Survey This!

Recently, I received the following correspondence from my former university:

Yeah, so I received both of the surveys – the one in Sept and the one in Jan.  They reminded me of everything I hated about college: a never ending rows and columns of bubbles to fill in with a #2 pencil.  For a moment I thought I was back in the testing center.

As with most great institutional surveys, all they did was ask the same question over and over again in slightly different ways.  They even provided the same answers over and over.  The temptation to draw little houses and airplanes using the bubbles was just too great… and this one doesn’t get graded, either!  So I gave up halfway through the survey.

I probably would have just suffered through the whole thing if it were online, but having to find more lead for my #2 pencil, and then the thought of having to walk out and put it in the mailbox was just too much for my heart to handle.

The best part about this email, though, is that their solution to those who didn’t send back the survey was to send out YET ANOTHER survey!  YES! Smart!  Maybe they should have sent out a candy bar as an incentive…

Granted, it was a smaller survey: five pages hosted on the world’s slowest web server (I’m still waiting for the last page to post) which basically asked me 10 times why I didn’t do the survey yet.  —  I think I might give up because of the slowness of the server.

Maybe if they keep throwing surveys at the problem, they will finally get a survey small enough that I will actually respond:

Are you going to send in this survey?  (Circle One)

Yes / No

And of course, the answer would be — no.

PS > Never trust an email signed “Best Regards.”  Chances are they have no good regards for you at all… not even the best ones.