Talk Back: Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Whenever we see a bubble, we pop it. That’s why nobody played with us when we were little. While all the other kids were blowing soap bubbles, we’d be chasing after their handiwork with … we’d better stop right there. Before we’re sued for spreading dangerous “ideas.”
Suffice it to say even at that age we knew what pointy-haired bosses were good for.
Of course, now that we are pillars of the community, we’ve turned to more genteel pastimes. Like popping bubble wrap. And honing our lawn dart hurling skills. Because you never know when a 40-story, glow-in-the-dark bubble might set up shop in your backyard without so much as a by-your-leave.
Pointy-haired bosses merely bounce off them, you see.
Anyway, we were practicing our patented submarine spinning sidewinder maneuver when the mail arrived, and everything changed. For there on top of the stack was a letter from our new best buds at MDOT. They’d been so impressed with our recent survey answers, they wanted us to help them better understand how we used Michigan’s transportation system and suggest ways to make it better. All we had to do was tell them where we went and how we got there, and they’d give us a $10 gift card.
Which they’d double if we let their app do the tracking and reporting instead.
Alas, it wouldn’t work with our tin cans and string. Still, ten bucks was ten bucks. Besides, it seemed pretty simple. Keep track of our travel for one day — 7 miles as it turned out — then fill out an online report — how hard could it be? Note to self.
Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
What we figured would take only a few seconds wound up taking days to complete. The four errands we did along the way were four different “trips,” they said. Pretty crazy but, hey, we’ll call a 150,000-square-foot bubble a flea if that’s what it takes to get a gift card. Oddly enough, MDOT didn’t give a whit about the distance traveled or how much wear and tear we put on their precious pavement. Instead, they were far more focused on arrival and departure times for each stop, details about our destination — saying “store” wasn’t good enough; which store was it and what was its address — how long we were there, if we used a drive-thru, whether we had to pay for parking, what type of vehicle we drove, how old it was, what kind of fuel it took — banana peels, we said — and that was just for starters.
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Then they went through the whole rigamarole again — only this time the questions pertained to employment and work-related travel. Followed by a litany of inquiries about how often we used buses. Or bicycles. Or walked. And whether we were even capable of doing those things. Or wanted to. Not to mention asking how many hours a day we worked — in our case that was about 64 — and whether we were hunters and foragers or such lazy good-for-nothings that we hired Uber and Lyft to take care of such menial tasks. Finally, we were down to the last question. Would we fill out more surveys for them? Sure, we said. That’s when we did the math.
And realized that gift card paid off at only three cents an hour.
Well, that sure burst our bubble. So there we were, grousing and grumbling and … hey, what’s that thing down the street? A giant inflatable? With a target on it? A perfect foil for our aggressive tendencies!
Now where’d we put those lawn darts.
Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time at www.localbuzzradio.com, Facebook Live and www.dougspade.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Talk Back: Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
