CSotD: Surveys, polls and dysquantifying reality
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Today's Andertoons is one that could run about anytime these days, since there doesn't seem to be a moment when someone isn't pestering you for feedback.
I bought a pair of Yaktrax online and, 24 hours after they arrived, got an email from the third-party supplier with the subject line "We need you to write an epic review of your order …" and, inside, "We are all dying to know how your shopping experience with us has been," and it occurred to me that these folks must not sell a lot of stuff if they're this desperate to hear about a minor order of a product they didn't even make themselves.
It also occurred to me that, if they wanted an epic review, I'd be happy to write them one, but my minimum charge would be worth more than the Yaktrax cost and I'm not sure how we'd work that out.
So I deleted it. Seemed best all around.
Specific to this cartoon, our local Shaw's grocery store has signs saying that, if your experience was a "10," they'd like you to let them know, and they also hand out little pieces of paper with your receipt saying the same thing, and noting that they draw from their reviews for shopping spree prizes.
I ran into the manager one day and said that it seemed they were soliciting compliments, not feedback, and that they might be in danger of suggesting that prizes were based on positive reviews, which could be legally problematic.
He told me they have to solicit "10" ratings. If a customer said, "I'm giving the store a 9. Everyone is friendly and I love shopping here, but I have to go to a specialty store to get lactose-free yak milk for my Tibetan pudding," corporate would call the manager and scream at him, despite the fact that HQ determines what the store stocks.
If he gets any rating less than a "10," his job is at risk.
I haven't seen him in a couple of months, so I guess someone gave him an 8. I hope he found a better job, which is to say, any other job at all.
I don't take their survey because I'm not gonna lie and there ain't nobody who gets a 10, but I don't want to cost some guy his job.
Nor did I take the survey after my last appointment with my eye doctor, whom I really like and would give a 10, except to hell with the soulless medical megaplex she works in.
Nor did I take the survey after the last time I had my Honda serviced. I like the car, don't like being nagged.
Instead of taking their surveys, what I do is to give them money for doing these things.
Perhaps I should also send them a copy of this Pickles from last April.
And speaking of demanding (only favorable) answers
Tank McNamara plays on polls today, not surveys, but the demand for precision coupled with the insistence on hearing what we want to hear is the same.
New Years Day used to be the culmination of college football, in which the top teams in each conference, together with some of the top independents and ranking also-rans, faced off in bowl games, after which the Hot Stove League kicked in and fans spent the next eight or nine months arguing over who really was the national champion.
Then, when the new season began, the arguments began all over. It's what made it fun, back when "fun" mattered.
Throughout the season, there was one weekly poll of college coaches and another of sportwriters, each a mashup of statistics and subjectivity that didn't always — or even "often" — agree with the other.
Which led to some wonderfully spirited speculation and quarrels.
In them thar days, when they'd give scores during games, if you were currently ranked in the top five teams or so and you heard that a team you had beaten had just whipped up on a team currently ranked above yours, you'd all start chanting "We're Number One! We're Number One!"
And that, O Best Beloved, is where that phrase came from.
But then America went insane and began to take itself seriously.
On the one hand, everyone took up the "We're Number One!" chant, regardless of where their particular team stood in the standings, more or less on the level of chanting "We Deserve Participation Trophies!"
Which is to say, they chanted "We're Number One!" even when their teams were playing like Number Two.
On the other hand (the one without the foam finger), sports nerds started whining that they needed a national championship series to establish once and for all who was actually, definitely, the really for real top team in the country.
Which, as outlined in today's Tank, doesn't work because football isn't basketball and even the NCAA basketball tournament isn't flawless and keeps expanding to get more teams in so fans will stop whining and buy more jerseys.
For college football, the net effect of the championship series has been that, while fans used to argue throughout the year over whether a tie is really like kissing your sister and whether it would have even been a tie if Nick Eddy hadn't slipped getting off the train in East Lansing, now they argue over how many teams should be in the tournament and how they should be chosen.
And the other thing they do is call the sports shows to complain that the New Year's bowl games have become meaningless.
As if someone else made that happen.
I liked it better when people argued over the actual games rather than over the administration of the sport.
And before their humorless obsession with numbers and definite answers sucked out all the fun.
Dammit, I miss the days of the Bottom 10.
(This one being from November 3, 1983.)
Back then, people knew how to take sports way too seriously. Here's Tank from that day.
Now run this up the polls and see if anyone salutes
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