Food Survey

Random food surveys are a great way to earn money and get a free meal. If you actually get on an email list and do legitimate surveys you can avoid getting poisoned! Or having a terrifying experience as I did in a random mall.

My story begins in a regular old mall like any other mall in America (because all malls look the same to me. Apologies to mall architects and designers). I had an entire afternoon to waste and I had already bought what I needed, so I began wondering aimlessy when a strange woman with a clipboard crossed my path.

“Do you want to make 5 dollars?” She asked.

“…yes. Yes I do,” I replied.

“…do you want some chooocolaaatteeee…?” she asked.

“…okaaaay.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Follow me, we’re going behind the mall.”

She had a clipboard! I trust people with clipboards!

So we travelled to the back of the mall through a white maze of florescent lighting and cheap ceiling tiles. It smelled kind of stale in this place, like there was an unattended water leak somewhere or something. I have had a few moments in my life where I have had the thought “Welp, this is it. I’m about to be murdered and/or kidnapped and there’s nothing I can do about it. I really should have learned how to not trust people. Or I should have stopped following strangers out of boredom.” Despite my fears, we arrived to a room with a single table, a single chair, a pencil, a clipboard, a bell, a plate of saltines, a cup of water, a plate of what I could only assume were little chocolates and a two way mirror.

I was given instruction to eat a saltine, drink some water, try the chocolate and answer the questions attached to the clipboard.

Ok. Simple enough.

The first few questions were normal. Questions such as, “How is the texture? How is the milk flavor? How is the chocolate flavor?” etc etc. I remember the word “Flavor” freaking me out. I was clearly not eating chocolate. I was eating the most artificially constructed thing to touch planet earth.

Then the questions started getting weird. Like “Would you replace a meal with this chocolate? Would you eat this if you were feeling sad?” I began to realize that these chocolates were basically going to be marketed to girls and women with eating disorders.

I felt dirty. I instantly went back over my answers and changed them all to “NO NO NO BAD BAD NO BAD!”

Then I rang the bell.

“Did I hear you riiiiiiiiiinginginginginginging?”

I guess she was trying to be funny by trying to imitate the bell sound by repeating “ing” but it came across as very strange. And creepy. And weird. She was weird.

I ended up getting my five bucks and RUNNING out of there. I looked at the five bucks and kept feeling dirty for some reason. It was like I had just done something really wrong to obtain this money.

Then I realized I had 5 bucks I didn’t really have to work for. So I bought some candy.