Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [5]
I sampled the Vanilla.
“How would you rate the colour on that?” she asked anxiously, pencil poised. “Natural, Somewhat Artificial, or Definitely Unnatural?”
“Have you thought about putting raisins in it?” I said, turning to the Caramel. I didn’t wish to offend her.
“Raisins are too risky,” she said. “Many don’t like them.”
I set down the Caramel and tried the Orange. “Are you going to have them serve it hot?” I asked. “Or maybe with cream?”
“Well, it’s intended primarily for the time-saver market,” she said. “They naturally would want to serve it cold. They can add cream if they like, later, I mean we’ve nothing really against it though it’s not nutritionally necessary, it’s fortified with vitamins already, but right now we want a pure taste test.”
“I think subsequent meals would be best,” I said.
“If we could only do it in the middle of the afternoon. But we need a family reaction.…” She tapped her pencil thoughtfully on the edge of the stainless-steel sink.
“Yes, well,” I said, “I’d better be getting back.” Deciding for them what they wanted to know wasn’t part of my job.
Sometimes I wonder just which things are part of my job, especially when I find myself calling up garage mechanics to ask them about their pistons and gaskets or handing out pretzels to suspicious old ladies on street corners. I know what Seymour Surveys hired me as – I’m supposed to spend my time revising the questionnaires, turning the convoluted and overly-subtle prose of the psychologists who write them into simple questions which can be understood by the people who ask them as well as the people who answer them. A question like “In what percentile would you place the visual impact value?” is not useful. When I got the job after graduation I considered myself lucky – it was better than many – but after four months its limits are still vaguely defined.
At times I’m certain I’m being groomed for something higher up, but as I have only hazy notions of the organizational structure of Seymour Surveys I can’t imagine what. The company is layered like an ice-cream sandwich, with three floors: the upper crust, the lower crust, and our department, the gooey layer in the middle. On the floor above are the executives and the psychologists – referred to as the men upstairs, since they are all men – who arrange things with the clients; I’ve caught glimpses of their offices, which have carpets and expensive furniture and silk-screen reprints of Group of Seven paintings on the walls. Below us are the machines – mimeo machines, I.B.M. machines for counting and sorting and tabulating the information; I’ve been down there too, into that factory-like clatter where the operatives seem frayed and overworked and have ink on their fingers. Our department is the link between the two: we are supposed to take care of the human element, the interviewers themselves. As market research is a sort of cottage industry, like a hand-knit sock company, these are all housewives working in their spare time and paid by the piece. They don’t make much, but they like to get out of the house. Those who answer the questions don’t get paid at all; I often wonder why they do it. Perhaps it’s the come-on blurb in which they’re told they can help to improve the products they use right in their own homes, something like a scientist. Or maybe they like to have someone to talk to. But I suppose most people are flattered by having their opinions asked.
Because our department deals primarily with housewives, everyone in it, except the unfortunate office-boy, is female. We are spread out in a large institutional-green room with an opaque glassed cubicle at one end for Mrs. Bogue,