At lunch today the cashier pointed at the bottom of the receipt, as they often do these days, and indicated a URL and a code. "If you go and fill out this survey, you can get a free meal". Now, free meal is a bit more definite than the usual "chance to win $PRIZE" for these sorts of things, and it's a small local chain that's one of my usual lunch spots, so when I got back to the office I visited the site. The survey was hosted by Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, so I wonder if it's someone's classwork to help out the restaurant with customer surveys? Anyway, the whole thing was pretty standard, but buried in the "please rate these statemtents from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree" were two statements that were A) poor survey design, because they contain too many variables and B) kind of felt like they were testing to see what the restaurant could get away with.

The quality of ingredients a restaurant uses is less important to me than making sure the restaurant abides by proper health codes and regulations.

I will dine at a restaurant with sub-par customer service if the food tastes really good.

So that first one—WTF? Both are important to me. If I say I disagree, does that mean I'm advocating that they use quality ingredients but give up on cleaning the place? And the second one… well, I'd probably actually agree. I mean, I eat at the Billy Goat. But I don't want them to know that I'm willing to trade really good food for rudeness.