Magical Mystery...Shopping...Tour

Tomorrow I embark on a 1300 mile trip that will take me along I-90 to Mitchell, then up to Aberdeen, then to Buffalo along the northern autobahn, and home (Hermosa) by Thursday night. I’ll complete 32 “shops”. If little or nothing goes wrong.

I’ll be evaluating the customer experience at a number of gas station/c-stores, a few car dealers and a post office or two. I’ll average 8 “shops” a day, spending about 1/2-hour at each, and average 325 miles of driving per day. If little or nothing goes wrong.

Then, about 7 each evening I’ll find a wi-fi hotspot and upload reports and photos for about 5 hours. Each morning I will need to be at the first shop at 8 AM, in order to complete the shops for that day.

For this, I will be paid about $1125.00. My expenses for food, fuel and lodging (I plan to tent it one or two nights) will be about $400. If little or nothing goes wrong.

In the mystery shopping world that’s about as good as it gets. About $700 net for four days of hard driving and long hours. I am able to put something like that together about once a month. During the other three weeks of the month I might gross an aggregate $400-$500 for 25 local shops. Try saving money for retirement out of that.

I just painted a house for a grand. That took me two weeks of 6-hour days (I get really creaky after 6 hours of up and down a ladder). I’ll paint yours if you like. I’m slow but I don’t spill much. (If little or nothing goes wrong.)

I’ll try to post updates on the road, but after 11 hours of pretending to be the Great American Customer each day and then four or five hours more telling the corporate Internal Affairs folks things they want to hear (or not), I probably won’t feel as close to y’all as I do now. And that’s if little or nothing goes wrong.