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March 21, 2005
The Dating Service Pt 2
I started thinking about my scheduled visit to the dating service office. It was free and by going I'd be sticking it to the man by giving one of their telemarketers a $100 bonus, but I was still leaning toward not going to my meeting. I can't go to this stupid thing.
But it's free. And you even get to spend someone else's money.
Yeah, but I don't want to go to a dating service.
It's not like you're going to sign up or anything.
But I'm going to have gone, and if I tell anyone they won't know I went as a joke, just to find out what they do on the inside, and they'll laugh at me.
Yeah. You'd laugh at them.
Yeah. See? I can't go.
After a few conversations with myself like that I decided not to go to the meeting. Sure, the office was just a couple minutes out of my way right between work and home, but I didn't want to go anymore.
But for some reason I can't say no.
The dating service called me up on the morning of the day I was supposed to have my meeting, "Brian, I calling to see if you are still OK with the meeting you set up for this evening."
"Yeah." No. I'm not going; I'm just telling you I'm going.
"Ok. I'll see you at 5:30."
Telling them I was still interested in going was a mistake. When I missed my meeting they called me up at home again. They asked me why it was I missed the meeting saying they hoped it wasn't because I was no longer interested. They begged me to schedule another meeting.
Why did I skip the meeting? I thought to myself. I should go to this meeting. I want to see what they do. You're not supposed to make fun of things you don't know. You have to know it.
"No. No. I'm still interested. Something just came up at work." We scheduled another meeting.
I stopped in at the dating service's office after work and found a completely empty waiting room. It wasn't like I imagined. I was like a hotel lobby. An empty hotel lobby. I was expecting people. A receptionist maybe, but there wasn't one. There was nobody, and I thought that was a little odd.
I sat down and picked up the only book in the place. It was a book about their successful pairings that ended in marriage. There were pictures sent in by the happy couples. I saw that. I opened up the book, a scrapbook-type thing and saw that it had pictures of weddings with names, but that's all I saw. Someone burst into the lobby and wisked me into a small meeting room. Then he left saying he'd be back in a minute.
My guess was they tried to keep two people from occupying the lobby at the same time - they might flirt, hit it off and leave without paying the dating service the finder's fee.
I sat in the meeting room and waited a few minutes for the man to come back. In the meantime I heard another meeting on the other side fo the wall. "~ No. No one bi. I couldn't handle that. ~" I made an effort to listen closer but the guy came back in.
"Brian. I have a questionaire for you to fill out. It's a personality questionaire we have everyone fill out so that we find you that special someone that most closely matches your personality. I need you to fill it out as honestly as possible. I'll be back in a couple minutes and then we'll do an interview so I can get a feel for who would best suit you. We interview everyone here and then make the decisions based on interviews, not only on how you fill in the circles. We're more accurate than computerized dating services that way."
I took the form and filled it out while the guy left the room. I was mostly honest, as I couldn't really add outlandish flares by just checking boxes. Still I provided enough false answers for it not to accurately reflect my personality.
The guy came back in about 10 minutes and found me waiting for him. "Wow. That was quick. You're done already?"
"Yep." Did I not tell you I wasn't serious about this? Oops.
"Ok. Well, I'll be right back with your scores. In the meantime here is a booklet describing our dating service. You'll see it was founded by two doctors with over 75 combined years in the field."
The dating service field?
He came back in a couple minutes with a scored personality test. "Well, let me tell you, Brian, we can call a lot about a person from their answers to these questions." Then he went on to tell me exactly who I was according to my fake answers. He told me about how the dating service was founded with only MY interests in mind. He told me again how his service was better than a computerized service. Then he started asking me questions. At first they were easy ones. Where do you live? How old are you?
Then they got a little tougher. What do you do? How much do you make? They were a little tougher because I hadn't prepared a character. I made up an occupation, and I thought I made a good estimate at the income, but he didn't seem to agree. "$75,000 as a temp?"
"Yeah. Well. It's in the tech field. It's a...It's not a temp like you're thinking. I'm more of a consultant."
"Oooh. I see." He seemed pretty excited about that answer.
But I eventually slipped up. I started answering questions truthfully. It didn't really matter, as I had no intention of ever signing up for the service, but I fell out of the little bit of character I had gotten into.
When he started asking the relationship questions I was no longer pretending to be someone totally interested in the dating service.
"So how bad do you feel that you haven't found that special someone?"
"What? Bad?"
"Yes. When you think about not having that special someone how bad do you feel?"
"You mean like do I wake up crying because I haven't found a wife? I don't do that."
"Well do you want to find your special someone?"
Why does this guy keep saying special someone? "Do you mean right now. This minute? Or, like, eventually?"
"Both."
"Well it doesn't bother me that I don't have that special someone right now. I guess it might some day. Like, if I was 70 or something and hadn't found my special someone I might be kind of sad."
The questioning went on like that for a little bit until he changed the subject to actually meeting someone and dating them.
"How long does it take you to decide if you want to date another person?"
"I don't know. About 15 minutes?"
"Wrong. It takes about 30 seconds."
What the hell does this guy mean, "wrong?" He drew a triangle on a pad of paper on his desk and tried explaining it to me.
"How long does it take for you to decided whether or not you like someone's personality?"
"Oh. That's about 15 minutes then."
"Nope. That takes 1 to 2 weeks."
Asshole. He changed the the triangle into a taller pyramid and said some more bullshit. Honestly I wasn't listening because I thought the guy was a dick.
There was one more question, I think about compatibility. He asked me to give another time estimate and I refused. I was going to get it wrong anyway. The guy wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say, he just wanted to tell me about how great his service was. He told me some junk and then drew more on the bottom of the pyramid. Then he drew another upside down pyramid and told me how they do all the work for you, all the hard stuff, and save you the time of getting to know someone by making you take the compatability test I just filled out.
Then he explained how everything worked. Sweet. This is what I came to find out.
I found it worked a little like this: You pay the service $1000 and they guarantee you 3 dates. But the dates aren't exactly dates. They send you a person's name and contact info in the mail. They do the same for the other person and the two people are responsible for contacting each other. "But why whould you not contact each other? You know the other person is looking for their special someone, and you know your personalities will match, because you've both been through our interview process." I kept from him the fact that I wasn't going to give him a cent and let him continue. Finally he said, "I'm going to enter some of the info from our interview and that'll give you some time to think -- I'll be right back."
When he came back he sounded a little disheartened. "Well, Brian."
"Yeah?"
"I think you're a great guy. I mean, I had a great time chatting with you and everything...but this service isn't for everyone."
Did I just get let go? Did I get kicked out of a dating service?
"It's just that you don't seem to want to find your special person as much as our other clients."
You mean I'm not totally desperate.
"Some of our clients may seem to you to be a little too anxious to find their special someone. And they may think that you're just not excited enough. It just wouldn't be fair to everyone."
"Really?"
"I have no doubt you're trying hard to find your special person. It just seems to me that you go about it in a more relaxed way and our other clients might not know what to think."
I'm getting kicked out of a dating service.
"But I tell you what. I'm going to keep your interview on file, because I know. I know you'll be back. I can tell. I'll give you 6 months. 6 Months and you'll be back here with more focus."
Then he told me to avoid Patterson Park at night because that's when it was full of male prostitutes and sent me on my way.
Even more than 6 months later I'm pretty confident I'd be kicked out if I went back.
Posted by calculatoronfire at March 21, 2005 12:19 PM
Comments
That's just...weird.
Your blog is great. I had a rough weekend, and ended up reading all the way back through your archives, to November. Thanks for cheering me up. :)
d.
Posted by: d2ana at March 21, 2005 01:38 PM
That's a lot of reading, if I remember correctly.
Did you read the one about the toilet paper? The lack of hygeine? I think it's in there?
Posted by: brian at March 22, 2005 07:36 PM
lack of hygeine like not flushing for as long as possible to gross each other out? I wonder if dad could play that game.
Posted by: nick at March 22, 2005 10:45 PM
Think about the bottles underneath his desk and ask me that question again.
Posted by: brian at March 23, 2005 08:22 AM
I can't believe they would kick you out of the service. It seems to me that they would want to scam $1000 bucks from everyone they could.
Posted by: anonymouscoworker at March 23, 2005 11:32 AM
Yup; read that. Read the whole thing. I didn't feel like going to the library; this was better than reading a book over my weekend. :)
Posted by: d2ana at March 23, 2005 07:28 PM
I think they must have had a money back guarantee and they figured anyone that would date me would demand their money back.
Yeah, I agree reading this would be a lot better than reading a book. It's more challenging. you have to figure out what I mean by my mispelled words, etc.
Posted by: brian at March 24, 2005 02:29 PM