In the spirit of general thriftiness and being willing to make an easy buck, I get these emails from time to time asking if I want to do a survey on X, Y or Z. Usually they don’t apply to me or it's $25 for a hour, which isn’t worth my while, so when the cat food one came up and they were offering $90 for two hours, I thought that was OK. I'd done on of them before (years ago) and it was sort of fun.
Right.
Got a babysitter and trekked up the Yonge and Eligible - roughly a 45 minute trip. Hmmm. That should have been a clue. I get there and there are eight other ladies waiting in the office. They look a bit… down-market, but hey, whadda you expect for a survey company? Anyway, we go around in the circle and introduce ourselves and our cats and the problems immediately become apparent. Some of my favourite personality types are there!
A. The long talker. She pauses before everything like she's about to make a life-changing announcement, and then goes on at long and slow and boring length about something so basic we get her meaning before she's done the first sentence.
B. The truly crazy. Her cat is her best friend, she has a hundred boring stories about it that she thinks were all dying to hear, and she has absolutely no concept of what a focus group is for. FOCUS group, people. Not group therapy. Not a advertorial for Walmart. Focus group.
C. The my-cat-is-special type. We had a couple of those. My cat is too old or too fragile to do what normal cats do. I would buy that but my cat can'tcope I like variety but my cat can't eat fish because of the ash the ash you know the urinary tract thing and the vet said about the ash the ash the fish the flavours aaarrrggghhh!
They could have paid me $200 and it would have been barely enough. I gotta give the woman who ran the group credit, though. She shut down the long talkers and the whack jobs just as fast as she could. I bet she just loves her job.
I will never misuse the term "crazy cat lady" again. If I use it on you, you're in serious trouble.
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