Whenever I complain about needing some extra money, which is often, one of my friends sends me lists of jobs that can be done from home.
Not too long ago I
tried working from home, but I soon learned the job required a reliable
computer, which my computer isn’t. It's not the computer’s fault, however, it's my Internet's. My connection works only during good weather. If a day is rainy or snowy, I lose my satellite signal and end up offline until the weather clears.
But I did manage, at least for a while, to work from home – as a copy editor, editing mystery shoppers’ reports. It actually was fun and I really enjoyed it...while it lasted.
Mystery shoppers are people who are hired to eat at restaurants or go shopping at various stores and then fill out reports about customer service, product quality and the cleanliness of the facility. My job was to edit their reports so they made sense and sounded professional. I also had to make sure the shoppers’ narratives matched their scoring.
For example, on one report, a shopper wrote: “Susie, our food server, was amazing. She was sociable and smiling, she recommended appetizers and specials, she kept our water glasses filled, and she checked back on us several times to make certain everything was OK.”
Yet, on the next question, “On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being poor, please rate the server.”
The shopper scored her only a 2. I changed it to a 5. I mean, other than giving them their food free of charge and standing there cutting their meat and personally feeding it to them, I don’t think poor Susie could have done much more to gain points.
On another form, the question was: “What was the best thing about your dining experience at this restaurant?”
The shopper answered: “The guy I went with.”
Some of the clients’ questions on the reports, however, made me chuckle. For example, one question asked: “Did the employee offer you a departing greeting?”
A departing greeting? Isn’t that what they call an oxymoron? Maybe a “departing or closing comment” might have made a little more sense?
And most of the restaurants wanted their servers to try to upsell to the patrons. For example, if the customer ordered a burger, the server was supposed to suggest fries or onion rings to go with it. If the customer ordered a piece of pie, the server might suggest topping it off with a scoop of ice cream.
But the question on the form asked: “Did the server suggestively try to sell you any additional food items?
When I read the question, the first thing that popped into my mind was a vision of a female server dressed “suggestively” as she sat on the customer’s lap and cooed, “How about a nice turkey dinner, big boy?"
And then there was the busboy question: “Were the bussers busy cleaning or serving guests?”
I pictured them with wet wipes, “cleaning” the guests.
One shopper was sent to report on five bars in one day, which involved buying a drink at each one and then sitting and observing the bartender's activities. The shopper ordered straight whiskey at each bar, so by the time he filled out his fifth bar report, I barely could understand a word he’d written.
But not understanding shoppers was pretty common. That's because English, for many of them, wasn’t their first language. So it was my job to try to translate what they’d written. Usually I did fairly well, but there was one shopper’s description that really puzzled me. On his report about the cleanliness of a restaurant’s restroom, he gave it a low rating because he said he saw faces on the toilet seats.
Faces on the toilet seats?
Faces of what?, I wondered. Bugs? Mice?
That was one of the difficult parts of the job – I wasn’t allowed to personally contact any of the shoppers and ask them to clarify what they’d written. It definitely would have saved me needless hours of wasted time, trying to crack the equivalent of the Da Vinci Code.
And then there were the shoppers who couldn’t seem to follow instructions. One client wanted the shopper to take a photo of her meal before she took a bite of it because he was interested in seeing how appealing the food’s presentation looked. Well, the shopper submitted a lovely photo of the exterior of the restaurant, including the parking lot. I never did figure out that one.
Even though I did enjoy the job, the pay wasn’t worth all of the time I was forced to spend on it. I was paid a flat rate for every report I edited – usually about $1-$2 each. That was fine for the short, one-page reports I could do in 10 minutes, but the 12-page ones with hundreds of questions often took an hour or more.
Also, there was a 12-hour turnaround for each day’s reports I was sent. That was fine if the weather cooperated and was sunny, but on stormy days when I’d have no Internet signal, there was no way I could make the deadline. And because of that, I’d sometimes be forced to rush, which occasionally caused me to overlook a mistake.
One such mistake still haunts me. A particular client owned two restaurants, both with the same name and both located on the same street. One was at number 35 and the other was at 835. He specified he wanted a shopper to dine at number 35…but she mistakenly ate at 835.
And I didn’t catch it.
My supervisor, who sounded very upset, informed me that because I didn’t notice the shopper had eaten at the wrong restaurant, I was going to be docked $20…for a report I was paid only $1.50 to edit.
I said that in all fairness, I should be docked only $1.50 because after all, it was the shopper's fault, not mine, she'd gone to the wrong restaurant. So dock her pay, not mine.
I was told exactly what I could do if I didn’t like it.
So I did it.
I quit.
And just to get even, I didn’t tell them I'd finally figured out the mystery of the "faces" (feces) on the toilet seat.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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