Typical Day
Ima Telling wakes up bright and early at 7:00AM and quickly dresses in a business casual outfit with smart shoes and a Prada pocketbook. She needs to look sharp for some of the shops she has planned for the day and the highbrow ones won't blink an eye at another under-dressed college student popping in for a bite.
She prints out the instructions and blank reports for the day's shops, discretely hiding them in her Shopaholic to the Stars book.
She double-checks that she has her little notebook and pen in her bag, along with a backup pen, in case she runs out of ink. Once she was on a shop run and had to write the entire report in eye pencil.
She makes sure her cell phone is charged and that she has loaded the addresses for the routes of her shops into her phone's GPS program, and she heads out.
It's 8:00AM—Ima's first shop is a fast food place. She must wait in line and order a specific breakfast sandwich and coffee at the drive-thru window. Then she has to go inside and order a different breakfast sandwich and a soda, as well as check the bathrooms. Almost every shop she does requires a bathroom stop, which is fine with Ima. It gives her a chance to jot down her notes before she forgets important information like names and wait times.
There are five cars in line at the drive-thru, and it takes her exactly fourteen minutes and ten seconds before she is asked to place her order. The voice on the other end is hard to understand, but he says all the requisite things and it only takes four minutes from the time she places her order to get her food and receipt.
Ima pulls into a parking lot across the street and out of sight from the restaurant. She takes a quick bite of the food and a sip of coffee, making sure everything's hot and tastes okay. She's not a fan of the sandwich, but that's just because she doesn't really go for eggs. She fills out her questionnaire quickly and heads back to finish the second portion of the shop.
She orders the food and notes how long it takes to be made, as well as the names of the people who helped her and their exact greetings. She pops into the restroom, which is low on toilet paper and could use a good cleaning. She writes this and other details down on her form before she hops back in her car. She's off to her next destination.
At 8:45AM, she pulls up to the mall, the site of her next few shops. She loves doing mall shops because that means less time wasted driving and less she has to pay for gas, which cuts into her profits.
9:01AM—Ima enters the cell phone store and pretends to be someone who is almost finished with her contract, shopping for a new phone and a new plan. The store is surprisingly busy and she has to wait thirteen minutes to be helped, which frustrates her.
The more time she wastes before the actual shop takes place, the longer her day is. She likes to run a tight schedule.
When she is helped by a very unenthusiastic salesperson, she has to ply him with probing questions to get enough answers to even write something up about the experience. If she were looking for a phone contract, she would most certainly not buy anything from this guy, who seems to really hate his job.
She gathers information about how many people in the store are being helped, what the other salespeople are doing, and the names, descriptions, model numbers, and prices of the phones. She tells the salesperson that she wants to comparison shop. (He could care less.) When she's done, she asks for his business card. He gives it to her and she heads out.
At 10:10AM, Ima plants herself at one of the tables at the food court, where she orders a soda, gets a receipt, and jots down notes. She makes sure to fill in the questionnaires before she forgets anything.
Between the two shops she's done so far today, she has made $25 and will be reimbursed for her food and drinks. Even though she's filled in the report details already, she still has to go home and input the shops into her computer, which will take time. When she figures it out, she's making about $8 an hour. Pitiful, but she is broke, and something is better than nothing. Thankfully, she's not finished yet.
She stops at a bank branch inside the mall and performs a quick teller shop. She deposits five dollars and makes a note of what the teller says, the wait time, and the amount of customers in the bank. The whole shop takes less than ten minutes and she's made $15. Her hourly rate's just gone up. She's now up to $40 for the day. Ima loves bank shops.
Once 11:00AM rolls around, Ima gets back into her car and drives fifteen minutes to her next gig. It's another bank where she goes through the very same routine she did at the last shop, except this time she withdraws the $5 that she just deposited. The teller smiles, wishes her a nice day, and hands her a receipt. Another $15 is added to the total. She's up to $55.
At 12:00PM, Ima stops at a fast-food restaurant and conducts a special midday rush shop. This shop requires her to complete drive-thru and inside orders. Since this is a rush job and a hero shop at that (one of the other shoppers in her company had flaked on it), she gets a $15 bonus, making the shop worth $30, plus reimbursement for her food: a chicken sandwich and a burger and fries. She eats the burger and just takes a bite out of the chicken, saving the rest for later. It's not too bad. She's now up to $85.
By 2:00PM, Ima is at her last shop for the day and it's her least favorite—a car shop. She has to hang out on the lot and pretend to be interested in a certain kind of car while a car salesman gives it his best shot at the hard sale. Ima feels pretty sorry for him. These guys work on commission only, and this is a lose-lose proposition for him. Not only is he not going to make a dime on his time spent with her, but if he messes up the pitch he could get in trouble with his boss or even lose his job.
Ima tries to be patient and kind, and lets him do his best. The car itself is fancy and fun, but not something she ever could afford (especially not on a mystery shopper's salary). Then again, even a Kia is out of the range of a mystery shopper's salary. Car shops may be a pain because of the long time spent at the dealership and the twenty-page questionnaire; however, they pay $30, and this one even has a travel bonus of $10. Plus, she doesn't have to lay out any money to get reimbursed. For $40, this is her biggest haul of the day.
By the time she's done with the shop, it's 3:30PM and Ima is tired. She has to sit in traffic and doesn't get home until 4:30PM, when she immediately starts entering the day's reports. She writes up as many details from her notes as she can in order to create a complete and enjoyable-to-read experience for the company. Ima is studying journalism at her community college, so she looks at this as on-the-job training. She made a $125 profit today—not too shabby.
Still, by the time she finishes, it's after 6:00PM and she has a night class at the college in half an hour. She grabs her backpack and a water bottle and is out the door.
10:00PM—Ima returns home from her class so exhausted, she basically passes out on the bed while still in her clothes. She quickly sets her alarm for the next day, curls into a ball, and falls into a deep, deep sleep.