Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2001-10-09 12:45 am
azurelunatic) wrote2001-10-09 12:45 am
Earning the Big Bucks
Work is so much fun, good *gods*.
Not.
After working eight hour shifts, six hours or less is mighty appealing. I only worked five and a half hours today. Less, if you count in the fact that we got a half-hour break, and also that I wasn't in my booth 100% of the time -- the company's policy that we always have a glass of water in our booths means that they can't sanely regulate water breaks, nor bathroom breaks -- and even less if you count, as I tend to, the time actually spent doing a survey as "non-work." Furthermore, they had me down as one of the fill-in-the-blanks workers who hangs out in the break room until the supervisors see how many people have bailed today, and then we get assigned to jobs as needed. They call us "wallflowers" because we sit around and wait until we're asked to dance...
Major unhappiness of the day -- two high school-sounding girls (the same two who'd been comparing notes in the bathroom about the one girl's nasty new streaked hair, which was supposed to have been blond but turned out orange instead) were gossiping up a storm behind me. I couldn't hear the guy on the other end of the phone, and I asked them to keep it down (politely) and when I turned back to the phone the guy had hung up.
A rather good day, overall.
High points --
--they put me on "Brand Equity," a rather long survey (30-45 minutes) about modern electronic communication methods, and providers of such services. I love this survey, even though the vast majority of my cow-orkers hate it.
--I got to eat dinner with Motley, a woman about my dad's age with a delightfully horrendous sense of humor. We talked about world events, dogs, cats, pinball cats, the psychoactive effects of her getting the flu and therefore being unable to keep her meds down, Pestilence, and other subjects of general interest. We usually tend to freak out the lunchroom when we do this. She's got a friend who wants to have the phrase "If found, drop in nearest mailbox" tattooed on the bottom of his foot in the Elder Futhark runes, in case he ever ends up in a morgue. This is one of her more normal friends.
--I came up with a brilliant idea that may or may not be put into practice. Two of our surveys are broken in the same place in the same way. Every so often the surveys get edited and things get added or taken out. A couple months ago, the section of the fast food hamburger surveys that asked, restaurant by restaurant, had they ever eaten at this fast food joint, was yoinked for time. Unfortunately, in doing so, they also pulled one of the indicators for a question later on.
You don't ever depend on the brains and/or good memory of the person you're talking to. If you ask Jane Schmoe which fast food burger joints she's ever eaten at, odds are she's going to give you perhaps five names -- Jack in the Crack, Micky D's, The Fuolornis Dragon, Wendy's, and Burger King. She's probably eaten at least a dozen, but only those five have been advertising lately, so those are all she remembers. When prodded later, she will recall them, but now those are in the system as all she remembers. There's no decently easy way to go back and change her answers at the beginning of the survey now.
If asked individually about all the other burger joints, she'll remember them, and say "Yeah I think I ate there a couple years ago" ... but she won't come up with the name on her own.
75% of the time this is no problem. There are only a few major burger joints that get specifically asked about at the end of the survey, and most of those places, people do tend to mention as at least being familiar with at the beginning. But sometimes they don't mention one of the major restaurants that they have visited that gets asked about specifically at the end of the survey.
At the end of the survey, there are questions on about three to four different burger joints, and the computer gives you a different set of answers to choose from depending on whether they've ever visited there or not. If they have said they've visited there for the computer to hear, fine and dandy, they get the seven-option "I have eaten at this place and ...." section. If they haven't said they've visited there, they get the four-option "I haven't eaten here" section.
Every day, I fill out a computer correction form telling the supervisors that once again, Jane Schmoe forgot at the beginning of the survey that she'd ever eaten at The Fuolornis Dragon, and none of the options at the "I have never visited here" section sounded appealing to her at the end of it all. Finally I just said, "The hell with it," and suggested to my supervisor that if they couldn't fix the damn survey to make it work right, write up a gods-damned memo detailing the question number of the question most likely to break (and the two-letter suffix saying which burger joint it's about), a paper copy of the correct question to ask, complete with question number and the proper shit to write down on the paper form, so we won't have to guess and miss every single damn time.
The sad thing?
All you'd really have to do is insert one question at the end there. If they hadn't mentioned whichever one of the Big Five by the end of the survey, ask them flat out if they'd ever been there. One question.
Like anybody even cares.
Fuck this shit.
Not.
After working eight hour shifts, six hours or less is mighty appealing. I only worked five and a half hours today. Less, if you count in the fact that we got a half-hour break, and also that I wasn't in my booth 100% of the time -- the company's policy that we always have a glass of water in our booths means that they can't sanely regulate water breaks, nor bathroom breaks -- and even less if you count, as I tend to, the time actually spent doing a survey as "non-work." Furthermore, they had me down as one of the fill-in-the-blanks workers who hangs out in the break room until the supervisors see how many people have bailed today, and then we get assigned to jobs as needed. They call us "wallflowers" because we sit around and wait until we're asked to dance...
Major unhappiness of the day -- two high school-sounding girls (the same two who'd been comparing notes in the bathroom about the one girl's nasty new streaked hair, which was supposed to have been blond but turned out orange instead) were gossiping up a storm behind me. I couldn't hear the guy on the other end of the phone, and I asked them to keep it down (politely) and when I turned back to the phone the guy had hung up.
A rather good day, overall.
High points --
--they put me on "Brand Equity," a rather long survey (30-45 minutes) about modern electronic communication methods, and providers of such services. I love this survey, even though the vast majority of my cow-orkers hate it.
--I got to eat dinner with Motley, a woman about my dad's age with a delightfully horrendous sense of humor. We talked about world events, dogs, cats, pinball cats, the psychoactive effects of her getting the flu and therefore being unable to keep her meds down, Pestilence, and other subjects of general interest. We usually tend to freak out the lunchroom when we do this. She's got a friend who wants to have the phrase "If found, drop in nearest mailbox" tattooed on the bottom of his foot in the Elder Futhark runes, in case he ever ends up in a morgue. This is one of her more normal friends.
--I came up with a brilliant idea that may or may not be put into practice. Two of our surveys are broken in the same place in the same way. Every so often the surveys get edited and things get added or taken out. A couple months ago, the section of the fast food hamburger surveys that asked, restaurant by restaurant, had they ever eaten at this fast food joint, was yoinked for time. Unfortunately, in doing so, they also pulled one of the indicators for a question later on.
You don't ever depend on the brains and/or good memory of the person you're talking to. If you ask Jane Schmoe which fast food burger joints she's ever eaten at, odds are she's going to give you perhaps five names -- Jack in the Crack, Micky D's, The Fuolornis Dragon, Wendy's, and Burger King. She's probably eaten at least a dozen, but only those five have been advertising lately, so those are all she remembers. When prodded later, she will recall them, but now those are in the system as all she remembers. There's no decently easy way to go back and change her answers at the beginning of the survey now.
If asked individually about all the other burger joints, she'll remember them, and say "Yeah I think I ate there a couple years ago" ... but she won't come up with the name on her own.
75% of the time this is no problem. There are only a few major burger joints that get specifically asked about at the end of the survey, and most of those places, people do tend to mention as at least being familiar with at the beginning. But sometimes they don't mention one of the major restaurants that they have visited that gets asked about specifically at the end of the survey.
At the end of the survey, there are questions on about three to four different burger joints, and the computer gives you a different set of answers to choose from depending on whether they've ever visited there or not. If they have said they've visited there for the computer to hear, fine and dandy, they get the seven-option "I have eaten at this place and ...." section. If they haven't said they've visited there, they get the four-option "I haven't eaten here" section.
Every day, I fill out a computer correction form telling the supervisors that once again, Jane Schmoe forgot at the beginning of the survey that she'd ever eaten at The Fuolornis Dragon, and none of the options at the "I have never visited here" section sounded appealing to her at the end of it all. Finally I just said, "The hell with it," and suggested to my supervisor that if they couldn't fix the damn survey to make it work right, write up a gods-damned memo detailing the question number of the question most likely to break (and the two-letter suffix saying which burger joint it's about), a paper copy of the correct question to ask, complete with question number and the proper shit to write down on the paper form, so we won't have to guess and miss every single damn time.
The sad thing?
All you'd really have to do is insert one question at the end there. If they hadn't mentioned whichever one of the Big Five by the end of the survey, ask them flat out if they'd ever been there. One question.
Like anybody even cares.
Fuck this shit.