My $0.02 is worth way more than a buck

Like most people in my job, I receive lots of junk mail at work. Even more than I do at home. Part of this has to do with the nature of my work. I interact with lots of manufacturers and they all have my address to send me their latest mailers and catalogs and whatnot. The other part is because I’ve worked in a variety of departments companies I no longer need to work with continue to send me stuff I don’t need. The postal service, for example, came up with the crappiest excuse for a magazine I’ve ever seen last year. Allegedly, the point of the magazine is to show the latest in mailing technology, but it ends up being a monthly ad for the USPS. If I didn’t have personal experience (from previous positions) knowing just how horrible they were at sending stuff, I might find it interesting, but as it is it’s a glossy lie sent to my desk every month or so.

By now I’ve gotten pretty good at weeding out the chaff, but last week I received a plain envelope with limited markings on it. Upon opening it, I found a survey from some trade association and a crisp, new dollar bill. This is a fairly recent development in surveys (we studied it in my marketing research class in b-school) and the point is to try and guilt you into filling out the survey. The “Well, they gave me a buck, the least I could do is fill out a quick survey” method of response-encouragement – for lack of a better term.

I showed this to the other folks in by group, and then promptly threw out the survey. My neighbor looked at me in shock, saying “Aren’t you going to fill it out?”. I assured her I most certainly was not. By then I had rationalized that since the survey was in no way related to anything I did or anything my company does my response would only make their data worse than it would be otherwise. In fact, they were better off paying me not to take the survey. If only I can get more companies to send me surveys that they are better off not getting answers to. And think of what this will eventually lead to? Someday, our grandchildren will be offered brand new cars or a million yuan for 15 minutes on a survey.

But for now, if they offered me cheesecake or some Chubby Hubby they might be onto something. I’m sure that’ll be the cover story in the USPS pseudo-mag next month.