The U.S. Government Comes A-Calling

Got a call from a pollster at the Centers for Disease Control just now, regarding tobacco. Our exchange, pretty much verbatim:

She: Have you smoked a cigarette in the past seven days?

Me: No.

She: In the past thirty days?

Me: No.

She: How about in the past year?

Me: I don't believe I've smoked a cigarette in more than twenty years.

She: I know this is repetitive, I have to ask you this, OK? In the past five years?

Me: [laughing] No.

She: How about in the last ten years?

Me: That would be another no. 

She: Fifteen years?

Me: No. Nope. Noperooney.

She: So has it been more than fifteen years since you last smoked a cigarette?

Me: Nothing wrong with your powers of deduction! Hey, this isn't personal, I swear, but would you be surprised if I told you that you're confirming some long-held suspicions about the federal government? You do see that it's a little bit nuts to keep asking these questions once I've given you the answer you're after, right?

She: I understand sir. As I said, they might be a little repetitive.

Me: Oh hell, it's fine — at least you're giving me something to blog about. Please, continue.

She: Thank you. Have you ever smoked tobacco in a water pipe, also known as a hookah, even once in your life?

Me: Sure. Late seventies, early eighties.

She: Have you smoked a water pipe in the past week?

Me: Nein. Nyet.

She: In the past thirty days?

Me: This is going to take a while, isn't it?

Nice lady. I'm sure I'll remember her for a fleeting moment come April 15.

Comments

[William]

The really scary part about the exchange is that polls are like that because there are some shockingly stupid people out there. I worked in a polling call center for a couple of years back in the late 90s. We mostly did consumer satisfaction and product testing surveys, so our participants were almost exclusively opt-ins rather than cold calls (except for the six months of questions about elderly buggery I had to ask when we took on a Medicare contract). Surveys are designed to be redundant because you'll often ask someone "how many times have you used product X in the past week,?" they'll give you a number, and when you follow up with "in the last day?" they'll give you a larger number. When we were doing a survey on a new snack food there were several people who insisted that they hadn't gotten around to trying the product yet, then asked if we could send more because it was really good.

tl;dr the world is designed for stupid people, if your IQ is above 80 or so you're going to be insulted a lot...

[Matt]

Why would you allow your time to be wasted like that?

It's easy to avoid:
Her: "Hi, I'm calling from the CDC, would you mind..."
You: "Not interested."
--click--

[Rogier]

Matt:

It was a slow day.

Nah, not really. I actually pricked up my ears when I heard the survey was about tobacco attitudes. Libertarian instincts being what they are, I could have hung up, and I was briefly tempted (for instance, I won't complete anything related to the U.S. census until such a time as an official puts a gun to my head). But refusing to cooperate in a "views" survey means that libertarians don't get their viewpoints out there, while everyone else does. So, while I had the CDC's ear, I registered my opposition to anti-tobacco scaremongering, as well as my opposition to overly draconian smoking bans. Stupid ideas, attacks on personal liberty, and deliberate falsehoods are always worth fighting back against. Your mileage may vary.

[Don]

Back in 1994 a brand new quadrazillion dollar state funded vocational school opened in my hometown and I promptly signed up for a night time AutoCAD class. In the indoctrination process many forms were filled out and I hadn't seen anything like this since the 60's. First, all the text on the forms was crooked, the ink was blotched all over the place and the ink itself was that hideous purple stuff? Remember that color? Yes, this bazillion dollar state of the art state spectacle was using copying techniques that were 50+ years old. That was the first red flag and the 2nd flag appeared 10 minutes into the first class.
My god how these *people* can mismanage a system. I've been a business owner for 26 years and never would I ever consider the things I saw there nor would I tolerate them. Amazingly enough 15 years later this same institution is still running and no doubt even magnitudes less efficient than before. Everything this gov't touches costs far more than necessary and produces far, far less than predicted. When the final tally is done sometime in the future it will be shown that the cost of this 200+ year old social experiment is more than all the rest of global history combined and it will never be repaid.