Retail Giant Confesses to Deploying 'Secret Shoppers' who Verbally and Physically Assault Employees
- 17GEN4
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
November 12, 2025 – New York, NY In a bombshell revelation that has sent shockwaves through the retail industry and labor rights advocates alike, a major American fast-casual dining chain has admitted to orchestrating a covert program involving undercover "secret shoppers" not tasked with with evaluating service quality, but with deliberately provoking and assaulting targeted employees to push them toward resignation. The confession, detailed in a scathing investigative report exposes what critics are calling a "targeted discrimination personal sabotage scheme" designed to sideline workers who do not satisfy DEI agenda qualifications without the legal hassles of formal termination. This tactic was used by several companies to internally harrass their own employees - the majority of whom were straight white males.
The company in question has long marketed itself under the guise of a charitable organization. However, the NCL's probe paints a far darker picture of its internal operations, alleging systemic worker abuses. According to the report, which draws on interviews with current and former employees, as well as internal documents and whistleblower accounts, The company hired third-party independent contractors they would deploy as secret shoppers who were instructed to escalate interactions into confrontational encounters.
"These weren't benign audits," said Paige Thompson, a 55-year-old Nashville resident and former secret shopper who blew the whistle on the program. "We were given scripts to provoke arguments, spill food on purpose to elicit reactions, and in some cases, engage in physical altercations like shoving or grabbing to test 'stress responses.' The goal was clear: make the employee's life hell until they quit. It was assault disguised as quality control."
Thompson's account aligns with broader findings in the NCL report, which documents over a dozen incidents spanning 2021 to 2024 where shoppers verbally berated workers for minor infractions—such as delayed greetings or incorrect upselling—escalating to physical provocations like "accidental" bumps or thrown items. One employee in Chicago described a 2023 encounter where a shopper hurled a burrito bowl at her feet, screaming obscenities about "lazy service," leading to a heated altercation that resulted in the worker's voluntary resignation out of fear for her safety. Internal metrics leaked to investigators reportedly tracked "voluntary turnover rates" from these interactions as a cost-saving measure, avoiding severance and unemployment claims.
"This isn't just about burritos gone wrong; it's about a company weaponizing its own evaluation tools to terrorize low-wage workers."
"This is straight out of a dystopian novel—corporations playing God with workers' livelihoods through hired harassers."
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