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Apr. 14th, 2008 04:45 pmAt work this morning everyone was congratulating Sarah #1, who ran the London Marathon yesterday. When I handed her the £5 I'd sponsored her for she proudly showed me her medal. Later she put a big notice up saying she'd done it in four and a half hours, that it was "an experience [she] won't be repeating" and that she'd raised over £2000 for the Stroke Association. Go girl.
Got two real gormos, one woman who refused "because her husband had told her not to do any more surveys" (but also cited its half-hour duration). When I asked if he'd given a reason for dropping out, she hesitated, then said "No, not really." End of conversation. I really don't get why people who feel so strongly about dropping out of the survey are so uptight about giving their reasons. Worse was another woman, a farmer, who did the whole interview but then said she wouldn't do any future waves "because the questions are all the same and nothing's going to change" - she wouldn't budge from that position even when I told her some of the questions will be different next time, and despite the fact that the answer to one question, their hours worked every week, does change with the time of year - as she herself had admitted! She also claimed the survey was "inappropriate" to farmers, even though the whole point is that we need respondents from all walks of life. She clearly didn't even listen to my attempts at talking her round, and finished by saying she was dropping out because the survey doesn't "benefit" farmers.
Sometimes this job feels like banging your head against a brick wall until it bleeds.
My last respondent - she took me over time - was a different kettle of fish. An elderly lady, she was a real character, laughed at many of the questions (but never in a nasty way) and made a few quips along the way like "I expect you need a glass of water now" and, at the end, "You have my permission to go and have a whisky". At the end, when I went up to the front desk Marilyn told me she'd been monitoring me. I was a little concerned as I thought I might have slipped up in a couple of places, but Marilyn said I'd fully met requirements and that this old lady had made her day. With the overrun and the monitoring, with looking at my email and entering my payclaim still to do, I got to claim an extra 25 minutes.
Still can't enter the claims for the week before last. When I told Sue #5 on my way out she knew - she'd been told by the techie team this morning that the fault had been fixed, only to learn from several people later in the shift that it hadn't at all.
Got two real gormos, one woman who refused "because her husband had told her not to do any more surveys" (but also cited its half-hour duration). When I asked if he'd given a reason for dropping out, she hesitated, then said "No, not really." End of conversation. I really don't get why people who feel so strongly about dropping out of the survey are so uptight about giving their reasons. Worse was another woman, a farmer, who did the whole interview but then said she wouldn't do any future waves "because the questions are all the same and nothing's going to change" - she wouldn't budge from that position even when I told her some of the questions will be different next time, and despite the fact that the answer to one question, their hours worked every week, does change with the time of year - as she herself had admitted! She also claimed the survey was "inappropriate" to farmers, even though the whole point is that we need respondents from all walks of life. She clearly didn't even listen to my attempts at talking her round, and finished by saying she was dropping out because the survey doesn't "benefit" farmers.
Sometimes this job feels like banging your head against a brick wall until it bleeds.
My last respondent - she took me over time - was a different kettle of fish. An elderly lady, she was a real character, laughed at many of the questions (but never in a nasty way) and made a few quips along the way like "I expect you need a glass of water now" and, at the end, "You have my permission to go and have a whisky". At the end, when I went up to the front desk Marilyn told me she'd been monitoring me. I was a little concerned as I thought I might have slipped up in a couple of places, but Marilyn said I'd fully met requirements and that this old lady had made her day. With the overrun and the monitoring, with looking at my email and entering my payclaim still to do, I got to claim an extra 25 minutes.
Still can't enter the claims for the week before last. When I told Sue #5 on my way out she knew - she'd been told by the techie team this morning that the fault had been fixed, only to learn from several people later in the shift that it hadn't at all.
