Guinea Pig
The other day I received a very simple email titled "Decision Making Exercise" from the London Business School offering twenty pounds for participating in a one hour survey. Now not only is twenty pounds a lot of mony (~$35), but I also invite you to examine one aspect of my situation here in London for a moment.
I am paying for my own groceries. That means no eating at home (like in SF) or at the dining hall to save money...or actually to pass the buck to my parents. And I eat a lot, and often...so of course I am utterly excited by this email and I sign up immediately.
Today I went to the LBS to take the survey and found myself in a room smaller than my dorm room, divided into six mini cubicles. Now I don't know if any of you have ever done anything like this, but the entire process is a total mental trip, a constant mental battle between your gut instinct and what you think "they" are trying to examine about you. I scanned the room for cameras, made sure I had cell phone service, noticed how the pencils eerily lacked erasers (who buys those???), all while waiting for the door to lock and a mysterious voice to come over a speaker system telling us we'd been had.
Of course nothing like this ever actually happens, but between the three seasons of 24 I managed to cram in this summer and the desire to have something REALLY interesting to put in this blog, I expected and sort of wanted to uncover an enormous conspiracy. Maybe they were luring British residents in to test a highly unstable bird flu vaccine or something.
The first part of the survey was 40 multiple choice questions of completely useless information, like which animal has the biggest eyes (I checked the Blue Whale, but Giant Octopus might have been right) and when Kellog's invented Frosted Flakes. Of course there was also the question of Jon, Jane, and David's ages if Jon was six years older than the square root of David and Jane's combined age five years ago.
All the while there was something messed up about the questionairre. At first the packet I got only had page one of the survey, and I had to ask for another, not giving me nearly enough time to make a legitimate attempt at answering the questions. But they didn't seem to care. I, on the other hand, wanted my money.
Then in the next exercise my sheet was missing some more pages, leading me to believe that I had been singled out for some type of psychological analysis. I could imagine two doctors watching me through a camera discussing when I was going to get up and ask for a new packet.
Either way, the entire time I was trying to outsmart them with my answers to the other exercises, still suspicious of the entire process, and what was actually being "tested" of us.
After about 50 minutes we were shuffled out of the room to sign a sheet that had none of our names on it, only acknowledging that "Sample 1" had in fact received his twenty pounds. I was happy to be able to drop the mind games, but then I noticed my bill has a huge red X on it.
Just another day in Londontown...
I am paying for my own groceries. That means no eating at home (like in SF) or at the dining hall to save money...or actually to pass the buck to my parents. And I eat a lot, and often...so of course I am utterly excited by this email and I sign up immediately.
Today I went to the LBS to take the survey and found myself in a room smaller than my dorm room, divided into six mini cubicles. Now I don't know if any of you have ever done anything like this, but the entire process is a total mental trip, a constant mental battle between your gut instinct and what you think "they" are trying to examine about you. I scanned the room for cameras, made sure I had cell phone service, noticed how the pencils eerily lacked erasers (who buys those???), all while waiting for the door to lock and a mysterious voice to come over a speaker system telling us we'd been had.
Of course nothing like this ever actually happens, but between the three seasons of 24 I managed to cram in this summer and the desire to have something REALLY interesting to put in this blog, I expected and sort of wanted to uncover an enormous conspiracy. Maybe they were luring British residents in to test a highly unstable bird flu vaccine or something.
The first part of the survey was 40 multiple choice questions of completely useless information, like which animal has the biggest eyes (I checked the Blue Whale, but Giant Octopus might have been right) and when Kellog's invented Frosted Flakes. Of course there was also the question of Jon, Jane, and David's ages if Jon was six years older than the square root of David and Jane's combined age five years ago.
All the while there was something messed up about the questionairre. At first the packet I got only had page one of the survey, and I had to ask for another, not giving me nearly enough time to make a legitimate attempt at answering the questions. But they didn't seem to care. I, on the other hand, wanted my money.
Then in the next exercise my sheet was missing some more pages, leading me to believe that I had been singled out for some type of psychological analysis. I could imagine two doctors watching me through a camera discussing when I was going to get up and ask for a new packet.
Either way, the entire time I was trying to outsmart them with my answers to the other exercises, still suspicious of the entire process, and what was actually being "tested" of us.
After about 50 minutes we were shuffled out of the room to sign a sheet that had none of our names on it, only acknowledging that "Sample 1" had in fact received his twenty pounds. I was happy to be able to drop the mind games, but then I noticed my bill has a huge red X on it.
Just another day in Londontown...
posted by R Chu at
8:12 PM
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