Places | At Work

Honesty Is the Best Policy—Especially in Focus Groups

There will always be liars in the focus group, but Fred was never one of them.

There are liars in the focus group. I was one of them once. Not as in, “I don’t use the product we’re discussing because the product is hand soap and I don’t use hand soap.” (Although, from what I’ve seen in public restrooms, there are actually plenty of people that don’t use hand soap.) No, my lie had to do with the fact that I was pretending that two of my friends were not sitting at the other end of the table.

When I was selected for this focus group, the recruiter had admitted they were having difficulty finding other girls my age—nineteen to twenty—who were available. Since most of my friends were working unpaid internships, the idea of ninety dollars for ninety minutes of offering opinions sounded like winning the lottery. The recruiter asked if I had any friends to recommend; she warned, though, that we’d have to behave like strangers at the group.

Everything was going well, until my one friend said, “I agree with Debra.” The Debra in question was our other friend, who was never called ‘Debra’ in the time we’d known her. Maybe it was the pressure of our illicit pact to not give away that we knew each other, but a snort slipped out of me. Everyone at the table looked my way while I tried to disguise it with a cough. But it was already too late.

My one friend was grinning and avoiding eye contact with me. My laughter threatened to spill out and finally erupted when the moderator asked me directly if the scent of the soap had an impact on my decision to purchase or not.

I giggled, snorted, and even weeped. I couldn’t stop, even when I could see the moderator’s obvious annoyance. Every time I thought I had it under control, another round of giggles would burst out. Once my two friends lost it as well, the group, minus the moderator, was bewildered. I said something to the effect of, “I’m so sorry. I laugh involuntarily sometimes.”

I was definitely placed on a ‘do not call’ list after that. I know this because they never called me again.

But I also know this because a few years later, when I was struggling to find a full-time job after graduation, I ended up with a part-time job as a recruiter for focus groups. Our database there contained many names with a bold ‘DO NOT CALL’ next to them. They earned this distinction usually because they had been no-shows, sometimes because they’d behaved inappropriately during the actual focus groups. The moderators didn’t kid around.

But my role as a recruiter for groups was sometimes fun. It got stressful when the parameters for participants got extensive. Was the person between the ages of thirty-five to forty-two, a frequent user of dryer sheets, a graduate with a college degree, making an annual income over $65,000, and someone with no food allergies? Sometimes you’d spend fifteen minutes on the phone screening someone who seemed perfect, only to disqualify them on the twenty-seventh question.

Sometimes people would fit all the given criteria, but not be able to participate for two hours in the middle of a workday. (Hello privilege!) And we always needed more than the amount of people required, just to account for potential no-shows. If you were one of those overflow people, you’d get the best case scenario: You would show up for your booking, not have to actually participate in the group, and still get paid.

But not everyone is so excited to be a part of a focus group. When I was recruiting, I also got hung up on a lot because people thought I was a telemarketer. I learned to rush to get to the part that we legit wanted to pay them for their opinions on gardening tools or cereal.

I worked this part-time gig for months, stuck here after graduation, with a pitiful hourly wage, where overtime wasn’t enough. It felt like all my friends had moved on to post-grad adulthood without me. They were working in Manhattan as assistant buyers in fashion, or writing for magazines, or down on Wall Street, with 401ks, health insurance, and already financially able to move out of their parents’ houses. It became a little more demoralizing each day, after yet another interview for another company that didn’t pan out.

One day, I arrived at work at the recruiting office. One of my bosses asked me to help them fill a group of male smokers in their twenties, due to a woefully low number in the database. Much like the time I was asked to invite my hand soap-using friends to a focus group, I began asking those male smokers in their twenties if they knew any other male smokers in their twenties. What was good for pulmonary health in the country wasn’t good for me: I spent most of my shift not making that much progress through the database’s network. When I realized I had a friend who might check all the necessary boxes, I called him in desperation.

My parents had friends who had a son named Fred. He was three years older than me and we, with our brothers, had gone on family vacations together as kids. My dad and Fred’s dad had been best friends for decades, often going Christmas shopping together for us four kids. Our mothers then became best friends too, and soon enough, we kids inherited the friendship legacy.

I looked at Fred and his brother Joe as cool older brothers who could do anything, always excited when my parents said we’d be going over to their house. Even as young as age six, I wanted to impress them and keep up when we played Manhunt on summer nights in their quiet dead end street, or when we watched horror movies that my parents had strictly forbidden.

When I called him for the focus group, Fred had been sober for a couple of years. He’d been battling addiction, with numerous stints in rehab that didn’t quite take until the most recent one. After that, he enrolled in community college, using his talent for graphic design and working part-time for a relative’s business to pay for his schooling. Fred’s only remaining vice was chain-smoking cigarettes. I knew that if he was a fit, he’d be appreciative of the money, since this particular focus group was paying over $300 for just a few hours.

Over the phone, I explained why I reached out and Fred was equal parts delighted and entertained. He did turn out to be a perfect fit. He answered each screener question exactly as needed to adhere to the participant requirements. My breath caught when I reached the last page of the screener. On it was what we referred to as the “articulation question.” It’s a question designed to ensure we were recruiting people who could eloquently speak at length on anything thrown at them.

The question: “If you were to write a book, what would it be about?”

“I’d write it about turning my life around,” he answered without hesitation. “I want people who have been through everything that I’ve been through to know that there’s hope. Because I have felt that hopelessness—and what good is my life now, if I can’t make sure other people know that, if I can make it through, so can they?”

I felt a deep sadness and my throat tightening. In that moment, I felt guilty that I hadn’t reached out more when Fred was in and out of rehab, trying to survive. His addiction had been the elephant in the room during that time in his life; asking about how he was doing made our families uncomfortable. So I took that cue and avoided the topic.

But what if I had pushed harder, asked more questions, visited or called, if it had been allowed? I should have been able to see beyond my own discomfort and unfamiliarity with addiction. It was terrible to assume that any acknowledgment of his struggle would embarrass him. It would have been more helpful to let him know I was there if he needed someone.

But over the phone, all I could manage to get out was, “What a great answer! No articulation problems here!”

But what if I had pushed harder, asked more questions, visited or called, if it had been allowed?

The day after Fred went to the focus group, he called to thank me for thinking of him. He kept exclaiming over and over, “It’s just talking about things that I do every day! And getting paid for it!” I promised him that, if I had to fill any groups that needed guys in their twenties, I’d give him a call to see if he’d qualify.

Coincidentally, a spate of such groups came across my desk in the next few months. Fred and I ended up chatting every other week. Sometimes he qualified, sometimes he didn’t. He never wanted to be dishonest in his answers, and he was always my first call when he fit the initial requirements.

Because of all the articulation questions, I learned more and more about the person Fred had become. That he really liked to cook because, as he smoothly put it, “I’m really good at it!” He wanted to one day visit Thailand because “have you ever seen more beautiful photos of a place in your life?” He was saving to buy a condo; “my dad says real estate is the best investment.” And he’d invite Marilyn Monroe to a hypothetical dinner party. “Does that make me cliché?” he asked me. “You know what, I don’t care. I’d still invite her. Put that down.”

When your parents are friends with another set of parents, it’s often assumed that the kids automatically become part of each other’s lives. You skip the step of meeting out in the world by happenstance, the part where you get to know each other. You skip conversations and arranging to hang out because your parents are the ones to do the work of getting together. As you get older, and as you drift apart, you still think that you already know your ‘family friends.’ But that’s not true. The more Fred and I talked, the more I realized how little I knew.

Thanks to the screening questions, I now knew how many packs of cigarettes Fred smoked in a week (two to four), what hair products he used regularly (Paul Mitchell), and what salad dressings he liked (mainly balsamic or Italian). But in between that, we shared what was going on in our lives. We’d make fun of our parents—like how he had to write out two pages of instructions for his mother on how to use the computer and she exasperatedly told him it didn’t work because she didn’t realize she first had to press an ON button.

I even admitted to him that I felt I was lagging behind all my friends in terms of life progression. In the words of our parents, our brothers were the ones who had “responsible” jobs. And we were the ones floundering and finding our path, pursuing creative goals but unsure how we’d get there.

“We are the lost children,” Fred joked once. “The ones who need direction. To find ourselves.” And I felt a pang, even as we laughed, hoping that “lost” wasn’t merely a gentler replacement for “hopeless.”

I added, “The ones also most likely needing to get bailed out of predicaments!”

“Isn’t that the truth,” he agreed. He seemed more optimistic overall than I was and I envied it. But I was also so happy to be privy to it, hoping too that it might infectiously become part of my own mindset.

“I think it’s all going to be ok,” he finally said. “I think it helps when you really know what you want.” He spoke so easily, so confidently, it seemed that he knew what he wanted, that it was so clear to him. I was probably projecting, but I felt that he also believed I would get there too. I just needed to figure out what I really wanted.

At the time, we were both living in our parents’ houses in New Jersey and often went to the same local hangout spots. This sometimes led our respective groups of friends to stand idly by while we reminisced and laughed about how he once introduced me to Freddy Krueger and I had nightmares for weeks. How our moms constantly asked him, “Didn’t that hurt?!” every time he got a new piercing or tattoo. Or how my family had listed his dad as a reference when adopting a dog, but Fred happened to answer the phone, then gave a glowing recommendation, answering “yes” to everything they asked, even though he wasn’t sure if it was even accurate, but he just really wanted us to get a dog.

When it came to addiction and rehab I often didn’t know how to talk about it or if I should talk about it.

“So you’re feeling good now?” I would awkwardly say, whether over the phone or in person. I wanted Fred to know I had been worried, but I had also been raised not to pry into other people’s private affairs.

“Oh yeah. I was into some bad shit,” he’d say. “Really bad.”

“But look you’ve come out the other side!” I cringed at how Mary Sunshine I sounded, wishing I could just say what I wanted: “I’m so glad you’re OK. You and your family are so important to me.”

Fred just laughed easily, as always. “I did! Just in time to help some company sell more cigarettes to hard-working Americans.”

“At least we’re not selling them to children!” I loved making him laugh, considering I’d spent a significant part of my childhood giggling at pretty much anything he said. There were still some vestiges in me of that young kid who desperately wanted to impress him, a surrogate second brother.

“I wanted to feel better,” he added, as if finishing a thought. “So I just had to . . . I had to find my way out.”

I felt more connected to him—on those calls, in those conversations, in that honesty—than I ever had.

*

A year passed.

I was no longer working as a focus group recruiter, and was a full-time financial headhunter instead. Fred was working as a hotel manager. I was writing on the side; he was drawing on the side. Though we weren’t yet making a living through our passions, we at least had decent salaries and our own health insurance.

I decided to call him one morning, to half-jokingly ask if I could get a friends and family discount on a hotel room for my boyfriend and me. After calling my dad to ask for the direct office number of the hotel (these were the days where most people didn’t answer cell phones during working hours), I kept getting side-tracked with work calls and emails.

Finally, I had a moment to call Fred and started to dial—only to be thwarted again by another line ringing. I answered to hear my father’s strained voice; he said that I couldn’t call Fred at work.

“Why not?”

“Because he passed away this morning.”

I felt numb. I couldn’t move. I thought I was just sitting there, with the phone to my ear in shock. But apparently, I’d begun shouting at my father: that he was a liar, that Fred was just a kid, that it wasn’t true. I only stopped when my co-workers surrounded my cubicle, their concerned faces telling me that I was shrieking at an inhuman decibel, that the uncontrollable sobs were bursting out of me, that I was gasping for breath.

I had lost loved ones before. This was something else. Maybe because I was old enough to be aware of what I had lost. Maybe because Fred had initially entered my life as an idolized older brother, and later just became my friend, I always believed I’d have him. Maybe because he was finally happy, because his life seemed to be heading in a positive and stable direction. The unfairness of it rankled most of all.

My entire body felt like a gaping wound, like the slightest movement would cause the pain to exponentially intensify, until there wasn’t an inch of me left that didn’t feel broken. I ran to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror. I could see myself shaking as tears continued to pour out of me.

My mind frantically sought and failed to find a way to absorb what was happening. Why it had happened. I was told he just hadn’t woken up that morning. His father frantically called for an ambulance and they couldn’t revive him en route to the hospital or even when they arrived.

I suddenly felt selfish and guilty thinking about how addiction doesn’t just resolve itself. It’s an ongoing underlying demon. Had any of us been checking in on him? Had he been afraid to say anything in fear of disappointing the people who had been so proud of his recovery?

I was half-heartedly told by various friends and family that it was possible he hadn’t been taking his prescribed ulcer medication, that a complication from that might have been the reason he had passed.

“Do you believe that?” I demanded of my mother, who was the third person to offer up that explanation.

My mom, crying silently, shook her head at me, signaling it wasn’t the right time.

And maybe it wasn’t. Did the reason matter if it didn’t change the fact that Fred was gone? I was torn on it, but also too devastated to push any harder. If I did, if any of us did, maybe we’d all have to accept some portion of responsibility. That maybe we failed him.

Did the reason matter if it didn’t change the fact that Fred was gone?

Going through the steps of grief bring you closer to acceptance. At least that’s what I hear. I don’t know that hugs and crying and sermons through a wake and funeral can ever alleviate the pain you feel when a boy of twenty-seven is gone. I don’t know that time can either, since it’s a constant reminder of all that he’s missing, all that you can no longer say to him or share. I don’t know if I felt cheated because, regardless of all the years I’d known Fred, it was the last two where I’d come to know him best, and I was mad because he deserved to keep going.

There were so many things I knew he would have done and the loss of so much possibility ahead of him just filled me with impotent fury. But more than just the accomplishments I know he would have achieved, he would have been a fantastic best man at his brother’s wedding, an incredible uncle to his future nieces and nephews, and, as always, a great friend to everyone who knew and loved him. He deserved to live his life, whatever it might have held.

I did know that I would think of him all the time. I had photos, I had memories, I had stories. I had an illicit photocopy of the screener where he said he wanted to write a book about turning his life around because I believed, one day, I would be able to give it to him as a gift when he did write it. This is what I had left of him. And it would never quell the grief. It would simply keep him with me.

Years later, I found myself in a waiting room, about to be a participant in a focus group, for the first time in a long time. A woman across from me conspiratorially whispered that she does one focus group a week for extra cash. I eyed her Louis Vuitton purse, leather jacket, and honey-blonde highlights, as she explained that she always says she buys whatever product the group happens to be for, even if it’s not true.

I thought about all the screeners I had gone through with Fred, how he once wouldn’t even pretend that he used a specific brand of butter because it wasn’t the truth. I recalled how much I had complained about that part-time recruiting job, feeling envious of my friends in their fancy full-time jobs, while I languished in despair waiting for some interview to go my way. I had scorned a job that had actually given me so many conversations with Fred we may have never had.

There will always be liars in the focus group, but Fred was never one of them.