Survey time...

I was explaining something to my son on a particular topic, for it was a fruitful chatting. At that time, there was a knock on the front door... and somebody was outside with a Survey form. The survey, which was on the usage of Cable tv and Broadband services of the local providers, went on for few minutes. In the meantime, I got a prompt from my better-half that it was getting late, to wrap up the work with my son. Still I continued, till the completion of the survey.

It used to happen sometimes over phone as well. Last month, it so happened that a survey call which started with "5min only" guarantee, extended upto 15 minutes with nearly 50 questions. By the end of that call, my energy level had dried up fully. Even then, I had a satisfaction.

What's the need to undergo that?

Because, I could understand their job nature.. I heard some of them do it as a part time job for specific companies like this. I had experienced it once, personally.... :-)

During my college days in Madurai, our professor introduced a Marketing guy (from Madras), who was there to do a survey among the teenagers on Ice cream trends. The agenda was like this.. He gave 20 survey forms to each one of us and asked us to visit different residential colonies targetting equal no. of boys and girls. Each successful / genuinely (!!) completed form carried a "X" amount as a reward. Since, it was an interesting assignment earning money for us, we accepted it gladly.

But it was not that easy, as we thought.


In certain houses the Moms (of teen girls) didn't entertain us.. we were stopped just near the doorsteps and the girls replied to our survey questions from the half-closed doors. Some people didn't entertain us completely, due to lack of time.

I did visit some of my friends' houses to fill up the survey forms thru their sisters. That was also tricky, since I had never spoken to them freely earlier. Somehow, I managed. Few of my friends gathered the results in front of girls' schools and colleges. [the reason, why I am talking about the girls alone, is that we found it trickier only there]

As usual, to complete the forms quickly, few in our friends' circle filled in the Survey forms on their own, without even visiting anyone's house. ['aasai'... to earn quickly]. That Madras guy caught them red-handed [thru cross-verifying] and refused to accept those survey forms, threatening to forfeit all they had earned so far. That approach of our friends, got amended immediately.

By the end of two days, I was so happy to earn my first pocket money - by exploiting my own(!!) abilities....

That experience, resulted in a decision. Not to refuse answering any surveys, unless it becomes too personal or due to lack of spare time.
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