A secret shopper is a freelance, professional hired by large retail, restaurant, and movie theater chains to check up on their local stores, in order to make sure that customer service is good, stores are clean, etc. There are thousands of stores across America such as department stores, supermarkets, appliance stores and clothing stores. All of them need to know how well their customers are treated when the manager is not around. They do this by hiring a secret shopper to go on a free outing in their stores and report on various aspects of experience. To find out how friendly their salespeople are, how clean their store is and how fast you get waited on, store managers rely on a secret shopper.