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Mystery Shopper > Mystery Shopping
Stories > Restaurant Gone Bad
A Restaurant
Mystery Shop Gone Bad
When most people get into mystery shopping, they do so because they think
that it would be nice to be able to report someone that gave them bad
service. Once they become a secret shopper, however, they come to realize
that more often than not, the service that they receive is just fine. In
fact, it is a rare occasion when something goes wrong to the extent where
bad marks are given. When it does happen, however, it usually is a fairly
memorable happening. Here is what happened to me when I did a restaurant
shop where everything went wrong.
Whenever we went into the restaurant they were supposed to greet us at
the door. That was where they made their first mistake, as they didn't
end up greeting us at all. We had to walk back to the station where we
gave our names and waited to be seated. After about 30 minutes of
waiting, during which time several people that came in after us were
seated first, we were finally taken to our table. The person that seated
us didn't bother to say anything to us, they just kind of motioned to us
to come over and then took us to our seat.
Our waiter really didn't pick up the ball where they had dropped it,
however, as they didn't have much of a personality to speak of. They came
over to the table and took our order and then disappeared into the back
without ever coming out again. One of the busboys brought over our drinks
to us and nobody ever bothered to come back to fill them again. When they
finally did bring our food out, after about 45 minutes of waiting, it was
not only cold it was just plain not good.
We figured that this was about as bad as it can possibly get, especially
since there were not many more things that they can be evaluated on. We
were wrong, however, as when the bill came out it was off by over $20.
Once we finally got the bill straightened out and paid the check, we left
the restaurant, eager to get home and fill out the online evaluation
forms. Even though we did not want to give anybody a bad mark that didn't
deserve it, everybody that waited on us at this restaurant deserved to be
basted.
The online evaluation forms at this restaurant gave us the opportunity to
be able to evaluate everybody that we came in contact with personally.
Because we had done this so many times before, we knew to get everybody's
name and also a description of anybody that we had to deal with while we
were at the restaurant. I don't like to be happy over someone's
misfortune but these people really brought this on themselves. After
filling out the forms I realized that I simply did not have anything
positive to say. So I just filled them out honestly and was happy,
knowing that all of the issues that we had experienced would not only be
addressed, they would not happen to anyone again.
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