"The Frosted Pop-Tarts of Credit Unions"
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a tale of silliness.
Whereas:
- Carole hates processing her personal email. A lot of it is stuff that’s only somewhat important, if that, and she finds it frustrating to have to sort through it all.
- I read incredibly fast. I can’t sing worth a damn and I’m overweight and un-athletic, but I can read really, really fast.
So… Carole has me process her inbox for her and let her know what’s actually important. I draw the line at reading all the email content - I go by the sender, subject, and the first-line preview that Gmail gives you. So if you’re wondering if your private emails to Carole are getting read by me first - actually no. I just mark things that look unimportant “read” and leave the rest for her to follow up on.
There are, however, a few exceptions to this process. Chief among them are the “customer surveys” that various organizations and merchants send out now and then. I know Carole’s never going to do any of ’em, and I know that in the long run, what one person says in response to a “how do you like us” survey from one’s local supermarket (for example) isn’t really going to matter much.
So I fill out the surveys Carole gets in her email, and I tend to be very, very silly.
My attitude is that “some poor bastard has to sit there reading all the responses to the free-text comments at the end of surveys, and I might as well give them a little dose of surreality”. For example, I went through a period a year or two ago where my answers to just about every survey had to do with the pending zombie apocalypse (and I say that as someone who’s never seen a single episode of The Walking Dead - I just thought it was funny).
Generally, I do all this with no expectation of ever hearing back from the merchant or organization who sent out the survey, even if I tick the checkmark that says “you can contact me about my responses”.
But… well, we got this card:
And inside we found this:
And we opened it and we found this (click to enlarge to full size):
Click to enlarge
But it gets better.
They actually called up as well and left a voice mail thanking Carole for “her” survey response.
Apparently, “Carole” really made their day.
You know what, though? I have no idea what I said in that survey.
Except, of course, that apparently it involved frosted Pop-Tarts.