|
Originally published in
Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, July/August 2007, page 10
War Stories
by Art Shulman, Ph.D.
Editor’s note: War Stories is an occasional column in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous anecdotes of life in the research trenches.
 Stefan Doomanis’ firm Dynamic Advantage does mystery shopping. One of the most important pieces of information collected for a particular client was the name of the employee at the counter, complete with a picture of that employee. In most cases the shopper is able to get an employee’s name. However, there are times where any employee is not wearing a name badge, or the badge could be covered by other clothing, a sweater, jacket or maybe an apron. Only once in Doomanis’ years of experience has he ever come across a certain problem: The employee at the counter of one store was crashed out, completely asleep! If she was wearing a name badge, the shopper would never know. In this instance, a few taps on the window did not wake her up. The shopper was able to complete the rest of the shop and snap a picture of the napping employee.
 Doomanis also reports that after a recent meeting he and his co-worker decided to stop at a local coffeehouse before heading back to the office. They found parking and walked up to the coffeehouse and were greeted by a sign on the door which said, “CAUTION! These doors are now broken due to being opened the wrong way. Please open it the right way and PULL it. Sorry about the inconvenience. Thanks.” To Doomanis the sign in effect said, "Our dumb customers broke our door by opening it the wrong way." After thinking about it for a minute while standing in line inside (without having been greeted upon entrance), they decided the sign was indeed indicative of the establishment’s overall attitude. So they took themselves down the street an extra block to the next coffeehouse.
|
