Mystery Shopping Thread 22 *PLEASE READ THE OP FIRST**PLEASE NO CLIENT NAMES OR FEES*

Littleoldme

timefortea wrote: »

Amber Arch are the only ones to have done it to me. Never worked for them again.

Yeah AA are the only ones who have rejected a report for me for the most stupid thing - needless to say they are no longer on my "list" of companies that I check!!

Big_Graeme

Oh what a surprise, they rejected one of mine too, they will have used the report too. AA are a pain for sending reports back and not paying for even the smallest detail.

Stryder

superliss wrote: »

'Did you feel that the members of staff were enjoying their job?'

Seriously? What kind of question is that? They were smiling. But inside they were saying I bl**dy hate being here..'

I would write:
Staff appeared positive and happy, talking in a relaxed manner and smiling. However, when they made eye contact, I saw the same look in all their eyes; I look of slow decay, and I could tell that they were dying inside and wishing for some one to end their misery of of a job that strips their soul of dignity.

Always thought silly questions deserve silly answers. :rotfl:

Workie_Ticket

N.I.M wrote: »

Not much you could have done GR are good this way, you should be fine, just make sure you are clear with them on what happened.



Health and Safety.

Thought that, I was just wondering what it meant, is it MS the test place?

N.I.M

HeavensDevil wrote: »

I would say so, a lot of it really is just common sense. For example, anything along the lines of "An unexpected thing/potential danger has appeared!" the answer is ALWAYS "inform your supervisor", or the closest answer thereto. This will form a fare proportion of the questions

I got a naughty download of the official study disk which has all the test questions on it. I only failed the first mock test I did and was getting mostly 35/35 or 34/35 with very little study. The only thing I had to properly learn (as I was keen to pass at the time, though I never did end up sending off for my trade card!) was the bit about fire extinguishers, which is probably a good thing to know anyway, regardless of the test.

Any chance you could email me a copy of it

Workie_Ticket wrote: »

Thought that, I was just wondering what it meant, is it MS the test place?

Aye

jmds

Since I started mystery shopping one of the things I find interesting is the various MS companies' attitudes to race. RE seem to shy away from having shoppers refer to anything in a staff member's description that they might find offensive and include skin colour in that. I find that attitude more offensive!

In a recent briefing document GfK stated that one should refer to the member of staff's ethnicity, for example Irish, Welsh, white, black. Clearly this wasn't offensive but it was a bit clumsy to conflate ethnicity and race in this way.

As a result of the RE approach I've found myself playing 'safe' and not mentioning racial origin as a factor in descriptions for other MS companies, unless specifically requested to. I'd be interested to hear all your opinions on the approaches of the various companies. Does anyone else think the RE approach to tiptoe around race is ludicrous?

Sorry if this is a bit of a heavy one for 9 in the morning!!

Boredupnorth

jmds wrote: »

Since I started mystery shopping one of the things I find interesting is the various MS companies' attitudes to race. RE seem to shy away from having shoppers refer to anything in a staff member's description that they might find offensive and include skin colour in that. I find that attitude more offensive!

In a recent briefing document GfK stated that one should refer to the member of staff's ethnicity, for example Irish, Welsh, white, black. Clearly this wasn't offensive but it was a bit clumsy to conflate ethnicity and race in this way.

As a result of the RE approach I've found myself playing 'safe' and not mentioning racial origin as a factor in descriptions for other MS companies, unless specifically requested to. I'd be interested to hear all your opinions on the approaches of the various companies. Does anyone else think the RE approach to tiptoe around race is ludicrous?

Sorry if this is a bit of a heavy one for 9 in the morning!!

I do the same; i also never mention age unless asked to do so. It makes it pretty awkward to describe someone at time though as 5'7" female with medium length brown hair is pretty generic!

misssarahleigh

I find this quite funny. I could describe a staff member as: Male, 6ft tall, shirt black hair around 30 years of age.

There may be two staff members which fit this description, the fact that one happens to be a black man isn't allowed which I find rather funny

(hold on wait, can I say black man? because I'm not allowed to sing ba ba black sheep! but then again I cannot say coloured, because the comentator got into trouble last week for that as it doesn't differentiate enough between race, but then if I say african, he's prob spent all his life in England and talks broader Yorkshire than me)

I think this is just another effect of the PC brigade in my opinion.

N.I.M

jmds wrote: »

Since I started mystery shopping one of the things I find interesting is the various MS companies' attitudes to race. RE seem to shy away from having shoppers refer to anything in a staff member's description that they might find offensive and include skin colour in that. I find that attitude more offensive!

In a recent briefing document GfK stated that one should refer to the member of staff's ethnicity, for example Irish, Welsh, white, black. Clearly this wasn't offensive but it was a bit clumsy to conflate ethnicity and race in this way.

As a result of the RE approach I've found myself playing 'safe' and not mentioning racial origin as a factor in descriptions for other MS companies, unless specifically requested to. I'd be interested to hear all your opinions on the approaches of the various companies. Does anyone else think the RE approach to tiptoe around race is ludicrous?

Sorry if this is a bit of a heavy one for 9 in the morning!!

I was a bit surprised by it at first but I just avoid it now. With the amount of "inclusiveness" and "tolerance" we've been legally forced to have its safer that way. Plus for my day job about 80% of our work is in some way related to public sector organisations so we have to be super careful with that type of thing.

jmds

I'm not sure it is a 'PC gone mad' thing. There are certain words and phrases that people from minority ethnic groups find offensive, coloured being one. We're all nice people and we don't want to set out to offend deliberately. However, it's difficult to know what those words and phrases are that should and should not be used. Use of them isn't in and of itself racist in any way. Maybe clumsy and almost certainly driven by imperfect knowledge (and who's never guilty of that?!). It's easy for me - I grew up in a massively diverse part of London so you quickly get to know what is and is not thought acceptable. It's much more difficult for those that aren't exposed to that, especially as there is more definition now over what is and is not acceptable - certain words that would have been a few years ago aren't now.

Back to the MSing - what I find much more offensive than the accidental misuse of words is that race should somehow be hidden, as if it's something a member of staff should be embarrassed by or would find offensive if described. I think that's a terrible attitude.