Employee's View of Mystery Shoppers at Applebee's

Very true sir.. I just got a mystery shop and I am not sure if I lost
my job or not, my managers have to talk to one another to see if i was
indeed the only server working and if I indeed did do the best I could
under the circumstances. As much as I despise my General Manager I do
need my job at this point in my life.. Please pray for me.

Thank uou

Try this one:
I was given a written warning by my manager because I received a 20%
out of 100% on a secret shop......I received this score because:

1)The only employees we had were the manager, assistant manager, and
myself. The manager and assistant manager made plans to go do
something together and i had to work by myself.
Did I mention it was Sunday?
2) Our secret shop consisted of several things: the most important
were:
-Greeting within 20 seconds of walking in the door
-Starting a dressing room for the customer
-asking the customer if they needed different sizes
-explaining to them the belly pillow
-asking if they need to be fitted for a bra
-putting them on the mailing list.
-explaining to them the return/exchange policy

The only thing I got credit for was the mailing list, and the
return/exchange policy because I couldn't move from behind the
register for 4 hours I had a sale every few minutes.

So I got in trouble because nobody could bring themselves to come to
work, so I couldn't do my job.

Mystery Shoppers, the hate of almost every retail/food industry
worker.

In many ways I am lucky, mystery shops where I work used to be heavily
slanted against the employees, but in the past year they changed the
questions so much to help employees.

Mystery shoppers are really good in theory and can be a huge help to a
business if done right or if you have a good person doing the mystery
shop.

I do not like the idea of terminating someone because of just a few
bad mystery shops, especially if you are working the floor alone. It
sounds like Applebee's needs to rethink/rework their mystery shop
program.

The idea of mystery shoppers is a good one, although very flawed. I
also work for a casual dining chain that uses them, HOWEVER, they do
not fire anyone for failing the shop. That's a horrible idea.
I once had a shopper lie and say that I did not suggestively sell her
a drink. But she had shown up late to her own "shop" (she was with a
friend who got there first), and I had sat down with the friend and
gone over the whole drink menu before she got there. That bad mark was
amongst other things, that had to do with the hostess, manager, and
other employees.

The only thing that would get you fired from one of our shops is if
you don't card the shopper. The policy is "Card anyone who looks under
40", and the shoppers they send in are all around 28 or so. Don't card
one? Fired on the spot. This has happened to three or four servers
since I have been there.

But the points on the shop would never get us fired. I agree, wait
times, cook times, the condition of the bathroom (which the employees
aren't even allowed to use/mess up), and the actions of other
employees should NEVER have an effect on a server's livelihood.

Good letter, Monika, I hope the adjust their mystery shopper policy.

I work for a company that uses mystery shoppers, and I also work for a
mystery shopper company.

I believe that mystery shopper reports shouldn't have a bearing on
anything other than the fact, that is how that person saw the company
at that time on that day. It is the opinions and views of the shopper,
and they can have financial effects on employees. In my store staff
can earn a 10% bonus (on top of wages), the manager an additional 1%
of sales, one of the criteria is the mystery shopper.

Things happen in life beyond the control of the business.

People call in sick, days, hours, minutes are extremely busier than
expected, mistakes happen.

How can I acknowledge someone if they are at the back of a queue
within 20 seconds, if it takes longer to serve the x customers
infront, with full staffing capabilities.

Mystery shoppers have so much power, paid little, and can have an
extreme effect financially and on the morale of a team. They are not
vetted on their professional judgement or experience, and who is there
to defend you should their report be inaccurate.

The reports should have less relevancy, but that the criticism should
not be ignored, in that pro active action is taken to correct these.
Disciplinary action is extreme but should be only merited if there is
an extreme catalogue of failures in work in general.

The OP is completely correct that the team is essential to all mystery
shops, so why should the server suffer the repercussions of a team
failure. Good letter highlighting genuine concerns.

When I worked in optical the company would pull this mystery shopper
on us too. It really doesn't help morale when all the employees get
yelled at b/c we didn't greet person within 30 seconds and so on and
so forth.

Most of it was petty stuff and who knows if the mystery shopper even
remembered who did what. Some of it was out of our control such as the
time it took for the glasses to come in. The mystery shopper stuff
should end! I don't think it helps the employees at all..it only makes
them upset.

I think mystery shopper companies are BAD.

The retail company I use to work for would use these shoppers.

We would catch them not telling the truth. You could often tell on
slow days the mystry shopper was in our store. They were required to
ask a question and when they would go dept to dept you could pick up
on them.

They did as you say check to see how long before they are greeted. If
you were doing stock work and so forth. If you offer to put it on the
company credit card. One day we had just received and alert for a bad
check writer. As management we were alerting the sales staff in small
groups by going to each dept. This one shopper reported it on her
shopping report. Well Duh if she had not been listening in she would
not of heard it, and secondly it was something urgent that we were
told to communicate by corporate security. Only reason she should of
been concerned if she was the person writing bad checks.

More than once over the years we even caught the shopper not telling
the truth.

We use to spot the shopper and watch to see what they said and how are
staff handled them.

My theory if the store received perfect scores there would be NO NEED
for their service.

So find something wrong even if you had to make it up was what the
shopper would do.

I am all for real customers letting a company know how their service
was...but NEVER for a company paying for untrained spies.

Spies that Lie!

We finally convienced our company after many years to fire the
shopping service.

And like you say how fair is it that these people cause people to get
fired or have bad reviews.

The phone surveys are ok, but I can see how someone might enter the
wrong end of the scale by not paying attention.

As a waitress I think your right. I hate it when the kitchen screws
something up and then the customer takes it out on me. I wouldnt want
to see anybody fired because of it.

I agree. Our store has the survey on the bottom of the receipt for
people to call in or get on the Net to fill out. We are graded by the
score, not by any comments that are left. We have had a couple that
even though it states that 5 is the best, 1 is the worst, gave us all
ones, but then in the comments section wrote, "I love shopping at the
New Albany Meijer!" so you know it was just a goofup. They also don't
take into account that people might have called off or you get
unexpectedly slammed and that causes delays for even the best workers.


The servers (or in our case the Service area workers) tend to take the
blame for alot that is beyond their control. It isn't fair and your
job shouldn't be on the line for something like this.

At our restaurant they have stupid things like that too. It's also a
corporate chain restaurant. One guest complained that the coffee
should be complimentary and because the waitress charged him he called
corporate and she was fired. Even though coffee isn't free and we're
told to charge for it.

It's really unfortunate when quality programs which could really be
used to help a company, team, and individual, devolve into something
that is seen as punitive. Here, the OP has been told that 2 bad
scores means you get the boot, rather than having the management team
say "we have a really great new way of seeing our service the way our
customers see it. Won't we get some fantastic learnings about what we
can do better?"

You make some excellent points. As a consumer, I can tell you that
when a service person takes an extra 10 seconds to make a bit of a
connection with me (a smile, a sincere how are you, explaining that
it's a bit backed up and that you'll be right with me, etc.), I'm a
lot more forgiving when things are a bit slow. Problems happen --
everyone understands that. How we react to problems is how we set the
bar of service.

that a mystery shopper would be required to grade each aspect of the
restaurant and not hold one person accountable for the entire
operation.

I suspect your management was merely letting you know that if you
specifically are singled out as not performing well on a mystery shop
that you get 2 chances and then you are gone. NOT that you are to be
the only one on the hook for an overall bad grade.

Mystery shoppers are not like average guests. They are trained to
understand that slow drinks may mean the bar is backed up, poorly
prepared food indicates an issue in the kitchen. They don't pin
everything on the server like some customers do.

I would just continue to give the same good service you have been and
not let it bother you. There's no way the restaurant will lose a
strong staff member over something beyond their control.

Mystery shoppers take much care in how they rate any restaurant or
business. They use their judgement on things such as low staff, menu
items that are not available, the way the staff treat each other along
with other issues that may come up.

You cannot work being so paranoid. Just take care of your customers
and make sure you do the best you can in your job. If you can go over
and above, do so. Help another staff member if you are able.

I suppose this is possible, but it makes sense this would be done in
prime time. To do it when there is only one server on would be a
trifle unfair.

What an interesting letter! Thank you for writing it. It seems that
mystery shopping is to waitressing as standardized testing is to
learning!

Monika W.,

This is excellent feedback in many ways. You have done an excellent
job of laying out the issues.

The issues pertaining to teamwork or the lack of at your store are
something you need to bring to the attention of the Store Manager who
among their many jobs needs to assure that the host/hostess is
properly balancing the work load.

Stop back and let us knwo how this pans out.

BillR.

I can see it from a bunch of sides. I was a mystery shopper at one
time, in an attempt to be able to stay at home with my daughter and
still earn some money.
Mystery shoppers are woefully underpaid, by the way, but that's beside
the point.

The mystery shopper is given a set of guidelines to use for grading
the shop and the guidelines are set by the companies paying for said
shop. The shopper has no idea you are handling all this work, and
should be using impartial judgement when putting scores together.

That being said, the store (Applebee's) has the responsibility of
putting together a shop that does not penalize individual employees.

I think, used properly, mystery shops can be a great tool to see where
a business needs improvement. However, I am a firm believer that
mystery shops should NOT be used against employees, unless the
employee is doing something egregious like flashing all the customers
or being abusive.

Mystery shops should be used in order to fix issues so that better
customer service can be provided to their clientele. However, they
also need to be willing to see where problems lie and be willing to
correct those problems. Using a mystery shop to terminate an otherwise
good, stable, hard working employee is just wrong.

Great letter. I agree with you 100%. These mystery shoppers have no
idea what your individual situation is. Like you said, it should be a
team work sort of overall score. At Walgreens we have mystery
shoppers also but at least they don't single you out by name (unless
it's positive). They may single out your department and you know what
time they were in the store (so management can pretty much guess who
messed up) but at least Walgreens doesn't make these visits a
condition of your employment. How freakin' horrible.