Consumer Research Coding:The Worst Job I've Ever Had

My odyssey began in May of '97 when I took a job at a local consumer research firm which shall remain nameless. I got to spend the next nine fun-filled months editing mail-in surveys. I was in my early twenties and went into this with the mindset of "onward and upward", looking for advancement and higher pay. When I emerged from the other end I was angry at first but as time went by and I gained distance and thus perspective I saw it for what it was, truly, what everything is in the end, a learning experience. Though this will doubtlessly come across as a whiny, self-pitying rant.

After a week long training session that just left me more confused than when I went in and feeling vastly unprepared, my fellow new-hires and I were tossed, like so much sluice out a window in pre-Renaissance Europe, into the horror that was the Coding room.

In the Coding Room we were put to work immediately. Each of us was assigned several on-going surveys which we were each solely responsible for checking the status of and keeping up with. Coding was an in-house term for the process of editing said surveys. For each job we received booklets of codes, strings of letters and numbers developed by the firm's code designers and approved by their client companies, meant to be substituted for the answers people had supplied. This simplified the content of the surveys so they could be put into the system more quickly by the people in Data Entry.

Before I go any further I should point out that the names of co-workers I give from here on out are, of course, no their real names. This is partly because it's the polite thing to do and partly because this was ten years ago and, frankly, I can only recall a handful of their names anyway.

My co-workers consisted mainly of conniving, gossipy housewives who, when not complaining about their husbands or stabbing each other in the back, occasionally got some work done. We were overseen in our duties by the Coding Room's very own Gang of Four. There was Marci the clerical support madwoman who'd been with the firm almost as long as it had been in existence and who possessed a near savant-like understanding of the operations of the place. Next was Kate, a stern governess who could cause Catholic school graduates to have flashbacks. After her was Andy, a gaunt, pallid wraith of a man who spoke in an uninflected monotone. The three of them together could not hold a candle to Gina, She-Wolf of the SS, who timed people when they went to the bathroom but who would, herself, take long, leisurely lunch and cigarette breaks. I'm still not sure what the four of them actually did there other than terrorize. They answered to Beverly, who told me that they of the Coding Room weren't the best workers but she'd inherited them from her predecessor and felt obligated to keep them around.

From the outset we were informed that the firm had as clients some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the country and they expected results. Speed and accuracy were the two main concerns. And therein lay the means of my undoing. Try as I might I could not work fast enough to keep up with their deadlines. I was told repeatedly that everything about the way I worked was inefficient. The position in which I sat, the way I held my pen, the position of the survey box in relation to the reach of my arm, the manner in which I looked through the code booklets were all conspiring to bring down their quotas.
Once, when I went to speak to one of the code designers in her cubicle she actually lost her temper and launched into a tirade about the importance of the work they did there. "Our clients look to us to provide them with the most accurate statistics in the business! They could go anywhere but they come here! And do you know why?! Because we set the standard! They look to us for a certain level of competence! If we fail to provide for them in a timely manner they'll hire someone else and we'll all be out in the job line!!!!"

She sat there trembling and panting for several moments before recovering and stammering, "Oh my God! Oh my God! I didn't mean that! I'm so sorry! Oh my God! I didn't mean that!" The rest of my dealings with this particular code designer during my brief time there were essentially repeats of the above incident: meltdown followed by profuse apology.

Another group on whose good side I could never seem to get was the Data Entry people. This was one glum, humorless cadre of wage-slaves. I would take bundles of completed surveys over to a binder in Data Entry to record all of the relevant information pertaining to the job before turning it over to them. Since they had to refer to it as well as they completed a bundle and I could not move fast enough to get out of their way I continuously found myself desperately scribbling information into the binder while a line of them fumed behind me.

My other favorite was when I would be stalked and cornered among the shelves by Marci where she would hop up and down and literally throw a tantrum. "you have to put the boxes back on the shelves right away!"

By the time the verdict came down that I was to be let go I didn't even care. The lesson I gleaned from this was to never let myself work in an environment like that again. That was as close to a corporate setting as I hope I ever come. Incidentally my next job has worked out much better. I've been there for the past nine years.