Sometimes what we write doesn’t effectively communicate what we mean. Mystery shopping company Confero offers a blog post about funny comments on mystery shop reports that includes this gem: “There were no baggers helping the cashier so I bagged myself.”
Okay, we know what the shopper meant, but her words paint another picture entirely. Misspellings, misplaced modifiers and other writing errors can mean that a mystery shopper’s report does not say exactly what the shopper thinks it does, and those errors can be made by even the most experienced mystery shoppers.
It is easy to make these kinds of mistakes, even when the shopper carefully proofreads the report before submitting it. We know what we meant when we wrote it, so we tend to read what we meant rather than what it actually says.
One good way to catch errors is to read comments and narratives out loud. Sentences that made sense as you read them on the page or the screen may not sound right when you hear them spoken.
Have a good laugh reading about the mistakes made by other shoppers, then proofread your reports carefully so that you do not show up in a future blog post!
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