I am a Ferguson Missouri resident. Ferguson is normally a quiet community. It is racially mixed and a good place to raise a family. We have a community newspaper and events for children, teens and elderly alike. We like our neighbors and also our police department. I moved here when I was 13. I moved into my own apartment after college, but then moved back and have bought two homes as an adult, so I am a true Ferguson resident. However, when chaos hits home, these things are not displayed.
Ferguson is a place that has many businesses. That also gives opportunity for many mystery shopping opportunities. From fast food restaurants, to sit down restaurants, department stores, discount stores, apartments and cell phone shops. The day after the first looting hit, (in which looters from outside of my community, looted), I had a mystery shop scheduled at a cell phone store. I went to the store and unbeknownst to me, it had been looted. Cell phone displays were knocked down and missing, and the store was boarded up. I was extremely disheartened and hurt. Two days later, I had a fast food shop. I went there and they had closed early because they were located where most of the looting had occurred.
I saw a mystery shopping opportunity on a board for a department store, that store had been looted, and it was closed. As I drove down a street that I drive down daily, I just felt like crying. I then began to think…some of the stores that were temporarily boarded were just mystery shops to me. However, these were places that people had full time jobs that they now could not go to, at least for a while. This was money out of their pockets and days of work that they could not go to. How sad is that?
Mystery shopping during chaos was difficult or basically impossible to do, but going to a full time job when there was not one to go to was even worse. Things are a little back to normal now. We are trying to get our loving community back together, and everyone throughout St. Louis city and county, has signs on their yards that say, “I Love Ferguson”.
I see mystery shopping opportunities that I can take now that the stores are back open and at full speed, but there is still work to do.
Khalli B.