Survey This
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I don’t want to act like a grouch but sometimes modern businesses are royal pains in the, for want of a better word, bum. (I meant ‘ass’ but John won’t let me say ‘ass’ in case it offends some stupid ass.) The next time some giant corporation asks me to give up three or four minutes of my time to answer a ridiculous survey I will march to their head office and strangle the CEO. And after I finish off him or her, I will go looking for the bonehead who actually e-mailed me this glorious opportunity to take time out of my busy day to rate their service.
As I am led to believe, my survey will then be forwarded to a committee of high-priced executives and my ratings discussed at great length. If I don’t give them a 10 on every subject, a number of people in their employ will be surrounded by a security team, publicly shamed, and marched out the door. (That’s the way humans are treated by management nowadays.)
Before I get into what giant corporation peed me off this time, I must tell you about an experience that happened to me many moons ago.
I got one of the aforementioned follow-up surveys from the company I worked for after they did some routine work on my car. I gave them a 10 rating all the way except for the last one. For some insane reason I reasoned that giving 10s all the way through would look like I put little or no thought into the form at all which I hadn’t, so I gave it a 9.
The next day the General Manager said, “Why did you do that? Now I have to write to head office to explain why you were displeased with us and what was I planning to do to make you happy again, you little jerk?”
To start with it never even occurred to me somebody would actually look at that stupid form after I answered it, but evidently somebody did. What a lousy job that must be. Can you imagine going home after reading survey after survey of this stuff all day? No wonder there are so many alcoholics in the work force?
“How was your day, dear?”
“Shut up and open me a beer. By the way, I’m giving you a 3 for the kitchen floor, you lazy witch. What’s for supper and it better not be Kraft Dinner again?”
On Monday, I went to my dentist, excellent people, I have been going to them since the 70s. On Tuesday I got an email thanking me for arranging my next visit, and would I mind taking a minute to tell them about my experience the day before. What could I say?
“Well, I sat in a chair, looked at what my dental hygienist (a lovely girl, if only I were 50 years younger) claims to be an x-ray of my mouth. I suppose it might be but I am more inclined to think it was one of the giant caves in Lord of the Rings with a hell of a lot more holes. Needless to say, I didn’t answer.
But next on my email list was a request from Rogers to answer a few questions. To start with, other than paying my bill online and on time otherwise you will never hear the end of it, I have had no recent contact with them – well maybe once in March. (Admittedly, I may have been mildly unreasonable during this winter’s ice storm when we missed Jessica Fletcher several nights in a row. And although I threatened to, I really didn’t hire a hit man from Chicago to wipe out Roger’s senior management. I tried but couldn’t. Well how could I? We had no phone.)
This really isn’t a complaint, more an observation. Shoppers Drug Mart is a fine store near us and Mary buys several barrels of makeup there every three or four days. I don’t; I have an arrangement with Champlain Ready Mix that allows me to scrape up anything that falls off their trucks and slap it on my yap with a trowel.
Shoppers Drug Mart has a self-checkout service, as do almost every retail store in the world. Their check-out machines talk to me, maybe not to you, but they do to me.
I bring my own bag, pick up whatever we need from the shelves, lug it over to the self-checkout area, scan the purchases and my Optimum card, then pay for everything with my debit or Visa card. The machine then has the audacity to say
“Tell us how how we did today?”
I hate to be rude, but what exactly did you do?
(Image Supplied)
