Death by Crackers

Meghan is on a list where sometimes she gets invited to do taste tests through the K-State Olathe campus.  Recently one came up for kids four and over.  It turns out we have one of those.  It consists of three one-hour sessions any time this week and pays $125.  I had time yesterday morning, so I took Joshua for the first session, with Meghan planning to take him today and then also tomorrow.  But when I got there, we found out it's for the parents too, so the same parent has to be at all three sessions.  This was a problem, because I knew I was going to be out of town today (I'm in Chicago), and Meghan wasn't really able to go yesterday, and plus I was already there with him.  So we talked with the organizers, and they said it would be okay if we did all three sessions in the same day.  So Joshua and I stayed there for our original 10:00 session, then we also did the noon session.

The tasting consisted of the child tasting five small cups each full of a different types of cheesy crackers and then I would ask him questions from the iPad app about how he liked different aspects of it (taste, crunchiness, appearance, cheesiness, etc.) and I'd then enter the responses on the iPad at our station.  For the second half of the hour session, the kids got to go play and do crafts at a table manned by an adult, and then I went through the same process with five different types of crackers, but with more detailed and in-depth questions. The end result is we would each try 15 types of crackers over the course of the three sessions.  The crackers were various versions of GoldFish crackers, Ritz Bits, and Cheez-Its and others,  Some were currently for sale, and some were test versions which the companies were evaluating (which of course is the whole point of the taste test.  They pay K-State, and K-State pays us, and then they have consumer feedback.  Everyone wins.)  After our second session, I dropped him off at home and went to work.  I didn't feel the greatest after have tons of crackers in place of my lunch, but it wasn't too bad.

Our third session was scheduled for 5:30.  By the time I got home to pick up Joshua to take him back, I was about sick.  Not really sick, but the thought of having any more cheesy crackers made me want to barf.  That's probably why they normally don't want people to do all three in the same day.  I just wanted to stay home and eat real food and never look at a Goldfish cracker again.  But you don't get paid unless you do all three sessions, and for $125, I was determined to power through it, even if it meant I would actually throw up at the end.  So we went back, and we each had five more small cups of crackers.  At the end, I felt pretty blah, but I wasn't going to actually vomit, so that was good.   It was definitely not something I would have done for free, but for $125, I was more than willing to suffer through it.  We collected our cash, went home, and celebrated St. Patrick's Day.  I was really glad to get some actual real food in me for dinner.