Saturday, May 7, 2011

Success of 2011 census may come down to nagging, guilt

Success of 2011 census may come down to nagging, guilt

"We're counting on Canadians to recognize the importance of this information and respond to the NHS if they are selected," she said.
And if they don't, Statistics Canada isn't above nagging people to take part.
Rivais said Canadians who don't fill out their survey may get a phone call or knock on the door from the agency.
"We'll ... follow up and ask them to participate," said Rivais. "We'll explain to you why it's important. And if you say you understand but you still don't want to do it, then, well, you don't do it and we're done."
Try 5 times.

The last time I was asked to fill out a voluntary survey, I was nagged 5 times for a total of about an hour of my time before they finally stopped trying to brow beat me into doing the survey.

And just think, if they had quietly accepted the decision to make the long-form voluntary, I might have taken the survey. Because they didn't accept the decision quietly, because they decided that the Canadian public should be forced into answering questions as inane as "how many bedrooms are in your house" or "how much unpaid work do you do in your household", because they didn't accept MY decision that I didn't want to participate in their survey, they just strengthened my resolve to cooperate less with them in the future.

Perhaps, instead of paying $150 for two or more bureaucrats to successively nag me and harass me, they should consider PAYING $50 for the inconvenience of filling out their survey, and they would likely guarantee that I would not only fill it out, but fill it out honestly.

Huh... it looks like they have plenty of money in the budget too...

2 comments:

  1. We were selected to take an employment survey. What a complete waste of time. Once a month, I am asked identical questions for at least ten minutes. Why don't they just ask "Has anything changed?" and leave it at that? Probably because that would cut their required workforce by at least 75%.

    I'm paying taxes to pay people to ask me about my work hours. So stupid.

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  2. Not only that, you`re paying people to FORCE you to answer questions about your work hours. That`s the best reason I can think of to be a libertarian.

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