Nueces County Junior Livestock Show: Mall Mystery Shopper Reviews the Barns
Corporate Evaluator Assigned to the Outlet Center Next Door Takes One Wrong Turn, Files a 1,400-Associate Report on the Largest County Junior Show in Texas
ROBSTOWN, Texas — A professional mystery shopper hired to evaluate the Corpus Christi outlet shopping center has instead filed a 38-page customer service report on the Nueces County Junior Livestock Show, which sits next door at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds and which she entered by mistake on the first Saturday in January while following a crowd she assumed was headed to a sale.
It was headed to a sale. It was simply a different kind of sale than the one on her clipboard.
The evaluator, a 22-year veteran who asked that her name be withheld because “the entire job is that nobody knows who I am,” realized her error forty minutes in, when a young associate in a white show shirt answered her question about whether a product came in other colors by pointing to the next pen.
She stayed for two weeks anyway. “I had the rubric,” she told Farm.FM. “I was not going to waste the rubric.”
The report, which Farm.FM has reviewed, applies the standard scoring sheet to every corner of the show. Its conclusion is printed in bold on page one: “Recommend that the outlet center be renovated to the standard of the swine barn.”
Greeting Within Ten Seconds at the Nueces County Junior Livestock Show
The first line item on any mystery shop is whether the customer is greeted within ten seconds of entering the store. The evaluator was greeted within four, by a Suffolk wether who leaned over his pen gate and ate the corner of her scoring sheet.
“Greeting: prompt, enthusiastic, physical,” she wrote. “Greeter was a lamb. No points deducted. Greeter appeared to be doing the best work in the building.”
The Nueces County Junior Livestock Show is widely described as the largest county junior livestock show in Texas, with more than 1,400 young exhibitors, and the evaluator counted every one of them as a floor associate. “Associate-to-customer ratio unprecedented,” the staffing section reads. “I have worked Black Friday in stores with three employees and a security guard. Here every associate was standing beside the product.”
Product knowledge was where the scoring got away from her. She approached a 13-year-old exhibitor with a market barrow and asked, in her standard neutral voice, what made this one worth the price. The answer lasted four minutes and covered muscle, rate of gain, feed conversion, the barrow’s preference for being walked before sunrise and his weight to the pound.
“Associate knew more about the product than the manufacturer,” she wrote. “Manufacturer was a sow near Bishop. I checked.”
Inventory Depth: Steers, Lambs, Rabbits, Welding and 100,000 Acres of Sorghum
The show carries thousands of projects, from steers and lambs to rabbits, poultry, homemaking and welding, for roughly two weeks every January. It began in the mid-1930s with 14 boys exhibiting beef cattle. “Store opened with one department and fourteen associates,” she wrote. “Expanded to 1,400. Kept the same level of service. In my industry this has never happened once.”
When she asked a Robstown FFA member where the stockroom was, the member walked her to the end of the barn and pointed out the door toward the flat open country around town, where Nueces County grows more than 100,000 acres of grain sorghum in a typical census year, most of it destined to feed livestock.
“Supply chain: vertically integrated,” the report reads. “The stockroom is the county. It is mostly milo. I did not know what milo was. An associate explained it in under a minute without making me feel stupid, which is itself a five-point item.”
Fitting Rooms, Food Court and the Manager
The report treats the wash racks and grooming chutes as fitting rooms, “fully occupied at all hours, overwhelmingly by steers, all of whom looked fantastic coming out, and none of whom bought anything.”
The food court section covers the kids’ barbecue cook-off held during parade weekend. She asked for a menu and was handed a plate. Score: “No menu. No wait. No complaints. Brisket prepared by teenagers who then had to go rinse a heifer, and who still asked whether I wanted more sauce.”
Under “Asked to speak to a manager,” a field every evaluator must complete, she wrote: “Requested manager. Was directed to a 16-year-old in an FFA jacket. She resolved my issue in under one minute. My issue was that I was in the wrong building.”
Checkout, the Return Policy and the $20 Problem
There were no price tags anywhere. Prices were set live in the sale ring, a system she described as “dynamic pricing operated by a man at three hundred words a minute.” Buyers paid well over market for animals they would not take home, added money on top for no additional merchandise, then received handwritten thank-you letters.
“Customers voluntarily pay more than the sticker price,” she wrote. “There is no sticker. They pay more than the no sticker. Then the store thanks them in writing. I have audited 3,000 checkouts. Nobody has ever thanked me in writing.”
The return policy section reads, in full: “All sales final. Nobody asked for a return. One customer asked if he could pay more.”
She also logged one complaint, her own. Every mystery shop requires a small qualifying purchase with a receipt, and her contract capped it at $20. The show had nothing for $20. On the final Saturday she joined a buyer group with a $20 add-on for a Robstown 4-H member’s market lamb, and received no lamb, no merchandise and the best customer experience of her career.
What Nueces County 4-H Teaches the Retail Industry
Her client rejected the receipt. Corporate expense policy requires an item. The evaluator appealed, attaching the only document she had received in exchange for her $20: a thank-you letter from the exhibitor, written in pencil, giving the lamb’s name, his final weight and her part in “helping me save for college.”
The appeal was granted. The client then asked for the exhibitor’s contact information so the outlet center could offer her a management position.
The exhibitor declined through the Nueces County 4-H program, which teaches livestock projects, record keeping, leadership and public speaking. She is 14 and has a record book to finish. She added, politely, that a lamb had greeted the evaluator in four seconds, and suggested the stores start there.
The outlet center has since installed a wash rack at the edge of its parking lot. Nobody has used it. The evaluator has been reassigned to the center for next January and has asked, in writing, whether she may park in the fairgrounds lot.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- She walked into the largest county junior show in Texas looking for a shoe sale and found 1,400 employees who know the product’s weight to the pound. The mall can’t tell me if there’s a size ten in the back.
- The greeter was a lamb, and the lamb ate the scoring sheet. That’s the only performance review in history where the employee also handled the shredding.
- The stockroom is 100,000 acres of sorghum. You ask a Robstown kid where they keep the extra inventory and they point at the horizon. Try that at a department store.
- Buyers pay more than the price, the price doesn’t exist, and then the seller writes them a letter. That’s not a checkout line. That’s a pen pal with a bidder number.
- Corporate wouldn’t accept a thank-you note as a receipt until they read it, and then they tried to hire the kid who wrote it. She turned them down. She has a record book due, and retail can wait.