@walesmaven wrote:
shoptastic,
It was a violation of forum rules, which are important. And, although you are not registered with that MSC you have been around this forum and the industry long enough to know the general expectations of ethics. Finally, industry folks, including both schedulers (and that particular scheduler, who works with many MSCs) and managers follow these forums and talk to one another, so you may have done yourself some harm. Just be glad the mods caught it so fast.
Yeah, I feel really bad if it affected anyone (scheduler, client, company, etc.).
I apologize to you all, take responsibility for it without excuse, and thank the mods for quickly removing it. I'm very deeply sorry.
This was one of those situations where my mind was entirely focused on one thing and the obvious entirely escaped me. I should have known that combining a client and mystery shopping company was against forum rules. I did not actually and specifically. Although, I figured it was already covered by ICA violation potential, which would be enforced by the forum, as I have seen it done many times.
This was a lapse on my part and I'm guilty (being absent-minded) of that and ignorance of specific forum rules. I can say that it genuinely did not come into my mind that there was a violation of sorts in my post. But that doesn't excuse it, as I should have been more careful, thoughtful, and knowledgeable! If it's at all helpful to provide context into my thought process, I was entirely focused on the personal email issue and this being a possible scam. At the time, I actually thought it would even be helpful to post about this. It never occurred to me that there would be potential ICA conflicts for others!
I think the combination of me not being registered with the company (which removed ICA considerations from my mind) and my focus being on the possible scam consideration completely made me miss the obvious: that others might have ICA conflicts of interest in talking about it and/or combining the client and ms company would be a violation of forum ethics. I can't explain why it didn't occur to me and don't at all excuse it. I feel terrible about it now. But that was literally what was going through my mind. I was so focused on the unusual email part. And I think maybe I was thinking too that people would be responding to my question as it related to the unusual email addresses and not having anything to do with the client, so again nothing related to ICAs ever crossed my mind. I think I somehow thought people would just be telling me whether a representative was a real worker for that company or not and that would be the crux of it.
Bad morning for me guys. I was pretty tired and the combination of these various factors led to me entirely being absent-minded about potential issues. I'm very sorry and again it's no excuse. I did just want everyone to know what was my thought process and intentions. But it's on me to know the exact forum rules and I failed at that.
Won't happen again and I extend my deepest apologies to the mystery shopping company, client, and scheduler. If there's anything I can do, please let me know.
[p.s. I'm going to actually take a break from posting and just spend more time reading first and thinking on the forums for a while, by the way. It probably would help avoid posting problems and be best for me too. I want to make sure these issues don't occur again and that I can be a more helpful poster too in the future.]
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2017 08:27AM by shoptastic.