I tip strongly towards the introvert side of the personality scale, always have. It runs in the family. My sister married into a notably extrovert family, some of which have been obliged to deal with the thick solitary shells around both my father and myself. They're nice about it, lovely people that they are, but I can tell that they're puzzled by our reserve. The shrinks and social engineers are geared towards extroversion and thus they tend to view introversion as a personality trait to be overcome. It makes sense that they would think that way; I can't imagine an introvert ever opting for a career as a shrink or social engineer. Nonetheless, they're dead wrong. At least a third to a half of the human race is more introverted than not.
Among my more tightly held introvert stances is that my personal life is my own business. Thus nothing irritates me more than strangers contacting me and asking my opinions, whether that be by phone or by mail, e- or snail. Surveys have morphed from a minor annoyance into a full-tilt assault on privacy. You can always say 'no' to them, but sometimes you wind up saying 'no' until you're blue in the face and still your minimum-wage dweeb soldiers on, valiantly attempting to get through the script.
The single most annoying survey I ever endured came from an East Coast company that had been hired to carry out some worthless study of energy usage by the U.S. Department of Energy. One got the impression that this was a very big deal for this survey company. They kept repeating It's for the US Department of Energy!! in the same approximate tone of voice one might use to proclaim that These questions will determine the fate of Your Immortal Soul. A few letters arrived in the mail. I took one look at the return address and filed them in the appropriate receptacle, whence they were duly collected Tuesday morning by the city sanitation crew, bleached, pulped, and returned to a worthwhile existence as recycled paper. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. At some point an exhausted elderly lady showed up at my door. This is the $10,000 survey, she announced: I have to get your answers so the company sent me to California to speak to you in person.
I pointed out to her—none too gently—that I was under no obligation whatsoever to speak to her, her company, or anybody else. But it's for the US Department of Energy and determines the fate of Your Immortal Soul! she protested. Eventually I relented and let her ask her damn questions. Probably I should have slammed the door in her face, frail little old lady or not. I was all the more convinced of that latter course of action when about a week later I received a call at 6:00 am from her company with some follow-up survey along the lines of We're taking a survey to determine your reactions to your recent survey experience. Apparently it hadn't occurred to them that the United States is a wide country divided into numerous time zones; if it was 9:00 am in New Jersey, then it was 9:00 am everywhere. My caller was yet another grandmotherly type. One got the impression that the entire survey company was staffed by little old ladies. That probably wasn't the case, but sheesh…talk about a marketing ploy.
I'm not completely free of telephone surveys as of yet, due to AT&T's spotty cell coverage here in San Francisco that obliges me to retain a land line. Since telephone solicitors are restricted to calling land lines, I'm still pestered by the occasional call. For a while I tried tormenting them with incessant and inane questions: what is your name? your employee ID? what's the name of your firm? what is their address? what is the name of your supervisor? what is his/her company ID number? are you a for-profit or non-profit institution? what is the nature of your contract with the company that hired you? are you aware that this company is implicated in the decimation of the snail-darter populations in Madagascar and is currently under an investigation by the US Department of Energy that will determine the fate of Your Immortal Soul?
I stopped doing that after a while. It just isn't sporting. I was picking on some hapless airhead in a cubicle, after all. So now I say NO and hang up.
Which is really the best course of action to all such surveys, whether they be on web sites (those sure have proliferated of late) or on the telephone or via the occasional sacrificial victim traipsing from house to house. Even my own place of employment has been evincing a fatal attraction for surveys, given no-frills freebies like Survey Monkey and its ilk.
I'm all for making surveys as difficult, as time-consuming, as expensive, and as labor-intensive as possible. Maybe then they will return to being infrequent activities, carried out only if the need is compelling and obvious, and conducted with all due constraint and care. These days they're just too doggone easy, and way too common.