Surveys

At two places along the Burke-Gilman trail today—near the Metropolitan Market in Ravenna towards Sand Point, and at the Lake Forest Park stop sign where I one got a ticket—there were groups of people passing out little orange squares of paper with a URL on it for some survey you should take to provide input on the Burke-Gilman trail. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually, if I manage to locate the scrap of paper among the other stuff on my desk.

At work, we’re supposed to complete an employee satisfaction survey or maybe it’s a student engagement questionnaire; I can’t remember, although I’m certain I’ll do both if I find them time.

When I read the New York Times online, I periodically encounter a pop-up window that asks me to answer some questions about the electronic newspaper; I’ve yet to do so, but the one thing I would mention, if I could, would be that I’d like it better if those little pop-up windows never appeared.

I bought a new printer last week or so and when I registered it, they asked me to provide feedback to their system about where I purchased the unit and how I’d heard about it; you could get away without doing it, though, so I did.

Every night, we get at least one phone call from someone who announces first thing that they’re not selling anything, they just want to know what we think about some service or product or politician or something; whenever they call it a “courtesy call,” I immediately think, “No it isn’t; it’s a rudeness call,” and hang up as soon as I can.

I don’t know what everyone is supposed to be doing with all this data or why they think having it will make any difference; this may be because I just don’t really care.

But I suppose if we’re really going to know for sure, we’d better conduct a survey.