One to ten

One of the more memorable scenes from (500) Days of Summer:

500 days of Summer - Expectations vs Reality

I was talking with a friend earlier and an old theory of mine came into play. Due to a previous job occupational hazard I was subjected to writing a large quantity of survey questions.

Please indicate your overall level of satisfaction with this textbook by using the rating scale below... and toss out a rating scale.

Like it too often does (and it's always irritating for all parties associated with you) my work bled into my personal life.

Instead of "Hi, Chip! How's it hanging?" or "Hey, Tad! Nice flannel!" I began asking people:

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you? With 1 being 'why I'm not very happy at all' and 10 being 'I'm on cloud 9.'

While I was initially dismayed how my job contributed to my social retardation, I began to pick up on certain trends I didn't quite know existed. Most people, normal people, seemed to say "Seven" quite a bit. I blame the educational system.

100-90 A - Excellent
89-80 B - Above Average
79-70 C - Average
69-60 D - Below Average
59 or below F - Failing

Using this scale the ratings seemed to go like this:

10 - Stellar! I just graduated or got a new job or just plain got some. You can't say TEN! and have the other person not follow up with a question about why.

8/9 - Still pretty excellent and people will expect a reason why.

(skip 7)

6/5 - Eh... seems like you had a meh day.

4/3/2 - Someone kicked your dog?

1 - Either we need to buy you a klondike bar or you need to stop dramatizing crap so much.


Seven seemed to be average to most people. Like when you ask someone, "how are you?" and they say "fine" because that is the canned response to move the salutation along. After I learned this little habit many people seemed to have I made a slight adjustment:

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you? With 1 being 'why I'm not very happy at all' and 10 being 'I'm on cloud 9.' And SEVEN is not an option.

Go ahead, try it out. Surely some (most) [okay, everyone] will give you a weird look, but it's worth it. An even rating scale is an... odd thing. With a 4-star system someone rating a hotel with 2 or 3 stars is a massive difference. Force people to take a stance and be a little more honest with their emotions, a skill which that c*nt from 500 Days could have used. :P