The Mystery Shopper
Friday 30 March 2007
Nothing happened tonight. The highlight was the better-looking members of the female ENTS (entertainment) team going on stage to do classic rock numbers (Val Halen's Jump, etc) in spandex and tops that were so sheer you could almost but not quite see everything. That was the point, I guess. Still, being the doorman it seemed kind of obvious if you just stood there staring so the best you could do was a quick glimpse and an even faster exit.
Spent a good half an hour filling out incident reports on what happened yesterday; it seems they're taking it very seriously, which is of course a positive. Time will tell if it amounts to much.
I've done 46 hours this week, over six straight days. Now, that might not sound a lot to those of you who routinely do this or more, but twenty quid says you spend 90 per cent of that on your backsides. Try doing 7-8 hours a night on your feet with two ten minute breaks, and then we'll share war stories.
Still, this lack of action gives me a chance to fill you in about one of our biggest causes of concern at the moment - the so-called 'Mystery Shopper'.
See, it's not good enough to just be regulated and have a license and shit. Nooooo. The industry and regulatory bodies need to test you by sending out people who pretend to be tourists and visitors but are, in fact, charlatans. All they're really there for is to try and catch you out, by either observing you doing things that are unlawful or tricking you into doing them. The latter stinks of entrapment to me, but nobody seems to care. If the Mystery Shopper catches you out, you're fucked.
Now, I don't really give a fuck, but the anticipation of all this has got the staff spooked. And that's exactly what the regulators want, of course. Because we don't know who the Mystery Shopper is - I could be him, for Christ's sake, in the eyes and minds of everybody else - it keeps everybody on their toes 24/7 and working their shiny little butts off.
We've already had a few suspects; a nice, somewhat out-of-place couple who returned one night to ask if the man's jacket had been handed in, only for him to 'find it' back at his caravan about ten minutes later. He then proceeded to return to inform us of the good news and then spent an hour or so drilling us with questions about the SIA and our licenses. His knowledge, for a punter, was a bit beyond the norm, to say the least.
And then there's the chap I mentioned earlier, ploughing his pre-teen kids with alcohol blatantly in front of everybody while drinking himself into a coma. Could he be the Shopper? Now, this might sound like an example of somebody taking their work above and beyond but according to local legend it has happened. A few years back, one chap trying to sneak out of the complex with a couple of opened bottles of wine (a big no-no, in case of smashed glass), announced, when stopped, "Don't worry lads... I'm the Mystery Shopper." But even that could have been some kind of test.
And it's not limited to the alcohol license either. He could be a fire inspector, or magistrate. Christ, he could be anybody.
Equally, he might be nobody, and the complex will spend eight months worrying about a ghost that won't even have the decency to show up.
(p.s. It's my day off tomorrow, so don't expect much in the way of an update.)
posted by Sheamus @ 2:52 am
