I received a phone call from a survey firm just after tonight's debate. I picked up the phone fully expecting it to be someone calling me on some variation of "what'd you think?" The survey itself focused on my computer habits at work.
The weird part came at the end. They asked if I would be willing to verify my answers by having them mail me a floppy disk, run that disk on my computer at work, and mail it back. You can thank me for not actually saying, "SOD OFF" at the idea, but I thought it real hard. I mentioned that I would NOT be willing to do so, and the reason for it is that I manage sensitive information on my work PC and such a thing is not permitted. Did I mention they offered me $20 for my efforts? My alarm bells would be ringing louder if I didn't hear several similar conversations going on behind my interviewer in similarly Indian-accented english.
In hind sight, I'm trying to figure out what the survey was about. I have to think back to that survey several months ago where X% of people would fork over their work password for a Snicker bar. The information they gathered consisted of:
Most strange.
The weird part came at the end. They asked if I would be willing to verify my answers by having them mail me a floppy disk, run that disk on my computer at work, and mail it back. You can thank me for not actually saying, "SOD OFF" at the idea, but I thought it real hard. I mentioned that I would NOT be willing to do so, and the reason for it is that I manage sensitive information on my work PC and such a thing is not permitted. Did I mention they offered me $20 for my efforts? My alarm bells would be ringing louder if I didn't hear several similar conversations going on behind my interviewer in similarly Indian-accented english.
In hind sight, I'm trying to figure out what the survey was about. I have to think back to that survey several months ago where X% of people would fork over their work password for a Snicker bar. The information they gathered consisted of:
- Basic demographic information such as age, number of adults in the home, that sort of thing
- Information relating to my work-place demographics, such as
- How many employees work for it?
- How many employees work at my site?
- Industry of my work
- Name of workplace [I declined to answer]
- My job title [declined]
- Information relating to my work-place technology usage, such as
- Office products in use
- Type of computers (apple/pc)
- Type of computers (desktop/laptop)
- Information relating to my specific technology usage at work, such as
- How many machines I use for personal computing (I didn't count servers, even though some of those consoles fit the standard they set)
- What kind of machine I have on my desk
- What types of activities I do at work relating to technology (use internet? use e-mail? use IM? Do personal finance? that sort of thing)
- Some questions regarding usage of technology at home
- What types of insurance I carry(?)
- My job function, with a lot of IT titles and one lone non-IT title [also declined]
Most strange.