It seemed like a good idea at the time. Jason got a call from Arbitron asking if we would be willing to be part of a radio ratings survey. Hell yeah! It sounded awesome! We would finally be one of the people who decide which stations get top ratings in our area.

I doubt that there is anyone who doesn't know who Arbitron is. If you listen to any station bitch about their ratings, they always mention Arbitron. Arbitron is to radio what Neilson is to television.

Neither of us have ever been a part of something like this before. I remember as a kid hearing about the Neilson ratings and thinking how cool it would be to have that box on our t.v., tracking all of our watching habits. Sure, there's part of me that thinks it's a little creepy a la 1984, but one could have a say in which shows should stay on the air. I guarantee, had we had a Neilson machine when I was a kid, the Spelling empire would have floundered because I would have done anything to keep that dreck from maintaining popularity.

The premise seemed pretty basic. We would receive a form in the mail and starting on Wednesday of a certain week we would fill in each day with what we listened to. And we had to keep track of what station it was any time we heard a radio, even if it wasn't ours or a station we picked. Which created a heightened awareness of how much radio I actually listen to, but I'll delve into that a little later. If we didn't listen or hear a radio on that particular day, we just marked on the bottom of the page "Did not listen today" and it was done. We had to send the survey back in as soon as possible after the final day of recording (but not before the end of the survey period, or else the survey was invalid and would not be counted) so we had to postmark them for the following Thursday. Pretty basic, right?

Apparently some people are unclear on concept, because the day the survey started began our week from hell. You'd think we're talking rocket science the way the company kept hounding us. On Monday of the week we were to do the survey, Arbitron called to make sure we received the surveys. Yes, yes. Do they make sense, do you understand what you're doing? Yes, it's pretty clear what one is supposed to do with these. Thanks for participating don't forget to start on Wednesday. Fine, fine, goodbye. The first day (Wednesday) Arbitron calls again to make sure that we knew that today was the day to begin. I told her that we had already started filling them out. She asked if we understood that it was any radio, not just ones we picked and reminded us that if we didn't listen to mark the bottom of the page. Okay, thanks. Which would have been fine. A bit insulting of my intelligence, but fine.

Then they called again. And again. AND AGAIN! I swear to god/dess, we received calls EVERY FUCKING DAY!!!! By Friday we were already tired of the calls and said that they didn't need to call us anymore. They even called on the weekend! By Sunday, I was tempted to send my survey in early just so they would quit calling. By Monday, we started getting indignant and told them that we were tired of them calling, we get it, and we'll send it in at the end of the week. The other thing they kept reminding us of was to complete the demographic info on the back page and to fill in any comments in the comment box. We informed them that we had already done that and our comment box addressed the issue of the incessant calls to remind us to fill in our surveys.

We actually looked at the caller ID on the phone, and we received a total number of 26 calls from Arbitron- from three days before the beginning of the survey period to the day after it was completed. Now granted, we didn't answer all of the calls because some of them were during the day. But they left a voice mail reminder and then proceeded to call again in the evening when we were home.

Personally, I don't like being treated like a preschooler. I mean, I am almost forty, not four. I think I know how to fill out a piece of paper. I don't need reminders two to three times a day on how to do something that you've already explained to me. It all goes back to micromanagement. Either you trust me to do something or you don't. If you don't, then don't ask me to do it. If you do, let me do my job and leave me the hell alone. I don't need the Thought Police standing over my shoulder making sure I'm doing it right. Gah!

But upon further rumination, there were a couple lessons learned from the experience:

1) I am NOT a fan of micromanagement. I mean, it's something I figured out when I worked for The Former Employer Who Shall Remain Nameless® but this just confirmed it. I have little patience for people who say they trust me and then show me that they clearly don't.

2) I "listen" to a lot more radio than I realize. It wasn't until I was doing the survey and really paying attention to all the places that I hear a radio that I discovered how often I truly hear it. Which in some ways skewed my survey a bit, because the radio stations that I heard more often than not were ones I would not have chosen to listen to. But I wrote them down, because that was what I had been instructed to do. 800 million times.

3) In all fairness, I will give Arbitron some benefit of the doubt. It's kind of like those dumb warnings you see on things, such as "contents under pressure- do not aim at eye while opening" on a Dr. Pepper bottle. The reason those stupid warnings are there is because some numnut didn't engage their brain and now everyone has to be warned about the potential for danger in opening a bottle of pop or holding a cup of coffee between their legs. It's a Department of Duh thing, but because some dumbass didn't think first we all have to suffer. I am going to assume that the reason Arbitron felt they had to hound us multiple times on a daily basis is because they have had trouble in the past. Which leads me to my last realization:

4) If the people who regularly participate in these surveys have to be reminded constantly to do them, I shouldn't be surprised by the crap that gets high ratings. I mean, think about it. This means that complete imbeciles are deciding which stations we should listen to and get the most commercial dollars. WTF?!?

To summarize: if you get a call from Arbitron asking to participate in a survey, say "No!" and realize that the reason the shitty stations get the best ratings is because dumbasses who can't remember to fill in a survey without a daily reminder are making the call. Bleh.