questions about it. She said it wasn't fair that I was there before they could resolve everything.
This happens more often than not. They are usually shocked that I will have a conversation with them. My stance is, "When I am on a route, the only people that see me are the person behind the counter. If I go missing on a route and they see me on the 10 o'clock news, I would hope one of them would remember me as the kind mystery shopper and report seeing me." I do a lot of rural shopping, I talk to my husband all the time, but I do not have a phone buddy outside of him, like some shoppers do.