Winding Down Part II

...or III or VI or however you want to look at it. Assuming you want to look at it at all. Anyway, I'm basically down to one class other than checking on the message boards every day to keep up my end of the conversations there. Not that there is much in the way of conversation in the last week of class as everyone scrambles to finish stuff. Later tonight, I'll do the last read-through of my final paper for class two and turn that in. I'd like to get a jump on the final week for my last class, but the instructor "hides" the weekly assignments until Tuesday morning because, gods forbid, someone might actually work ahead. He's the only instructor I've had that does this. Normally, it's not a big deal; the student guide has all the assignments for the class. But there are frequent changes, so I don't like spending time on written assignments that turn out to either get dropped or modified. I may just browse around doing research for the final projects. Those are typically pretty set given that I'm supposed to have been working on them since the beginning of the class. Yea, right.

Debbie did a couple of those mystery shop things yesterday. All I can say is most of the stores really don't want mystery shoppers. One was OK; get a pizza delivered for free plus $5. I can deal with that and it should be relatively easy now that we've done it once. The second involved going into the store and making a purchase, which also wouldn't have been a big deal except that the reimbursement is limited to five dollars and you have to buy either Kilz primer (we live in an apartment, so we don't do a lot of painting), a carbon monoxide detector (everything in our apartment, including the heat, is electric), a fire extinguisher (provided by our land lord), or a bag of potting soil (which isn't very useful in an apartment that gets no direct sun). All of which cost more than the $5 reimbursement. Needless to say, she won't be doing this one again.

We looked at another one at a local grocery store chain, but the form you had to fill out was six pages long and you had to walk around inside the store taking about a dozen pictures and stand in line in different departments and ask some stupid question. For $5. Uhuh. First off, how much of a "mystery" can it possibly be when you have surveillance footage of someone taking pictures inside the store who is also walking around to specific places asking canned questions? Another place pays $10, but you have to scrounge up a wheel chair and pretend to be handicapped, which is morally repugnant as well as being legally questionable.

Of course, the larger question is why any business even bothers with this. We did this before when we lived in Flint. For two years, we ate at the same chain, did our report, got free food and a few bucks. In that entire two years, not one single thing was ever addressed. Not even the simplest things, like "Napkin wedged in corner," or "Floor not vacuumed." So other than giving away free food, what, exactly, is the point? And I can almost guarantee that it will be the same deal with our free pizza delivery deal out here in the Territories. Based on what the franchise is looking for, these guys aren't even trying. We'll make a bad report once a month, nothing will change, there won't be any consequences to the franchisee, and everyone will just be wasting their time.

Gotta Go!! Waffles are ready!!