A simple "No" would have been nice

I apologize for the long delay in my posts. It turns out when I sit in a cubicle in front of a computer all day, I don't have any desire to sit in front of my computer. But anyway, I feel a few stories are long overdue.

A few weeks ago, we conducted visitor surveys at one of the museums. This mainly required me to walk up to museum visitors and tell them (I didn't ask because they didn't need an option to say no) to take my brief survey before they started their museum visit. Because it was a survey, I certainly couldn't force them to take it, but I was supposed to be a good salesgirl and stand there and convince them.

My first survey out of the gate was the most awful experience, and after that I was assigned to hold the counter and count visitors. Our point person sent me to talk to a pimple-faced sixteen year-old, who apparently had a mother who failed to teach him any manners. He was the perfect candidate for a little "home training." I politely walked up to him and handed him my survey. At that point, if he really didn't want to take the survey, the polite answer would have been, "No, thank you."

At that point, I would have asked him for his zip code, collected a little demographic information and walked away. What he chose to do was repeat "No, thank you" over and over again, while staring at his feet and avoiding eye contact. He was not developmentally delayed, he was not visiting with a special needs class. He was just a sorry little punk, who is lucky that my boss was there because he really deserved a nice whack with my clipboard or a very strongly worded talking to.

I feel sorry for his mother.