I Got Paid to Spy on People While They Worked
For the eighth time today, I ask to store my baby’s umbilical cord blood at the stem cell bank.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I tell the saleswoman on the phone. “My husband gave me a list of questions to ask.”
“I know how that is, Linda,” the saleswoman says, but she doesn’t.
My name is not Linda. I am not married, pregnant, or considering freezing my unborn child’s stem cells. I can barely afford shampoo, much less a $6,000 vial of my own bodily fluids. But if I pretend for 15 minutes, I’ll get $8.
At the kitchen table of my fifth-floor Harlem walk-up, a roach trap beneath my foot, I stare at a printout titled “CHEAT SHEET.” I read from a script; the responses might determine whether or not this saleswoman gets fired.
As Linda, I am a mystery shopper—a euphemism for corporate spy. Mystery shopping companies, which serve as middlemen between mystery shoppers and retailers seeking to review customer service, contact me to evaluate employees. I time how fast they make hot chocolate, rate their enthusiasm while scheduling appointments, and verify if they mention specific cord-blood benefits.
Mystery shopping sounded fun when I discovered it weeks earlier, Googling “make money weird schedule” at 2:00 A.M. after receiving a low-balance alert from my bank. As a New York City college student surviving on summer-internship savings in 2016, I thought I’d tried every cash-out-sans-job ploy: I walked dogs, took a slew of fifty-cent surveys, and installed apps that monitored my internet use. My personal information and privacy? Didn’t need them. Food, on the other hand, was necessary. So when my fridge got down to one shriveling hot dog and a half-used packet of ranch dressing from Dairy Queen, I found a bootleg copy of The Mystery Shopper’s Manual: How to Get Paid to Shop in Your Favorite Stores, Eat in Your Favorite Restaurants, and More!
The promise of eating meals that weren’t canned without resorting to Tinder felt like a back door into the world of the elite, a middle finger to the credit card debt and soulless jobs I’d assumed were prerequisite to purchasing power. I signed up with several mystery shopping providers. No formal training, interviews, or specific qualifications were required. Most just asked for my name and social security number, which I unquestioningly signed away—selling myself for a shot at empowerment.
Over the six months I’d spend as a shopper, I'd discover the free meals and easy cash promised by mystery shopping providers would come at a cost—taxing my morals until, ultimately, I quit.
Mystery shopping is an estimated $1.5 billion industry, with 1.5 million mystery shoppers in North America. The practice launched in the 1940s, but it’s become increasingly relevant post-pandemic, as labor markets have tightened and employee turnover rates have risen. With a less stable workforce, and companies rolling out new technology and policies in stores as a response to COVID, employers are heightening surveillance to drive consistency, said the president and CEO of a major mystery shopping provider I spoke to. Intermediaries like this company contract directly with mystery shoppers on behalf of retailers. Their clients, which include national brands across different industries, have increased mystery shopping spending 30 percent year-over-year.
In the industry’s early days, mystery shoppers were trained private investigators, hired as undercover employees. Even though that’s no longer the case, critics still call it “corporate espionage.” For example, I saw a listing for an arcade that required mystery shoppers to perform “integrity audits,” bribing employees with cash for high-ticket prizes. “Start by offering a small amount, then gradually work up to a larger one,” the instructions said. I pictured a claw machine at the arcade—but in this case, it’s the mystery shoppers working buttons to manipulate the employees just right, to make them misbehave. Who wins the prize?
The arcade gig noted that shoppers’ findings can lead to workers’ “dismissal from employment and possible legal action.” I’d assumed as much for all mystery shopping gigs, but it felt different to see the impact spelled out. This job wouldn’t allow me to feign ignorance; it would mean accepting that I was OK with getting someone fired.
It seemed like a minefield to me, but shoppers are thrust in without any real training. A trade organization called the Mystery Shopping Providers Association offers 22 optional certification courses for $35 to $75 each, but many shoppers don’t have the discretionary income to afford them.
I wondered: is this kind of surveillance even ethical? Despite its widespread use in nearly every industry, from retail and hotels to funeral homes and hospitals, this shadowy business operates with little regulatory oversight. In the UK, companies are required to notify employees if they’ll be mystery shopped, but there is no equivalent federal legislation in the US. This means that employees may have no idea they’re being covertly monitored until they receive their first negative report.
That’s a problem, according to the Market Research Society, which publishes a non-binding code of conduct for companies with mystery shopping programs. The organization advocates for mystery shopping policies to be proactively communicated to workers, including detailing how evaluations will be used.
Some Applebee’s locations did just that, advising servers that two consecutive bad grades from mystery shoppers would prompt termination, according to current staff members. (A spokesperson did not comment on that specifically, but stated that Applebee’s doesn’t have a formal mystery shopping program at the corporate level, though its independent franchisees “use this industry standard practice [of mystery shopping] periodically to gain valuable feedback and insights to track trends and improve the service for our guests.”) Back in 2008, one server responded with an open letter to management: “I help to pay the bills with the company by upselling,” she wrote, “yet I will always have a noose around my neck.”
Mystery shoppers wear a similar noose: at the same time as they’re evaluating workers, mystery shopping companies are grading them. “Validators” assess shoppers’ timeliness, adherence to instructions, attention to detail, and writing skills, doling out scores that determine future assignments and pay increases. Poor scores can get a shopper removed from a company’s database—effectively firing them.
Few can subsist on the income from shopping alone. The average commission is $15 to $20 per assignment, and assignments can require several hours of work. Cutting into shoppers’ bottom lines, evaluations are sometimes rejected due to failure to comply with technicalities, like ordering the wrong item, arriving even one minute late, or omitting a required photo. Cassandra Tulloh, a mystery shopper with eight years of experience, once had a bar shop rejected because she “didn’t get the correct details”—sticking her with the $85 bill, despite sinking hours into the shop and write-up.
“As someone who was going out to do this to pay off student debt, putting myself in the hole of $85 was not what I wanted to do,” she told me.
Essentially, this industry pits underpaid shoppers against equally poor employees in a proxy war with corporate sponsorship—a power play of the unempowered. Industry marketing describes mystery shopping as a “Marvelous Tool in the Hands of Organized Retailers,” but it’s the employees and mystery shoppers themselves who become corporations’ marvelous tools.
As Linda, I’m quizzing the cord-blood saleswoman, and she is failing. When I ask for prices, she responds, “It’s on the website. Have you looked at the website?” I know our corporate overlords expect specific price quotes, which she does not provide.
I consider lying for her; it’s something I do a lot as a mystery shopper, actually. One gig required me to ask about a grocery store’s money-back guarantee, but I figured the cashier, who dropped my pasta on the floor, might not know. I checked the box signifying she’d answered correctly without ever asking her.
Perusing online mystery shopping forums, I learned that this sort of dishonesty is a hot topic. One shopper admitted that she alters pizza deliveries before photographing them, adding peppers from her own refrigerator if there aren’t enough. Fellow mystery shoppers lambasted this admission: “I think that your empathy is misplaced,” one wrote, suggesting that managers need to be told about employees’ failures. Arguing for accurate evaluations, another shopper commented: “My integrity is worth a lot more than a piece of cardboard with ketchup on it.”
The irony of this comment—that there’s more integrity in following corporate directives than safeguarding employees—would not be lost on author and self-described “agitator” Vicky Osterweil. She’s suggested that poor customer service by the working class may be a rebellion against exploitation. Mystery shoppers thwart these efforts and “break the avenues of refusal available to workers.”
With income inequality climbing since the 1980s, mystery shopping presents as a modern-day reprise of Jay Gould’s robber baron philosophy: hiring one-half of the working class to kill the other half.
Mystery shoppers aren’t strictly working-class individuals, however. The industry attracts a steady stream of college-educated, middle-class participants, often stay-at-home moms and early retirees who view mystery shopping as a hobby, a bonus “fun money” paycheck—much lower stakes than the workers they evaluate. White women over 40 make up a disproportionate share of shoppers, according to an analysis by career advising firm Zippia. Perhaps some take assignments more for entertainment than income: “Karens” leveling up their can-I-talk-to-your-manager schtick.
As Linda, I feel perversely virtuous, so I opt not to lie in my evaluation. Ultimately, I’d earn $8 for this half-hour of deception: 15 minutes of fibbing to the saleswoman and 15 minutes of documenting her reactions. My write-up, while accurate, feels more dishonest than my falsehoods on the phone.
To drown out lingering thoughts of the saleswoman, I go out for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream. Subtracting it from my paycheck, I pocket $1.87 from the cord-blood gig. I may have gotten a woman fired for less than $2 and a pint of ice cream.
Back at home, as I spoon each cold bite, a photo of Stephen Colbert smiles at me from the ice cream carton. In the photo, he holds up one finger in a crude gesture.
He’s giving me a thumbs-up.
Today’s phone store assignment is terrifying; the whole subway ride there, I’m fighting nausea. I’m supposed to rate how enthusiastically employees mention the new iPhone, but my script is so specific and improbable, I’m sure the salespeople will discover I’m a narc.
My friend who works in luxury fashion can supposedly spot mystery shoppers by sight: women prowling the men’s section or circling the store. Once, he confronted a mystery shopper, and somehow, she kept her cool. I would have fled. Just as I have the power to get employees fired, I worry that they could get me banned from future gigs by identifying me.
On the subway to the assignment, I stare at a sticker plastered on the train car window: “Mass non-compliance is the only way to end this nightmare,” it reads. I get off at the next stop, as planned.
Seconds after I enter the phone store, a worker ambushes me. Let’s call him “Mike.”
“Hi,” I chirp pathetically. I offer my practiced line: “I’m shopping for a new phone, but I’m not sure which—”
He cuts me off. “Trying to decide between what?”
I can see the bolded and underlined instructions in my head: Do not mention iPhone or any smartphone brand at the start of the conversation. “No idea,” I say, realizing how ridiculous that sounds.
“Well, do you want Android or Apple?”
Do not give a preference for any brand or operating system. “I don’t know,” I stutter.
“OK,” he hesitates. He’s onto me. He turns around, and I consider bolting, but here he is, bounding back across the store with backup, outnumbering me with three more co-workers.
Mike mutters a briefing: “She wants a new phone and has no brand or OS preference,” which seems like code for “mystery shopper.” Mike, a mammoth of a man with spiky hair, smells of a recent carnivorous lunch, his lips glossy with grease. Ignoring several unattended customers, his pack surrounds me. They pounce.
“How much storage do you need?”
Do not mention a specific capacity. “I’m not sure.”
“How much storage does your current phone have?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Do you have it with you?”
IMPORTANT: If you bring your current mobile phone, turn it off completely and leave it out of sight at all times. “No.” I’ve fallen into their trap. Who doesn’t bring their phone shopping? The unspoken question clogs the air between us.
Mike spits out some recommendations, with no mention of the store’s massive iPhone display. If the salesperson does not mention iPhone, prompt them for more information. I assume this assignment is commissioned by Apple, though instructions don’t specify client names, ostensibly to avoid influencing shoppers’ responses. It’s usually fairly easy to suss out the interested parties based on evaluation questions, though.
“What about the new iPhone?” I ask.
“You don’t want that,” Mike says. “The latest Androids are better,” a co-worker adds.
“Why are my friends obsessed with their iPhones?” I push, as if I don't have one myself.
“It’s just a trend,” says Mike. The others nod in agreement.
I’m thrilled by his answer, imagining my scathing response to the evaluation: Did the employee’s comments suggest that the iPhone is better than other smartphones? I am a marvelous tool: protecting shoppers from these aggressive salespeople.
Part of me wants to punish them for scaring me—about being outed, about potentially losing my job. But I’ve also noticed my reports that rate employees poorly seem to earn me the highest grades: “10/10, great write-up!” Anecdotally, some shoppers speculate that they have been banned from assignments for leaving too many positive reviews, and I won’t take that risk. Gotcha, I think, closing the store’s door behind me.
Other mystery shoppers may feel this same way. A former cashier at a Texas gas station told me she received low mystery shopper ratings based on two seemingly arbitrary details: once, her nametag lanyard had flipped backwards, and another time, she slightly rephrased the required scripted greeting to a customer.
“It was like they were just trying to find reasons to nitpick. I could not believe I was getting written up for it,” she told me, adding that she was passed up for a promotion because of shoppers’ evaluations. “They should not have the power that companies give them. Mistakes are made. Nametags get flipped around.”
The battleground between shoppers and workers is not just metaphorical. Several years ago, a mystery shopper was charged with indecent assault and battery for groping the employee he was sent to evaluate. Indeed, several employees claiming to be harassed by or forced out of their jobs by mystery shoppers have sued multiple large retailers, but their efforts have been unsuccessful.
Days after submitting my report for the cell phone store, it’s rejected. I’d completed a restaurant assignment immediately after, and the mystery shopping company flagged my back-to-back gigs as a quality control concern due to their “overlapping times.”
All my anxiety at the phone store had been for nothing; I won’t be paid the $8 commission or reimbursed for the restaurant shop. But that isn’t what bothers me most. I realize I’d violated a quality standard of my own. When I first signed up as a mystery shopper, I was unwilling to get people fired, but over time, that barrier vanished. I’d become a perfectly comfortable snitch.
In the bowling alley’s restroom, water mars the countertops. There are splashes and dots and pools of water and even a sploosh of foamy soap.
My current assignment asks me to evaluate whether the restrooms are “clear of water,” and if they’re not, requires me to notify staff. I have to submit photographic evidence; I unsuccessfully test for camera angles that hide the puddles.
Facing myself in the mirror, I feel superior to the bowling alley employees, even though we might earn the same wage. In an hour, I’ll walk out of this place, leaving behind the sticky smell of feet, and I’ll write about whether cleaning crews sufficiently stocked the bathroom. Capitalism forces constant comparisons like this: the Starbucks barista feels superior to the McDonald’s line cook, the American Eagle clerk to the Walmart cashier. When I worked the register at an outlet store, a nickel per hour separated me from the stockroom workers, but I felt worlds above them.
An employee comes in and slams a stall door. She’s a few years older than me, in her late 20s, with bags under her eyes. Maybe she was up all night with a newborn, no option for maternity leave. To her, I’m another reveler out on a Friday night, when all she might want is to be home. What if my complaint is the one that breaks her—turning her into another puddle on the floor?
I pretend to fix my hair while strategizing how to minimize rudeness. I’m ready to speak—I’ve decided on, “Excuse me, ma’am, I wanted to make sure you saw the water on the counter”—and my heart is racing, but I’m trying to play cool, just a normal customer futzing with Chapstick for three minutes. I’m finally opening my mouth—but, just then, she shakes her sink-wet fingers, creating three new puddles. Then she's gone, swinging the door behind her.
The bathroom is out of paper towels, so I sop up the water with toilet paper. The single ply disintegrates, adding to the mess. I scrape it off, the drippings of a dozen strangers’ pee-hands now under my fingernails.
I take a picture of my work, my own figure caught in the mirror’s reflection. I’ll submit the photo along with the caption, “clean and clear of water.”
When I exit the restroom, I nearly smack a janitor in the face with the door. He had been waiting for me to leave.
I find my last straw, my final assignment, in a bougie café’s bathroom. I’m panicking: I’ve lost the receipt. Without it, no reimbursement. I’ll tank my entire week’s wages on a $12 grilled cheese and fruit cup.
I take off my sweater and fold it on the bathroom floor—I want to keep it clean, though now it’s soaking up dried-piss residue. Topless, in my unwashed bra, the only good one I own, I do it: I force-feed my arm to the trash can.
Shoulder deep in it. Fingers sift through slimy fruit slices, used cups, soggy bread—the trash of the rich, it turns out, is as vile as the trash of the poor. I excavate wads of snot-sealed tissues and inspect them one by one. Not my receipt.
I’m not an all-powerful mystery shopper, wielding weapons against workers. What I feel like now is worse: the lowest form of life in this capitalist meat grinder. How arrogant to think I could break from this system, using its own oppressive rules.
In the weeks that would follow, I’d realize my panic in that café bathroom wasn’t just about the receipt. I’d remember the cord-blood saleswoman, the way I’d machine-gunned my script of questions at her, and reread the email she sent to me after our call, where she told me that her baby showed her “the truest love.” I’d wonder if she, or any of the dozen other employees I’d evaluated, were jobless now, thanks to me—and I’d resolve to find a less costly way to earn money.
But back in the café bathroom, I’m not thinking that far ahead. I’ve locked myself in for several minutes, but nobody’s knocked, so I take my time, sudsing my hands in burning sink water. I give up on the receipt. Drying my hands on my jeans, I eye my fruit cup, dropped on the floor. The top’s off, the container turned on its side. It’s clean enough.
Sitting on the toilet lid, still shirtless, I grasp sticky slices of mango with my hands—slowly at first, with the tips of my fingers, then faster, fisted in palms, juice dripping down my chin. Fruit is a luxury I can never afford, so I force myself to eat. This time, it’s me that has to pay.
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