Monday, April 12, 2004
Secret shopping is really the best job in the world for me. It satisfies two very strong desires in me: the desire to lie and the desire to feel superior.

I started off today at a car dealership pretending to be shopping for a particular car. My instructions were to claim that my "husband/wife/partner" and I decided to get a new car because "our family is growing". I have posted before about my love of lying to strangers and creating new identities for myself, but in my defense this time it was my JOB to lie. I had so much fun in that car dealership. I went on and on about my "life". I told the dealer that my husband Joe and I had just moved here from San Francisco. I didn't think my story through and was a little caught off guard when he asked me what Joe did for a living. Suddenly I found myself spinning this yarn about how Joe was an accountant but he really didn't care for such a mathmatical life. In high school he had been a pretty good artist but his military father discouraged him so he went to Harvard Business school. After five years of doing accounting in the city, when we found out we were expecting our first baby we decided together to just pack it all in and move somewhere new (Rocky Mount). Now, Joe was finally exploring his artistic side and I was going to support us all by teaching. I actually got a little tear in my eye when I told the man how proud of Joe I am. Just packin' it all in like that.

Then I got to go to a toy store and do a secret shop. This one wasn't as fun because it didn't have the one on one time that shopping for a car has. But it was fun in that I received terrible service. But instead of feeling completely impotent about the horrible service I was getting, I felt hugely powerful. I felt such enormous satisfaction when Jeremy (who had spent our interaction sighing and rolling his eyes when I asked for help and then just pointing me in the general direction of the Diaper Genie instead of taking me to the actual) gave me his name because I knew that his manager would get a full report on his awful service. And I was almost gleeful when Mysty took over six minutes to ring up the woman in front of me because I knew her name would be on my little form, too. I felt very superior to everyone as I strode through the business armed with a pen and a survey.

I also made nearly thirty dollars today. Yee-haw! ¶ 6:38 PM