A Week in the Life of a Mystery Shopper

September 12th - September 18th...

I am satisfied with my earnings from last week. The hours were long but not crazy like they have been before. I had one day where I worked 21 hours (6 AM until 3 AM the next morning) and the last six of those hours were sitting on the couch doing paperwork. The web site for one of the my merchandising companies kept crashing and that slowed me down considerably. All the other days were very reasonable.

Last week I earned $888 in fees and $240 in reimbursements. Much of this work was merchandising. I have a regular route of 20 stores that I merchandise a DVD display. It's decent work but the company has reduced its frequency to about every 7-8 weeks. Then, I picked up 7 extra stores that the regular merchandisers canceled. I also completed a special 20 store merchandising project - each store took less than 5 minutes but the pay was low. I merchandised two other stores and did a competitive price audit at a fast food restaurant. I shopped 31 gas stations, a car wash, 6 fast food restaurants, 3 casual dining establishments , a payday loan store, and three other retailers. In case you're counting, I visited 92 different establishments last week.

This week will be slower, but I'll do my best to cobble together enough work to stay busy. I've picked up a few merchandising assignments that other people canceled. Reliability in the world of shopping and merchandising is incredibly low.