I have just succumbed to an encounter with that scourge of my socialist class, the privatised utility company. The one that provides my Gas & Electricity is called E.on (well its caled that for this week at least). Somehow they, or an even more sinister entity their market researchers have got hold of my mobile phone number. Well, in a weak, off guard, moments madness I answered the phone to a withheld number. So there I was, talking to an overly polite young man (How old do I sound!), hooked in to a customer survey, too polite and reserved to escape.
After a few establishing shots he started with questions of satisfaction. I had to rate experiences from not satisfied at all to extremely satisfied. I immediately started a grammatical debate over whether you can be extremely satisfied or was satisfaction an absolute. "After all" I said "the root of satisfaction is the verb to be sated, and you are either sated or not. You can't be extremely sated just as you can't be extremely pregnant!" I don't think this poor cold caller, who had probably spent the day being sworn at, appreciated my pedantry. God bless him, he stuck to his task with a level of steadfastness you could only expect from Guantanamo Bay interrogators. He was bloody well going to get some straight answers out of me, probably because I'd been his only catch of the day. Next I had to rate my opinion of their services from 1 - 6 and then respond to statements by agreeing strongly, disagreeing weakly or not giving a F***. We plodded on like this for the next 15 minutes, he desperate for simple answers, me trying to shoehorn debate at every turn. By the end he got his answers, and I lost 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back. I did want to ask him at the end if he strongly agreed that market research is b*******and if he was extremely satisfied with his career choice, but never got the chance.
On another matter. My laptop has just completed yet another update. I decided to see what this one did. The description went as follows.
Install this update to enable future updates to install successfully on all editions of Windows Vista. This update may be required before selected future updates can be installed. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Once you have installed this item, it cannot be removed.
Answers on a postcard please? (If they still exist) Its nearly as bad as our workplace Policy entitled - Policy On Writing Policy
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6 comments:
I'm not with Eeyore, or whatever it's called. British Gas, despite being the most expensive, still manage to be the most useless. After three years, they just wrote to us to welcome us to our new home, The Occupier... and the next day sent us a letter to say we'll be cut off if we don't pay our bill (paid three weeks ago).
I am not sated at all, in this regard. I am positively ravenous. Tell Sid.
Hmmmm, I'm not sure you can say "satisfaction" is an absolute or incomparable term. Wouldn't that be like arguing you are either drunk or not? There are surely degrees of drunkenness just as there are degrees of satiety.
I love that bit about how the software update "cannot be removed". What kind of idiot makes something that "cannot" be removed? One reason why I have turned off automatic updates on my computer...
Sid has a lot to answer for
I knew I was on shakey ground with my gramatical point, but as a seasoned Trade Unionist I never let accuracy get in the way of my point.
Ive also figured the best way to get comments on a post is to include the odd error.
like the auto updates. They make me feel wanted!
Sorry to be a humourless pedant - but actually such questions interest me :)
never apologise
A Blog without Pedantry is like a Dictionary without Definitions
No idea what they're called thesedays, don't tend to focus on the masthead when reading the bill.
I got caught by one researcher similally too polite to slam the phone down. Didn't really pay attention enough to be pedantic just randomly said satisfied or un satisfied to get it over with. And I suspect he was as well.
Thats why companies shouldnt pay too much attention to customer research.
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