The Value of a Dollar

Maybe it's because I work in research, or maybe it's because I know how it feels to cold call someone, or maybe I just like giving my opinion. But whenever I'm asked to take a survey, I do it.

This past summer I bought a new car, and about a month ago I received a follow-up mail survey. It asked me to rate things like vehicle features, comfort, performance, etc. And enclosed with the survey materials, as an incentive, was the newest, crispest dollar bill I'd ever seen in my life. This thing was so perfect, so untouched by gritty human hands, that I still haven't even put it in my wallet. It was so crisp that, as it sat on our coffee table for a few days, multiple people (friends, my mom) who'd come over actually commented on it:

"Look at this dollar! Where did you get this?"

"This is the newest-looking dollar I've ever seen!"

A one-dollar bill had become the biggest conversation piece in my apartment.

And for some reason, while I probably would have answered the questions anyway, this lovely piece of currency really was an incentive for me to take and mail that survey. If it had been old, torn, crumpled, or wrinkled, there's no way it would have had the same effect; in fact, I likely would have had the opposite reaction: "Wow, they want my opinion so badly, they sent me a whole chewed-up dollar."

It's a neat little piece of irony that in this down-the-crapper economy, a single dollar bill bought 15 minutes of my time. And perhaps it's even more ironic that we pay some of our hardest-to-get recruits upwards of $100, and I was willing to settle for a buck.