Has anyone ever felt this in the field? We're asked to do our work secretly, don't have co-workers, never see our "boss" (if you want to consider the editors/schedulers/company reps., etc. in that light), and spend lots of time "under-cover" and then alone writing up our reports.

It has its benefits, such as picking your own schedule and being able to dress "down" for many assignments. But, after I get home to start to type up my reports, I feel a deep sense of loneliness. I'm sitting there for hours alone typing away deep into the late night/early morning. I don't have interaction with other would-be co-workers in a traditional job. When you finish a report, you often never hear back and don't get the validation you would from a boss telling you "Well done!" There's no sense of building something special long-term for your company. Although, I do get a great deal of satisfaction knowing my observations may have helped a MSC's client.

I get so lonely and bored sometimes of the work when typing reports that my mind wanders and I go onto YouTube to watch music videos to relax or surf the web. Don't tell my editors, lol. I do the best I can to take breaks that are needed and submit things in a timely fashion.

It can be tough, though, late at night. Anyone else feel this?

I see my boss every time I look in the mirror, I don't work late into the night and I don't need validation or a pat on the back. If my clients give me more work, that's validation enough.

I have been doing this while off from work on vacation, and if I could manage to do this full-time, I would in a heartbeat. Work starts again on Thursday and I cannot say that I am looking forward to it. The real job pays money that pays our bills, mystery shopping pays 1/10 of my salary, even with hustling.

I rather enjoy working alone, and no, don't feel lonely doing my work, but glad we have the forum to express feelings and share. I'm much happier knowing only I am responsible for the work I do...nothing more needed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2018 02:45PM by Irene_L.A..

My current full time job is working from home, so I don't interact with a ton of people there either. I like the shopping, and share it with my wife, the stories are fun sometimes. The restaurants, I get to spend that time with her. I don't really feel lonely doing it, but again, I have been conditioned to be used to working alone, even though I am part of a large team of engineers.

While I miss the camaraderie of co-workers, regular customers and manufactures/distributors, I wouldn't go so far as to call it loneliness. I was a manufacture's representative for over 35 years in a previous life and some of the best times were spent with other reps at meetings and conventions. Dinner meetings are a great source of information exchange and socializing. A bond was formed with some of my long time customers and a friendship with some. Two of the owners of businesses I represented died prematurely of cancer and I still feel pangs of sadness when I think of them. They were truly friends.

None of that exists in this business. I have never met and don't know any of you except though these postings. My relationship with the MSC's is strictly by email or phone. Because I do a lot of gas stations I do have repeat customers and have a cordial relationship with some of them at best.

I have family, friends, two dogs and a job of my choosing. No time for loneliness.

Whenever I feel bored or alone I open and read this forum!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2018 05:07PM by kenasch.

@kenasch wrote:

Whoever I feel bored or alone I open and read this forum!

I consider other shoppers on here a great bulwark against loneliness. IRL, I always want to share my experiences with those around me, but I know it's not as interesting to them as it is to me. I love commenting and asking things on here because it does make me feel connected to a community of people who are doing similar work to me.

I really don't feel loneliness...but having to keep my work secret (from the places I check) sometimes bothers me because I feel like I'm spying on them.

I love working alone. When I do gas station audits I see employees and managers that I see a lot and they look forward to seeing me so that is nice. Other than that I really enjoy working alone.

@kenasch wrote:

Whoever I feel bored or alone I open and read this forum!

That helps, but I still lack that direct human component that would be nice.

On the other hand, it beats having that human component that might be a crazy, breathe-down-your-neck boss, lol. Sometimes, it's good to NOT have to deal with ppl.

@shoptastic - You have all of us. We are your coworkers, stationed at different branches and regions, on different assignments. And, I don't miss human contact as much as some. I'm an only child and tend to mole out, unless prodded.

@shoptastic,I can completely relate..I have a full time job and can't stand my coworkers. Needless to say that means I don't socialize with them outside of work. My parents live across the country, friends that I have are scattered throughout the world;I met them when I served in the military a long time ago, and one of my longtime best friends moved out of state a a few months ago..having said all of that I would much rather be hustling 8 hours a day mystery shopping rather than going to a job I don't really care for although it does pay my bills...have you considered meet ups, or online dating?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2018 05:14PM by dawnhu.

OCS Only Child Syndrome......I don't play well with others

I'm a natural hermit but my advice is to make some friends and upgrade your social life.

Volunteer at a local organization that you love. You'll get plenty of people to chat with. If it is a matter of being able to talk about this type of work, I get it. Can't really chat up your neighbors or typical friends. So....here we are.

I have 5 kids..... being alone sounds like a dream..... if you want we can trade lives for a week..... I can PROMISE you won't be lonely (even while trying to poop)

I do not feel lonely because I have friends in town from several different places my Happy Hearts and Home group , my Newcomers club pals and my church. Beside I have my hubby , my two sons and my brother. This also gives me something do help bring in some money because of my back injury I would not work a regular 9 to 5 job on my feet every day.

We raised 4 kids and now it's just me and my husband. Its nice to have peace and quiet while I am working! I rarely work late at night unless we do a restaurant shop that's due by midnight. My office is in our bedroom and he watches tv while I do reports, and we talk. When he is gone out of town working I don't mind being alone.

I have met several other shoppers in my local area and try to have lunch or some other meet-up at least once a month. One of them and I do a lot of work in cash integrity and exchange texts and call about crazy happenings. Then, once a year, at least, I go to a 3 day IMSC conference and interact with 100 - 200 shoppers and MSC owners, schedulers and editors, many of whom I have known for years. We email back and forth, meet up on this forum and on the IMSC FB pages, and exchange emails and PMs. So, there are many ways of sharing the unique world of MSing and providing mutual support.

I just come here and read posts that are 3 times as long as they should be.

Seriously, the forum is good for that, but I've found personal interactions with other shoppers is great for making this a less lonely profession. I have an ongoing group text with a couple of shoppers and another 3 or 4 that I text with often. While most of them are people I work with on specific projects we talk about other things too.

Shoptastic I do not feel lonely when mystery shopping and as a matter of fact I enjoy the contact with all sorts of others while doing the shops. Most people I meet out there on mystery shops are so nice and we snatch small bits of chatter while on the job. None of them have become my friend. I do work at mystery shopping part time though and can imagine, not loneliness but pressure from the intensity and tedium of some reports if I had to do a whole bunch of them every night. If it is possible with your schedule perhaps you could take a break during the middle of your shops and sit down at home, in the library or coffee shops and do some of those reports then go back to shopping refreshed and with the weight off your mind of those early in the day reports looming. That way you would not have to spend so many hours in a very long stretch filling out reports at night.

Shoptastic, have you thought about shopping as a hobby rather than as a full-time job? If you are able to, getting a full-time or part-time job outside of the home and shopping part time as a hobby might be more fulfilling. If that is not realistic, perhaps forming a MeetUp group (or something similar) for shoppers in your area might be a means of providing the "coworkers" and connections you seek.

I would also consider trying something else to do workwise, such as audits or merchandising. I do both. It's a great way to break up the monotony and there isn't a great deal of reporting (if any) to do afterwards.

I can understand the loneliness at times...I’m a people person, my full time job working is as a social worker so I do like to generally have people around rather than be alone. I just have my mom or husband come along though when I’m feeling like I want company and then do the other shops alone and that seems to work just fine for me. I even drag them along on all day routes occasionally. My mom thinks it’s really interesting but doesn’t want to actually do the shops herself, she just likes to go along for the ride and free meals lol. Maybe have a friend or neighbor ride along sometimes it could be helpful....

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2018 02:00AM by Lissymaree.

I've worked for myself for 26 years now, so I'm used to working alone in my home office. But from time to time, I've held part-time "normal" jobs on a temporary basis or worked on-site as a contractor. I do enjoy those jobs for the most part. Getting out of the house and interacting with other people is good. It keeps me from feeling totally isolated. But it also makes me realize that I would HATE going back to work full time where I had to be around people 40+ hours/week and answer to some (usually) useless manager. And have to deal with backstabbing, petty gossip, etc.

Right now I work a day a week at the antique co-op I have a booth in. It's great to be around customers who share my love of vintage and antique items and nice, for the most part, to have co-workers you can socialize with a day a week. (Although there is one woman there who drives me crazy with her incessant chatter!). And I've met a woman with whom I have a lot in common through working there, and we've become friends and socialize outside of work. .

Occasioanlly, but then I remember I almost always hated all of my co-workers and never interacted with them outside of work anyway, so no real loss there.

@MSF wrote:

Shoptastic, have you thought about shopping as a hobby rather than as a full-time job? If you are able to, getting a full-time or part-time job outside of the home and shopping part time as a hobby might be more fulfilling. If that is not realistic, perhaps forming a MeetUp group (or something similar) for shoppers in your area might be a means of providing the "coworkers" and connections you seek.

Yes and no, MSF.

I don't want to talk too much about it for privacy reasons (and because of the nature of the condition), but I have a partial handicap (mentioned it before and as of today, it's still an issue). [If someone really wanted to know, they can just PM me.] It means I can't do certain types of physical activity and limit my time out of the house. I am looking into contract editing (not for mystery shopping, but as a copy editor or general editor) and/or online English tutoring. There will be some changes coming, but just not yet.

There are helpful folks from church who are also helping me "ask around" for positions from employers who would be accommodating to my condition. These are people who have senior positions in their companies and know the people in HR. It's easier than bringing up the issue myself during a job interview. I wouldn't have to disclose it technically, but it prevents enough things for me that it would be known very quickly and impact my work, so I feel like there's a catch 22.

The bad part is that it's not yet classified as something that counts as a disability for government assistance. There are two versions of the condition - one more serious. I don't have the version that counts for disability. So, it's frustrating. I have to still work even though I have a condition that makes it difficult.

Socializing for me is also limited for the same reason. I last minute cancel a lot of things, due to the issue.

Now that I think of it, it's maybe not the isolation of ms-ing that is getting to me - although, it IS a factor. It's really this other thing that affects all areas of my life. But combined with some of the isolation of ms-ing, it's more acute now. I can feel that loneliness more.

Someone mentioned not waiting until you get home to do all your reports and doing some outside of the home. That's a good idea. I never did that in the past, because I don't have data on my phone. And I never use public WiFi or public computers (like at a library), because of fear of hacking. I mentioned this in another thread, but I once used Barnes & Noble's free WiFi and logged into my email account. I was only one there very briefly and when I drove home about 30 minutes later, I could not log into my email account I had just used. I tried typing my same user name and password over and over endless times and realized I was hacked and someone changed my stuff. I finally got back into the account via security checks, but that freaked me out to the point of saying HELL NO to free WiFi. Since we have our SS#, PayPal accounts, birth dates, etc. in MS company profiles, there's no way I would log into my account to do my reports on public WiFi. Identity theft is scary.

Honny Brown mentioned phone encryption. I am going to look into that. Does anyone know if that completely solves the problem and there's no way someone can steal your info. through WiFi that way?

If I can, I'd like to be able to do shops and stop at Starbucks to do some reports. I'm still limited in some ways, so I wouldn't be able to do too much outdoors before my condition acted up, but I could probably occasionally spend several hours at a place like that. It beats saving up all the writing for late night reports. I'm more tired and it's lonely typing away at those hours. But, that means I need a safe connection.

The funny thing is, when my sister was home from college (she's younger actually and attends school four hours away), she sat with me during several report writing sessions at the kitchen table. It was great company, but my regular hours of report writing turned into practically no work getting done and falling asleep writing them and having to wake up early in the morning to finish late reports. It's a distraction! We ended up just watching movies and what not and me not doing my work.

Maybe it's the tediousness of certain reports too as someone else mentioned. Some shops and surveys are just soooooooo tedious!

I know I'm griping and complaining when there are people in this world who have it much worse! They might live in war torn countries with barely any access to clean water or enough nutrition for healthy living. They may live under oppressive governments or threats of violence. Here I am complaining about writing reports alone in an air-conditioned home with internet access and a TV next to me. I do have to keep things in perspective too!

Still, some reports can be torture. I take lots of breaks to procrastinate and get away from the mind-numbing work of writing those. I've even created a few threads on this forum when procrastinating.

Can you take a laptop to a an all night coffee shop? During the day a library is nice to work in.

Like many of you, I mix things up - various gigs both in and out of the home + online sales. I pray that I never have to go back to a 9-5'er. I'm much too old & grumpy to put up with puppy stuff.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2018 05:55PM by Monk-N-Nut.