Ever Discovered a Shop to be Dangerous. I have.

Normally I am the opposite of a fearful, timid person. However I once found the instructions for one mystery shop to involve real danger.

This was a multifaceted shop at a very large outdoor flea market, with service in a restaurant to be sampled, and a few specific photos taken. You need to know that the flea market was huge, and the shop had to be on a weekend, when it was extremely busy. Also, I got the feeling that if a customer was hunting for stolen car parts, this would be the place to search.

One of the photos required was inside the men's room. I visited the men's room several times during the hour or so I was at this flea market. Each time there were 20 or more guys in it. What would have happened if I had started taking pictures ? I never took a picture there because I wanted to live.

I explained in the report why there was no interior men's room photo. I never got paid, and will never again sign up for another shop like this one.

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I wouldn't either

Never dangerous, but our fellow member Cettie has stories that will raise your arm hair, talking guns....Cettie
come forward.

Live consciously....

Haven't seen Cettie around lately, wonder what's up? Maybe she's being chased by amorous goats somewhere...

Oh, right, in the men's room there's less, um, privacy. Yea, no, I would have taken a pic of the floor and a private stall and that's it.

I had a shop that I thought was dangerous. It was a cell phone shop maybe 200 miles from my home, on a travel trip of shops. It was in a bad part of town, I hadn't know that until I got there. It was a franchisee of a very small cell phone company. He, well, let's just say I had my hand in my pocket grabbing my pepper spray.

Right. This is not rocket science. You take a picture of a private stall to indicate condition, submit that and explain in the report that you could not take a picture undetected in the areas of hand basins or urinals due to large crowds and privacy issues. Report would almost certainly have been accepted. There was, as far as I can see, no requirement that you put yourself in any danger. OTOH, we have had reports of shoppers here who have found a dead body on the premises, walked into a bank or store robbery or been quite close to a shoot out. But, none of those were due to shop guidelines and most occurred in areas that were not regarded as inherently dangerous.

Finally, I make very large bonuses, and laugh all the way to the bank, because I know that many areas within 50 miles of me are not actually dangerous places for me to be, or (in a very few cases) not so in the day time. Many area shoppers appear to regard anyplace where they would not be in the majority category as dangerous. (19 years of selling residential real estate in MD, DC and VA meant really learning neighborhoods and micro-neighborhoods. )

Based in MD, near DC
Shopping from the Carolinas to New York
Have video cam; will travel

Poor customer service? Don't get mad; get video.

I had a shop once where I had to take bathroom photo and I refused to go back and do it (I didn't know I was supposed to until I got home, it wasn't in the guidelines). It was always crowded too and even though it was a ladies room, I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures in there due to privacy concerns (I knew I wouldn't have liked having my picture taken in a public restroom I find the idea creepy). I've never felt in danger in a shop and I hope that I never will.

What's done is done. An egg cracked cannot be cured.
There are 3 kinds of lies. Lies, Damn lies, and statistics.

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Ever Discovered a Shop to be Dangerous. I have.

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