Gallup has been trying to get a hold of someone in our house for about a week, but Smartie never answers the phone when they call. Saturday, I picked up on a number I thought was the hinterlands of Minnesota but was instead a Harris pollster calling for some input. I hung up on him pretty quickly, since it was a Saturday, I was in a hurry, and I couldn't understand a word he was saying.
About a half an hour after Mr. Harris called, Gallup called again. Feeling guilty about the way I treated Mr. Harris, I decided to go through the full 20 minutes with Ms. Gallup. Once, long ago and far away (well, two states away, anyway) I too was a summer pollster, and there is nothing more frustrating. Normally, I pretend I work for a polling place, too, since they can't poll you but can count it as a completed poll. But this time I decided to run the gamut.
Normally, a pollster tries to hide what it is he's actually pulling for, and it's a fun game to try and discern the true intent. Smartie once got asked to act as a test subject for a new pilot sitcom for NBC. It was pretty obvious once they started asking questions that they really were trying to figure out how effective their commercials were. (And those jerks never did give us the grocery shopping spree they promised afterwards). But Gallup seemed to be a straightforward, quality of life in Minneapolis type of poll. How are the parks, how is the arts, how's the transportation, is the city getting better or worse.
An hour later, the phone rings. It's a pollster. "May I ask how you got my number?" I ask him. "You're the third one to call today." He's flustered, I feel guilty, so I partake in another poll, not realizing that this is going to be the longest 40 minutes of my life.
We start with the standards: "How do you rate the job the president is doing? Excellent, good, fair or poor?" "Poor." "How do you rate the job Donald Rumsfeld is doing? Excellent, good, fair or poor." "Poor." "How do you rate the job Tom Delay is doing?" "Is there something lower than poor?" "No, I'm sorry, poor is all I have." "Okay, then poor."
Then it gets odd...
We veer a little tangentially, with some questions that appear to be about losing privacy through the Patriot Act. Then a weird one:
"Name two companies who have good reputations."
"What kind of companies?" I ask.
"You know, places that people work."
"You mean, just companies? No particular industry, no choosing out of a few?"
Then he asks for two with bad reputations.
"Halliburton and Wal-mart" I answer immediately.
"What new sources do you trust? How much news do you get off the internet? Do you approve of PR people putting things in news? Do you own a plasma TV?"
At this point, I kind of want to get back to those privacy questions from earlier, so I can tell them I strongly disapprove of overly intrusive polls.
But still I don't hang up. I've been at the other end of really long polls. You get a fat bonus for each one you finish, usually because most people hang up about 5 minutes from the end.
When we finally get there, it turns out I have participate on a Harris poll. This guy might possibly have been the same one I hung up on earlier, afraid to tell me it was him again on the possible change I would just refuse. So I think we are now done with the polling, or, at the very least, are no longer being stalked by them, and we can pick up the phone with abandon.
But I still want a choice lower than poor for Delay.
