The HRchive CONTENTS

Love 'n Hate Index   >> Issue 1 - SREs     >> Issue 2 - Indies     >> Issue 3 - Clientside Res     >> Issue 4 - MD / Agency Boss     >> Issue 5 - MR Software Sales     >> Issue 6 - Omnibus Researchers     >> Issue 7 - TV Researcher     >> Issue 8 - MR Recruiters     >> Issue 9 - Office Party Planner     >> Issue 10 - MR Marketing Mgrs     >> Issue 11 - Associate Directors     >> Issue 12 - Field Mgrs     >> Issue 13 - JRE & Grad Trainee     >> Issue 14 - Head of Research     >> Issue 16 - Pharma Res Client     >> Issue 17 - Tel Interviewers     >> Issue 18 - Aussie Researchers     >> Issue 19 - Personnel Mgrs

• The profit margin now that the building, equipment and furniture are all paid for and the agency side carries the running costs of the place.
• The weeks where there are full bookings and life is hectic.
• Clients who thank you when they leave. Moderators who thank you when they leave. ANYONE who thanks you when they leave!
• The look on the moderator’s face when realising there have been cross wires about incentives and no one has brought any... but we only enjoy this if it happens to a snooty one. The nice ones find we will drive them around cash points and even top up their funds if need be.
• Seeing respondents leave smiling and relaxed when they had been tense and nervous when they came.
• Meeting people from all over the world.
• Helping make something ‘happen’ when all seemed lost.. (Finding a US to UK PC adaptor. Touring local shops and supermarkets for test products everyone forgot to bring. Taking a group at (literally) the last minute because the moderator’s plane has been delayed and the 5 Japanese clients are getting restless).

• The weeks where there are few bookings. Life is boring and turnover down.
• Clients who treat you like 18th century servants from ‘below stairs’. (Smile sweetly).
• Taxis. Taxi companies who are unreliable and uncaring. Taxi drivers who sit honking their horns for people to come out when they were the cause of the group starting half an hour late.
• Customers who don’t tell you what food they would like (after half a dozen times of asking) and then turn up expecting a hot meal for 10 assuming you have restaurant facilities.
• People who ask you to recruit ‘an easy, straightforward group’ at the last minute and then you discover you are looking for 60+ women who conduct internet banking using their mobile phones.
• Moderators who bully respondents... you vill answer my questions!”
• Moderators who bully our staff.
• Clients who don’t go home, even though it’s 11.30pm, but use the viewing room like a hotel lounge (in spite of much door closing and key jangling). We wouldn’t mind so much if they were still talking about the research project.
• Folks who complain we are difficult to find even though the name of the place is four foot high outside, they have evidently just driven past us 6 times, they live 2 miles away and the folks who drove 150 miles found us with no bother.