The careers service at the university I am associated with decided to have a survey pop up on logging in to their website. I don't mind doing surveys that are supposed to be about finding ways to improve a service I use.
How clever... Every time I log in it asks me if I want to complete the survey.
How clever... It saves the data so you can come back and finish it later.
How completely, absolutely stupid do they have to be to make me do the survey every time? Especially after I have filled everything in and clicked "submit"!
I certainly do mind a survey that makes my life just that little bit more tarnished. Thankfully, there is a bright, gleaming surface under this patina of frustration, one which can be brought forth through a liberal application of polish and elbow grease. The silver polish I need comes in a tin labelled, "Do you have any other comments about our service?"
Why yes... yes I do...
This is the fourth time I have logged in to YourWebsite and been faced with the same survey I filled in and submitted the first time I found it. I realise you may have difficulty understanding this, but that means I have had to scroll through it and click the submit button five times now.
While I understand your opinion of unemployed students is that they are shiftless layabouts who sleep until noon and watch daytime soap operas, the truth is wildly different. Even if I conformed to that stereotype, my time would still be valuable. Soap operas do not watch themselves, after all. To elaborate further, I am trying to inform you that the continuing adventures of people named after geographical features, who stare off into the middle distance struck with the awesome gravity of their situation when they hear the milk has gone off or the cat puked on the carpet, would be more stimulating than clicking "submit" for the sixth time.
However, it happens that I do not conform to that rather outdated archetype, which must have been formed at the same time as your library of resources crafted to help people with their job-seeking were created. I'm guessing that was the mid nineteen nineties - perhaps it's time to find a birdcage to line with them?
The truth is, I am a young, go-getting woman who wants to finance her high-flying lifestyle with a career other than sitting here filling in the same survey over and over. Well, that's not entirely true... I'm not that young, and every second spent scrolling down and resubmitting this form is another few grains of sand slipping through my fingers into the abyss... and the gigantic, bloated spider of being considered too old to employ draws ever closer.
This distasteful situation also has sour twist added to it. I have realised that the person who coded this survey no doubt graduated from this fine institution, and yet didn't actually have the mental capacity to imagine what it would be like for an end user to be confronted with the same form over and over. This is extremely galling to me, as I am in the same field, though no doubt I have a different skill set. For starters, I do not drool all over the keyboard and bang my forehead on the keys in a crude imitation of typing when I am programming.
I sincerely hope that this situation will be remedied as soon as you manage to find someone to read this complaint to you, and then you both find someone else to explain what it all means. As you will no doubt conclude, I am a bitter and twisted individual. But you must understand: This sort of time wasting has contributed greatly to my bright and cheery outlook on life. You only have yourselves to blame. If you're not motivated to fix the survey yet, just imagine this: After three to four years of putting up with this sort of stupidity, how many more students are feeling the same way, and on seeing this survey will feel compelled to tell you in excruciating detail?